There are some conflicting ideas for the origin of the WWW (World Wide Web), but the generally accepted inventor of the WWW is Sir Tim Berners-Lee. As stated on the Cern (2020) website "Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989, while working at CERN. The web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world."
Here is a screenshot of the recreated original front page of the WWW and its purpose of allowing access to resources from a central point and therefore aiding research and science. The use of the Web has changed dramatically over the years from its beginning, but it is still often used as a source of information and for academics to share ideas, information and conclusions from research. It is said that Berners-Lee has mixed feelings about how the Web (and the Internet [1]) is now used, which I would like to explore a little more here. From an interview in Vanity Fair (01.07.2018) he is stated as saying he was devastated that the Web had been used by governments to influence other countries politically, and that users data had been shared for analysis without their consent. He is now working on reforming the Web and set up the World Wide Web Foundation in 2009 to protect the human rights of its users, as well as working on Solid, a project that "aims to radically change the way Web applications work today, resulting in true data ownership as well as improved privacy." (Solid, 2017)
Who invented E-Commerce?
Online shopping was invented and pioneered by Michael Aldrich in the UK. In 1979 he connected a modified domestic television via a telephone line to a real-time multi-user transaction processing computer. (Aldrich, 2011)
As this was developed many years before people had PCs at home and the development of the internet for free online access, the use of online shopping was limited, but as technology and software progressed, the online e-commerce universe has expanded considerably.
References
Aldrich, M., 2011. The Michael Aldrich Archive - Internet Online Shopping. [online] Aldricharchive.com. Available at: http://www.aldricharchive.com/internet_online_shopping.html [Accessed 5 July 2020].
Andrews, E., 28.10.2019. Who Invented The Internet?. [online] HISTORY. Available at: https://www.history.com/news/who-invented-the-internet [Accessed 5 July 2020].
Brooker, K., August 2018. “I Was Devastated”: The Man Who Created The World Wide Web Has Some Regrets. [online] Vanity Fair. Available at: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/07/the-man-who-created-the-world-wide-web-has-some-regrets [Accessed 5 July 2020].
Home.cern. 2020. The Birth Of The Web | CERN. [online] Available at: https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web [Accessed 5 July 2020].
Solid.mit.edu. 2017. Solid. [online] Available at: https://solid.mit.edu/ [Accessed 5 July 2020].
[1] A platform that was developed by the US government in the 1960s, which was called the ARPANET and following development by many scientists a version of this is what is now used by millions across the planet. (Andrews, E. 28.10.2019)
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