The Revolution of WWW

| Insights

Over the past 35 years, the World Wide Web (WWW) has revolutionized nearly every aspect of our lives, profoundly altering how we communicate, learn, work, and interact with the world around us.

In this in-depth analysis by Andersen’s Industry Group Technology, lawyer Paola Finetto, partner of the firm and expert in data protection and cybersecurity, tells us about the key elements that led to the birth of the internet as we know it today and how many facets and functions the tool has acquired over the years, until it has become an essential tool for both leisure and especially work.

Here is the story, in brief, of the famous WWW-acronym and the way it has taken over our lives. It seems that Sir Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist working at CERN – the European Organization for Nuclear Research –, was impressed by how some of his Italian colleagues used to transmit information via telephone line from one floor of the institute to another by displaying information via video. What is certain is that Berners-Lee observed how difficult it was for researchers to access and share information stored on different computers. In March 1989, Berners-Lee submitted the document “Information Management: a Proposal” to his supervisor: this proposal is recognized as a key moment in the history of the internet, laying the groundwork for the web’s fundamental structure and functionality. The document outlined the conceptual and architectural framework for what would become the World Wide Web and described a system designed to facilitate the sharing and updating of information among researchers. Although this project was initially underestimated2, Berners- Lee went on to develop the first web browser and web server, and the first web page went live on 6 August 1991.
This marked the birth of the World Wide Web as a public service on the internet. After two years in which it had only been used by the scientific community, CERN decided on 30 April 1993 to make the WWW available to everyone by releasing its source code into the public domain.