It was 20 years ago today — March 13, 1989 — that Tim Berners-Lee published his now historic document, Information Management: A Proposal, which became the foundation of Internet technology.
But it was the mid 1990s before the Internet started to catch the attention and imagination of the masses.
And, in 1989, Berners-Lee was very cautious in his predictions about how far his idea could go…
We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities.
The aim would be to allow a place to be found for any information or reference which one felt was important, and a way of finding it afterwards. The result should be sufficiently attractive to use that it the information contained would grow past a critical threshold, so that the usefulness the scheme would in turn encourage its increased use.
It was 1993, when Jim Clark and Marc Andreesen came up with the Netscape browser, that the full potential of Berners-Lee’s invention became apparent.
Evolving Squid
“in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities.”
I’m forced to say… EPIC FAIL!
The internet has become a cesspool of fancy animations and graphics that do much more to obscure, delay, and deny information than convey it in a concise, clear manner.