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FOR THE EUROPEAN physicists who created the World Wide Web, preserving its history is as elusive as unlocking the mysteries of how the universe began.
The scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, known by its French acronym CERN, are searching for the first Web page. It was at CERN that Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web in 1990 as an unsanctioned project, using a NeXT computer that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs designed in the late 80s during his 12-year exile from the company.
Dan Noyes oversees CERN’s website and has taken on the project to uncover the world’s first Web page. He says that no matter how much data they sort through, researchers may never make a clear-cut discovery of the original web page because of the nature of how data is shared.
“The concept of the earliest Web page is kind of strange,” Noyes said. “It’s not like a book. A book exists through time. Data gets overwritten and looped around. To some extent, it is futile.”
Berners-Lee running WorldWideWeb software at CERN in 1994
In April, CERN restored a 1992 copy of the first-ever website that Berners-Lee created to arrange CERN-related information. It was the earliest copy CERN could find at the time, and Noyes promised then to keep looking.
After National Public Radio did a story on the search, a professor at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill came forward with a 1991 version. Paul Jones met Berners-Lee during the British scientist’s visit to the US for a conference in 1991, just a year after Berners-Lee invented the Web. Jones said Berners-Lee shared the page with the professor, who has transferred it from server to server through the years. A version remains on the Internet today at an archive Jones runs, ibiblio.org.
The page Jones received from Berners-Lee is locked in Jones’ NeXT computer, behind a password that has long been forgotten. Forensic computer specialists are trying to extract the information to check time stamps and preserve the original coding used to generate the page.
The Web page preserved by Jones is both familiar and quaint. There are no flashy graphics or video clips. Instead, it is a page of text on a white background with 19 hyperlinks. Some of the links, such as ones leading to information about CERN, have been updated and still work. On the other hand, a link to the phone numbers for CERN staffers is dead.
Noyes said he’ll keep searching for earlier versions of the page. Noyes said his project still has to sort through plenty of old disks and other data submitted following NPR’s story. He suspects there will be a couple of pages to pop up that were created months before the version Jones has.
The Internet itself dates back to 1969, when computer scientists gathered in a lab at the University of California, Los Angeles to exchange data between two bulky computers. In the early days, the Internet had email, message boards known as Usenet and online communities such as The WELL.
Berners-Lee was looking for ways to control computers remotely at CERN. His innovation was to combine the Internet with another concept that dates to the 1960s: hypertext, which is a way of presenting information nonsequentially. Although he never got the project formally approved, his boss suggested he quietly tinker with it anyway. Berners-Lee began writing the software for the Web in October 1990, got his browser working by mid-November and added editing features in December. He made the program available at CERN by Christmas.
The Internet and the Web
These days, many people see the Internet and the Web as one and the same, even though the Web is just one of the many functions of the Internet. Personal email tends to be conducted over Web-based systems such as Yahoo and Google’s Gmail. Web-based message boards have replaced the need for Usenet. Friendster, Myspace and later Facebook emerged as go-to places on the Web for hanging out. People now use the Web to find dates, watch television shows, catch up on the news, pay bills and play games. Many more services are still being invented.
In less than a quarter century, the Web has turned into an easy way to retrieve data on just about any topic from just about any computer in the world with just the click of a link. It has become the equivalent of millions of libraries at the fingertips of anyone with a Web browser and a network connection. The resources have made it far more difficult for authoritarian regimes to keep information from their citizens.
The cover page of “Information Management: A proposal” by Tim Berners-Lee in March 1989. His supervisor, Mike Sendall, has written “vague, but exciting” at the top of the page. See full size image here.
Berners-Lee’s office was a few corridors down from Noyes at CERN’s headquarters in Geneva. Nearby is a plaque honouring him for his innovation. Noyes recently brought his 14-year-old son and showed it to him.
“For him, it was a concept that doesn’t make any sense,” Noyes said. “It’s no fault of his own, but he can’t imagine the world without the Web.”
Attempts to reach Berners-Lee through CERN were unsuccessful.
That’s part of why Noyes believes it is important to round up the World Wide Web’s history. He said it represents the best of how science and free governments can make the world a better place. And the quest for the first Web page reminds him of CERN’s main goal – seeking answers about the universe using tools such as the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, where high-energy beams of protons are sent crashing into each other at incredible speeds.
“We’re looking at the origins of the universe. Origins are intrinsically exciting,” Noyes said.
Jones takes pride in his small part in Internet history, too. He understands the pull of trying to find the first Web page even if it doesn’t make much sense. After all, even the simplest page created by a blogging novice today is richer and has more depth than those Web pages more than two decades ago. He likens it to why millions of people go to Europe to see original paintings of The Scream or the Mona Lisa when they can see replicas with almost no effort at all.
“No matter how perfectly you can reproduce something, like The Scream or the Mona Lisa, we have a fetish for the original,” Jones said. “The more you see the derivative, the more you want to see the original.”
Genuinely, does FFG feck ups and deliberate scew ups surprise anyone anymore. Children’s hospital, the tunnel project, e voting. Then you have the Moriarty and Mahon Tribunals. Bank bailouts. They have a long list to justify why they should not be there, yet they control the media and tell us there is no alternative.
@Cal Mooney: let’s not forget “Frankfurt’s Way or Labour’s Way” – Eamon Gilmore. The biggest and most costly broken election promise of them all.
If the State continues to put its own administrative convenience above the legal rights of its citizens, it risks losing their trust and confidence.
Bit late there with latest polls…
Ffg decline is in free fall..
