Happy Birthday Interwebs

Get the candles ready, as one score and 9 years ago the World Wide Web was born. Happy 29th Birthday Internet as we know it.

It was on this day in the heady age of 1989 that Sir Tim Berners-Lee made a proposal for an information management system. Something to do with needing a system to push all of the data spewing out of CERN or some-such (I just go with his story as he has a few letters after his name… “Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA FBCS” — also a winner of the Turing Award and Queen Elizabeth Prize). That year he pumped out a working prototype named Enquire. He redistributed this in 1990 for use at CERN and then it was released outside of CERN in 1991 first to nerdy research institutions then to the general pleby public in August 1991. Imagine the veritable truck loads of information coming our of CERN before this invention!

So the Dub Dub Dubs is 29 years young. Lets see what we might see in its near future. We are on the verge of seeing the internet being not just a rich kids toy to buy things and say things. Over a billion people live off the modern power grid now, but soon hopefully we will see more people switched on to power with alternative power sources – as well as affordable internet. This will be an amazing tool for the poor and the under spoken to have a voice, get the tools they need as well as an education at the click of a button.

We definitely know, that when they do connect they will be wanting to use the net as a serious tool, inclusion into the global community and as a voice in this new community. They won’t be so taken in by the glittery ads for shoes (that look suspiciously like the ones they are probably making in a factory). Maybe with this addition to our community we will see a more service based and less object based internet? With all this open dialogue and inclusion. Our concepts of borders may start to change and seep into our politics.

More and more things will be available to be created by the user and the vendors will be selling designs (not physical objects) to be printed, made, created by the end user. Think t-shirt printing, 3D shoe printing, house-hold object replacement parts, art and tools. Those frames on your glasses look pretty buggered mate, print these new ones…

Well, we have to go cut the cake and blow out candles. We will leave you to your cat videos and Rick and Morty…