Today, the 12th of March 2014 marks the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web (W3). 

In the space of 25 years, it has grown to the point that two out of every five people on the planet are connected. I think it’s easy to underestimate just how significant an achievement that is and how vital the web has become.

Interconnectivity between computer networks had existed long before the W3 but what it brought us was a way to publicly share information in a ‘hypertext’ language that could be retrieved by software and displayed on a user’s screen. In the time it has taken for a generation of people to grow up in a world where the W3 has always existed, it has transformed in technologies and uses but the core principal is still the same.

Software requesting information from a source and displaying it.

The World Wide Web will only get bigger and by reading this post, you’re helping with that. The Web’s inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is calling for an online ‘Magna Carta’, a bill of rights to protect our privacy. I say we should all support him: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26540635