10 fun facts about the World Wide Web
Most of us use it but how much do we actually know about the World Wide Web? Here we bring you some of the most interesting facts about the web that we found off the web…
1. The web is not the same thing as the internet. The web is any information that is identified with a URL (Universal Resource Locator). Think of the internet as the tracks of a railway system and applications such as the web, as one of the many types of traffic which runs on that infrastructure. The web is big and important but it’s only one of the things that runs on the internet.
2. Although most website addresses begin with “www” there is no requirement they have to begin this way. It’s a remnant of an early convention to help people recognise that someone was running a web server.
3. Of the seven billion people on the earth, around 2.4 billion has internet access. That’s around 40 per cent of the world’s population.
4. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. He is the first individual to have completely transformed mankind’s communication environment since Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1455, widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period.
5. Berners-Lee copied the double slash “//” in URLs from the Apollo workstation’s domain file system.
6. The internet’s first website went online on August 6, 1991. Berners-Lee and his fellow team members launched a page that contained 153 words.
7. The web is the single fastest-growing communication medium of all time. The web took four years to reach its first 50 million users while it took broadcast radio 38 years and television 13 years.
8. It is estimated by the end of 2015, around 15 billion gadgets – such as your smartphones, tablets, desktops, servers, wireless routers and hotspots, car GPS units, watches and so much more – will be connected to the internet. By 2020, it’s believed it will be 40 billion gadgets.
9. According to Pew Research Center, the US use the internet the most with 78.6 per cent of global web usage. Australia came in second at 67.6 per cent, followed by Europe (63.2 per cent), Latin America/Caribbean (42.9 per cent), Middle East (40.2 per cent), Asia (25.7 per cent) and Africa (15.6). Interestingly, 24 nations remain completely offline.
10. The first emoticon is credited to Kevin Mackenzie in 1979 who typed in the simple “-)”. Three years later, Scott Fahlman proposed a “:-)” which has become the norm.
Related links:
How to use social media to make new friends
Tools to turn you into a tech-savvy senior NOW