CREATE BLOG |
WHO INVENTED WWW |
Today, blogs are taking over the web at warp speed. Where did they come from? Why are they here? Are blogs merely a means to some devious alien end for humanity? Perhaps. In this chapter, we'll dig into the history and chronology of the blogging revolution, discuss what a blog actually is, tour some good examples of blogs, and find out why they're so popular.
Tim Berners-Lee graduated from the Queen's College at Oxford University, England in 1976. He built his first computer with a soldering iron and an old television. Then Tim spent two years with an equipment manufacturer, working on bar code technology. In 1978, Tim wrote some typesetting software.
After a few years as an independent consultant, Tim went to work as an engineer at a particle physics laboratory in Switzerland. While there, Tim proposed a global hypertext project. It was designed to allow people to work together by combining their knowledge in a "web" of hypertext documents. This work was started in October 1990, and the program "WorldWideWeb" was first made available on the "Internet" in the summer of 1991. I was mowing lawns that summer.
What was this Tim guy up to? That's right, you guessed it: Tim invented the web. Let's all give him a big round of applause. Good job, Tim! We always knew you could do it. And your mother wanted you to be a doctor? Good thing you didn't listen to her.Through 1991 and 1993, Tim continued working on the design of the web, coordinating feedback from users across the Internet. I continued mowing lawns. Another thing Tim starting doing—and this is of particular interest to you—was link to new sites as they came online.
In 1996, GeoCities opened up web publishing to the masses Anyone who wanted to dabble with HTML or play around with an early What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) web editor could do so without the barrier of acquiring and maintaining a dedicated web server.
People began pioneering the web in the mid '90s as personal home pages were created in droves with thoughts, opinions, and life experiences. They were learning how to build their own sites, experimenting with design, and sharing their voices with the world. It was good stuff.
But there was a problem. After the initial creative burst and FTP upload, most home pages just sat out there like a big, lumpy matzo ball getting dry in the wind. The page would just languish, never to be updated again. Nobody would visit it because they had already seen it—it wasn't changing, so why visit again? The web became littered with freshman attempts at web design and the occasionally funny, but still hideous, "Welcome to my homepage, I KISS YOU!" genre of site.
Then there was the whole dot-commerce scramble. Tim's invention became swollen with e-stores, bloated with search engines, and puffed up with megaportals offering streams of relentless, commercialized content, and "free services." People were trying to pave the web and build a mall. Ultimately, that bubble burst and reality came down hard all around us. But not before some talented people developed some real products and services that were actually good ideas.