Today may well be the 150th anniversary of the first serialisation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities, but I’m talking about a tale of two technologies. Thankfully, the child of the internet, www, is no longer jailbait. It’s legal. It can get married and die for its country. But it can’t yet drink. God help us in two years’ time! We’ll be collecting its vomit-flecked and bleary-eyed face from a gutter in the ripped backside of the other end of town. Back in 1993, April 30th was the day when CERN, where the world wide web internet application was developed, announced that it would be free for anyone to use – allowing the two technologies of the internet and world wide web to take off unimpeded by competitors. Since which time information technology has totally taken over our lives. Has it freed us up or tied us down? Or both, at once, in 3D? Can you remember when you first started using the web? The first time I went on, there were only three websites. God. Coca Cola. And one featuring fundamentalist advice on how to bomb America. Whatever, I like the comment from the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams: “The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for.”
Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/
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