World Wide Web Day 2024

World Wide Web Day is celebrated on August 1 every year. The day is observed to commemorate the World Wide Web (www) and its impact on the world. The World Wide Web (www) has become an integral part of our daily lives, transforming the way we communicate, access information, and navigate the world.

The day is marked in honour of the ability of people to browse information freely using the Web. The Web is the tool that billions across the globe use every moment to interact with the global system of interconnected computer systems, which is the Internet.

World Wide Web Day is celebrated every year to celebrate the anniversary of the web being created as a tool to browse information across the global system of interconnected computers (internet). Furthermore, World Wide Web Day is marked by numerous events globally, where prominent figures who played key roles in creating and developing the World Wide Web are the focus of conversations and interviews at prestigious institutions.

History of World Wide Web Day

The World Wide Web, or simply ‘the Web’, was made by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while he was working at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research).

In March 1989, Berners-Lee presented a proposal for a “distributed information system” to facilitate the sharing and updating of information among scientists at CERN. Berners-Lee and his colleague Robert Cailliau developed the first web browser, WorldWideWeb (later renamed Nexus), and the first web server, “httpd,” in 1990.

The world’s first website went live on August 6, 1991. It was a basic page that made sense of the World Wide Web project and gave data about how to access and utilize it. This site was hosted on Berners-Lee’s NeXT computer, which likewise served as the world’s first web server.

Significance of World Wide Web Day

World Wide Web Day is huge as it is an opportunity to reflect on the effect of the web on our lives and to praise the creativity and genius of Tim Berners-Lee and the numerous other people who have contributed to its development.

The day is an indication of the force of the web to interface with individuals and share information. It is likewise a day to praise the creativity and development that has made the web what it is today.

Facts about World Wide Web Day

World Wide Web, which is also known as a Web, is a collection of websites or web pages stored in web servers and connected to local computers through the internet.

These websites contain text pages, digital images, audios, videos, etc. Users can access the content of these sites from any part of the world over the internet using their devices such as computers, laptops, cell phones, etc.

Web 3.0 is a decentralized internet to be run on blockchain technology, which would be different from the versions in use, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.

In Web3, users will have ownership stakes in platforms and applications unlike now where tech giants control the platforms.

Gavin Wood, founder of Ethereum, a blockchain technology company, used the term Web3 first in 2014 and in the past few years, many others have added to the idea of Web3.

Web 1.0 is the World Wide Web or the Internet was invented in 1989. It became popular in 1993. It lasted until 1999.

The internet in the Web 1.0 days was mostly static web pages where users would go to a website and then read and interact with the static information.

Web 2.0 started in some form in the late 1990s itself though 2004 was when most of its features were fully available. It is still the age of Web 2.0 now.

The differentiating characteristic of Web 2.0 compared to Web 1.0 is that users can create content.

They can interact and contribute in the form of comments, registering likes, sharing and uploading their photos or videos and performing other such activities.

In Web 2.0, most of the data in the internet and the internet traffic are owned or handled by very few companies ex. Google.

This has created issues related to data privacy and data security, as well as the abuse of such data.

There is a sense of disappointment that the internet’s original purpose has been distorted.

Theme of World Wide Web Day

This year’s theme highlights how the web has revolutionized communication, collaboration, and access to knowledge, bringing the world closer together.