Thirty years ago the Internet was born: how the "network of networks" came into being

Just a minute on the Internet, more than 3.8 million searches are made on the Web; More than 29 million WhatsApp messages are sent, 156 million emails and 350,000 tweets. This sea of ​​information that is now part of our daily life comes from the hand of Tim Berners-Lee just 30 years ago.

In just three decades, revolutionized the world of informationtimes were accelerating, new business models were appearing, and at one point distances were reduced. The "here" and the "there" have been resignified. What happens in a context where data steals and information becomes viral.

The March 12, 1989 wrote his first proposal on how the web architecture should be. At the time, I worked at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, based in Switzerland.

A few years earlier, in 1980, he had already proposed to implement a project based on hypertext facilitate the sharing of information between researchers. Together with their group, they created the hypertext label or the HTML language; the hypertext transfer protocol or HTTP and the location system of objects or URLs.

The Web was born from the idea of ​​combining HTTP, the communication protocol allowing the transfer of information; and HTML, the language marked for page generation.

Thus was born, in March 1989, the first proposal to build the network of networks or the web. But at that time, it did not have the expected repercussions. Barely a year later, Berners-Lee and his colleague Robert Cailliau presented a review of the original proposal.

The first browser was developed with NEXTSTEP, called WorldWideWeb, and the first CERN web server. The proposal was approved and on August 6, 1991, the explanation of the nature of the Web was online. In this first page of the Internet, it was explained how to generate a browser and build a web server. It was the beginning of a new era. In 1995, there were already 200 servers and the rest belongs to history.

From the beginning, Berners-Lee was an advocate of the free and free nature of the Web. In 1994, he organized the W3C Consortium, headquartered at MIT, which he still manages, and which came up with the idea of ​​standardizing the technology that feeds the Web.

Today, the W3C has more than 350 members and centers in Germany, Australia, Austria, China, South Korea, Spain, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Morocco, United Kingdom. and Ireland.

Britain's Berners-Lee, born June 8, 1955, has won many honors during his professional career. Among them, in 2017, he received the Turing Award. In addition, he is part of the Internet Hall of Fame in the Internet Society, has won the Asturias Award and is an honorary member of the Royal Society of Arts.

The plan to reinvent the web

In the last time, Tim Berners-Lee showed Concerned about data leaks and uses of personal information users, as well as misinformation and hate speech that abound in the networks.

Given this panorama, the father of the Web presented last year an initiative called Contract for the web, Which aims to ensure that governments, citizens and businesses work together to ensure the free flow of information, while ensuring the privacy of users.

This initiative is supported by fifty organizations, governments and businesses, including Google and Facebook. As Berners-Lee explained at the time, details of the agreement will be announced in May this year.