Next year we will be celebrating two decades since Tim Berners-Lee and his team at CERN implemented the first HTTP system and gave birth to the World Wide Web.
All of THIS has happened in 20 years.
Although the sophistication of the Social-2.0-Ecommerce-Flash-2Way-mediaRich-databaseDriven-AJAXenhanced web scarcely resembles the text based clients of the early days, the foundation has not shifted. It is all about the LINK.
That’s right. The hypertext link is what online empires depend on. From the success of the Ecommerce giants, to the buzz of the social media superstars, to the corporate jousting of Murd0ch v. Google, the link remains center stage.
We crave those links and scrutinize their quality. Our revenue depends on them. And we are beholden to almighty possessor of link authority: Google.
Is this the web of humanity that TBL envisioned? I cannot say. But the web is a fascinating, ever-expanding Escher-like puzzle. As it evolves – complex and wondrous, the hypertext link remains the connective tissue that defines the web and gives it form. I pay tribute to the link: so simple and elegant an invention on which our new universe has been built.
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