A short post this, to remind that today is officially the 25th birthday of the World-Wide-Web, in March 1989. It took five years for a conference around the theme to be organised and below is a photo from that event.
From my perspective and perhaps from the 200 or so others present at that closing session, I went back home and told my young children that the world had changed that week. So it has.
And one personal anecdote. In January 1994, a colleague in my department mentioned that they knew the producer of a BBC science program called Tomorrow’s World. He suggested I send him an email describing what the WWW was, and its potential. I did, and he responded a little time later with a link to the very first Web site produced within the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). To my regret ever since, I did not capture that site as it was then. Of course, it eventually grew to the one we now know (and read about TimBL’s call for a Web Magna Carta on that very site today).
Here is another momento, although very sadly not in good condition (it was dropped in the garden, and spent some time buried!). A genuine first WWW conference badge.
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Here is a plot I extracted from the spin-unrestricted IRC pathway in the direction transition state to product. It shows the value of as the reaction proceeds.
You are quite right and we got so used to the www that we cannot envisage life without it...