Suitably identify themselves = State owned and issued passport. Who do I call to get paid??
The PSC is nothing else but a Biometric National ID card by the back door.
Wait until 3 million people have to pay more tax to cover the cost of compensating themselves, plus legal fees of course
@Frank Martin: wrong, there will be one test case then a class action suit can be taken.
@Susan Adair Farrelly: Aah Susan. Who do you think will be paying the bill then? Maybe you missed the point.
@Susan Adair Farrelly: we don’t have class action suits in Ireland. The legal profession will make money on each case.
Public consultation probably would have helped and I for one have no issues with this card, but like everything our government does is to force a foolish idea that there own party come up with without getting a full insight into the pro’s and con’s and the repercussions, and yet again no one will be held accountable.
@Gavin R: hold a\c at elections only way to solve this deliberate incompetence
@Gerard Heery: they are all incompetent…only good at feathering their own nest. The model needs to change…politicians should never be allowed to get close to our tax money…
@Gerard Heery: genuine question, how do we do that with what’s on the table, I understand fully what you are saying but that’s not going to happen, as there is no party I would pick out of the one’s on offer, they’ll all sell you the sun, moon and star’s until their in.
What? Even more expensive that the e-voting fiasco??
@Stephen Duffy: Paragraph 1.
@Stephen Duffy: I was even more shocked that 300m paid out to army personal because someone behind a desk decided ear protectors weren’t needed …when firing a gun resting beside your ear.
@Orla Smith: much obliged. Missed that. Only €55 m plus storage costs..!! Simon Harris would go through that in a week..!!!
@Stephen Duffy: only a smidgen more expensive than the €50m field that was bought at Thornton Hall for a prison. I’m sure somebody will be held accountable and heads will roll. Ha, as if!
It’s effectively an anti-fraud measure, designed to protect our taxes and ensure that they go where they’re supposed to go. I fail to see how anyone could have a problem with that.
If you want services or money from the state, get a card. If you don’t want to get a card, that’s your choice and your right. What’s the problem?
@John Mulligan: was it not shown that social welfare fraud was actually miniscule after Leo’s big pr campaign to rat ppl out. I remember there being a bit of a backlash by the public and interest groups at the time that it seemed to be impinging on ppls rights and they pushed on anyway without any delay. You then had to sign up online to submit more information. It was v much pushed on ppl. Another example of FG being arrogant pr!cks.
@John Mulligan: Read up about the Indian Aadhaar Card and it’s intended purpose. The very same as given by the Irish government. See the reality of what such a card can do. The Aadhaar card is made by the same company that makes the PSC.
I think and i hope FF and FG’s days are numbered. They are pure political disasters, totally unfit to run the country.
The article talks continuously of citizens. My wife is not a citizen of Ireland but has a PSC. Will she be excluded?
The Daily does not sit on Mondays and Fridays. Only mugs work every day
@Toby Fish: So it doesn’t sit daily
@Frank Martin: no
As much as I try, I cannot understand the problem with having this ID card!
@Mary Lyons: why is it required to apply for and sit driver theory test?
@Susan Adair Farrelly: Eh, so no one else can sit it for you?
@Mary Lyons: There is a need to correlate the different state administrations to ensure overall efficient operation, not least to prevent evasion & criminality.
For example, co- ordinating driving licence issuance with revenue, social services, vehicle & property ownership would enable the state to reduce tax evasion & welfare abuse.
The justice system needs to have every tool in the state data bank to combat modern criminality, subject to lawful access, & it is proper that our law provides that access. Repeat, only the state data bank, not the private data bank of citizens, except where court warrant is justified in pursuance of criminal investigation. These court warrants are specific, not general.
Electoral voting machines anyone?
Our idiot politicians thankfully don’t have enough power to destroy the planet but they sure do have enough power to destroy Ireland, and its one of the very few things they’re doing a pretty good job of.
What is actually the problem with the PSC. The only people who have any reasonable reason to fear this card are the scammers.
@Peter Buchanan: Exactly, there is absolutely no new information ‘on’ this card. Don’t want to get one for your pension or dole? Fine, don’t get one. See where that gets you.
So, a card we created (via our public representatives) has infringed our own rights and we must compensate ourselves with our own money? Any lawyers involved in this scheme by any chance?
I find it disgusting that what was created to stop welfare fraud and help provide public services is now perceived as a easy money making venture by lawyers and claimants. The GDPR was brought in to stop exploitation of data for private gain and was primarily aimed at the private industries. Also it was brought in May last year well after the card was introduced. And its presented as an opt in card, a person doesn’t have to apply but you they wont get free public services. What is wrong with that.
This is proof that a large percentage of Irish people are little better than scammers……a national ID card that protects taxpayers against social welfare fraud etc is what any intelligent society should have.
@IRL77: It seems yourself and Pat have both entirely missed the point of the article. A biometric ID card must comply with all applicable data protection laws. The PSC doesn’t do this and the government is carrying on regardless.
If there’s a right way and a wrong way to do something, our government invariably pick the wrong way and it always seems to end up costing the beleaguered taxpayers of this pretend republic.
@Will: it is NOT a “biometric ID card”
@Peter Buchanan: You do realise that a photo, such as that found on every PSC card, IS biometric data? Therefore the PSC card IS a biometric ID card.
This article is disingenuous. An investigation is ongoing with the Data Protection Commission. Of course DEASP are not going to release their submission until after the investigation is completed. Neither would Simon McGarr if it was one of his clients who was accused of wrongdoing. Surely ICCL should have put in the FOI request to the Data Protection Commission, not the Department.
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