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  • History of the World Wide Web
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  • The World Wide Web ("WWW" or simply the "Web") is a global information medium which users can read and write via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, as e-mail does. The history of the Internet dates back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web.
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abstract
  • The World Wide Web ("WWW" or simply the "Web") is a global information medium which users can read and write via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, as e-mail does. The history of the Internet dates back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web. The hypertext portion of the Web in particular has an intricate intellectual history; notable influences and precursors include Vannevar Bush's Memex, IBM's Generalized Markup Language, and Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu. The concept of a home-based global information system goes at least as far back as Isaac Asimov's short story "Anniversary" (Amazing Stories, March 1959), in which the characters look up information on a home computer called a "Multivac outlet" –which was connected by a "planet wide network of circuits" to a mile-long "super-computer" somewhere in the bowels of the Earth. One character is thinking of installing a Mulitvac, Jr. model for his children. Interestingly, although story was set in the far distant future when commercial space travel is a commonplace, the machine "prints the answer on a slip of tape" that comes out a slot –there is no video display– and the owner of the home computer says that he doesn't spend the kind of money to get a Multivac outlet that talks.