Community News

The big 3: Happy birthday to the World Wide Web!

The web was born out of an extremely simple but powerful idea: linking, connecting documents through their web address (what we call today hyperlink). R&E networking is the natural next step to make that sharing, linking and connecting the best possible one: from the cutting-edge network services, to the world leading AAI, GÉANT is at the very heart of the same scientific community who saw in the web the answer to their need to share information.

Where did it all start?

British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee published a paper including a plan on transferring information within the organisation, while working at CERN in Switzerland in 1989, which went on to become the world’s very first website.

Dr Domenico Vicinanza of Anglia Ruskin University and Dr Genevieve Williams, from the University of Exeter, have used a process called data sonification to translate some of the key phrases used in that original 1989 paper into musical notes.

“The story of this piece starts with revolutionary, but simple and somehow magical development: beginning quietly, the piano plays a melody derived from the sonification of “A solution: Hypertext”, the title of the key section of the paper where the fundamental idea underpinning the entire world wide web, linking documents together through network pointers, is introduced.”

Listen to this paper now! Yep, that’s right, you can listen to a paper.

Happy Birthday World Wide Web! 3⃣0⃣ 🥳

Skip to content