Today the World Wide Web is exactly 30 years old. On August 23, 1991, one of the patriarchs of the Internet, Ty Bernes-Lee, presented the first website to the public. He posted it on the CERN server (the one where the collider is) a little earlier, but the 23rd is still considered the official date.
If you want to see where it all started, go to http://info.cern.ch /, it still hangs there. On the main page – 21 lines of text and 25 hyperlinks. Immediately after that, it makes sense to go, for example, to YouTube and estimate the length of the traveled path.
The most amazing thing in this story is that only 30 years have passed. And we can no longer imagine any life without the Global Network. Neither everyday, nor political, nor economic. None of the previous communications revolutions (printing, sound recording, telegraph, telephone and the Internet itself, as the technology appeared in 1969) was not so rapid and comprehensive.
The world wide web opened so many doors at once that at first humanity was even confused by the spectrum of possibilities. This turned out to be especially important for Russia.
The notorious “dashing 90s” are far from just wild capitalism in crimson jackets and endless political turbulence. This is the time when the energy of thousands of young talented people rushed into a new unknown area and performed a real miracle there.
Runet created by enthusiasts is little that in the modern history of our country can be proud of without any reservations and discounts. For the time being, it remained a zone of absolute freedom, and, what is especially valuable, this freedom was mainly used for the good, refuting the popular thesis that without a direction from above, people will necessarily slide into indecency.
The potential accumulated then is still working. And this causes quite understandable irritation among the authorities, who prefer to live offline in the old fashioned way. It is more difficult for free people to lie, which means they are more difficult to manage.
It is not without reason that so much propaganda effort is spent today on portraying the Web as an information dump consisting of sheer fakes, the salvation from which lies in control and “sovereignty.”
However, trying to slam the doors thrown open 30 years ago is like catching the sea with a net. Even the Great Wall cannot hide from the free flow of information. And this is the main result of the past 30 years.
