The Very First Webpage

Not one word of credit to the inventor of the web. Al Gore.

Funny, yes.

But, in reality, Al Gore (a US politician) didn't actually claim to invent the internet, rather he says he was one of the early proponent of what became the internet. The documentary evidence supports his claim.

Of course, I don't really care about him, but I'm concerned with the tendency for (both sides) in any debate to vilify their opponents.

After all that politician you don't like probably isn't evil, ignorant or stupid, even if they're wrong. Just as them assuming their opponents are evil, ignorant or stupid is also wrong.

I never said that I didn't like former Senator Gore, nor did I say he was evil, ignorant or stupid.

Now, I feel vilified.

I too, initially read that as a conservative sound bite against Al Gore, because it is similar to what has been done "maliciously" elsewhere.

We have gotten oversensitive in these trying times.

Reading it now, without reading *into* it, it is a humorous statement.

Cheers.

My intentions all along.

Al Gore is an intelligent man, and I don't doubt that he was instrumental in helping get the internet rolling.

^{BTW, I am a moderate Republican who isn't above voting for a Democrat, if I think they are the best for the job.}

I took it that way as well - humorous.

Of course Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, never claimed to have invented the Internet and I'm sure most people here already know that. Nor do I feel that Lyn's was necessarily an ad hominem attack on the aforementioned towering intellect inventor statesman politician.

I can remember surfing the web back in the 90's, there was only a handful of sites...Somebody with 10 Gigs was huge....These were just people's computers that you could log on to and search their data...Most of them would have little tests of computer proficiency that you had to pass before they would let you connect, so you wouldn't screw up their computer...Seems like only yesterday......You never knew what you would find...Can't help but wonder what it will be like in 20 years...

Lemme guess, you used Mosaic?

The way things are going with CISPA and it's ilk - meeting little, if any, public resistance - I suspect censorship will be the norm. That is, if the botnets don't trash everything first.

Assuming they don't, Human users will be a tiny minority in the grand scheme of things. Everything will be networked. Everything. Even your fridge will have its own URL (so that it can order more goodies when you're running low).

Today you can put a complete, fully-featured website on a thumb drive, but in twenty years? Petaflop-scale machines in the same footprint, powered by a single coin cell. Exaflop-scale machines at the gov't level, recording and data-mining everything, machine-learning at an unprecedented scale to ferret-out trends and potential or real threats at lightning speed, predicting individual behaviour with uncanny precision and making occasional mistakes, deliberate or otherwise.

There will be no privacy, no anonymity and no security. An Orwellian Future to a degree and on a scale its namesake would scarcely have imagined. Not a very cheery outlook, for which I apologize, but then, look where we are today. Are we better off? I'd say so, but I don't expect it to last.

Let's hear it for the runaway fridge ! Domestic fuel tanks have re-ordered by themselves for ages. It sounds scary, but not so much as the alternative of having a wife .

The real cheery scenario is if/when the interweb collapses (or our electronic gizmos fail). Forget getting the car to work, forget any food being in the shops. The list goes on, but it'd be like the life of many aboriginal peoples thrust into the 21st century world. No skills to cope, and the only escape a bottle of booze. I've got the latter bit down to a fine art, but I've no idea how to field dress a cat.

Just to keep myself on topic, I found a fun link on early e-mail.

No advertisements, no pop ups, no viruses! the good "old" days!

I remember that page! I remember distinctly, clicking on "What's out there?" and I have been following links ever since, never being able to find my way back home...

How do I get back to that simple link???

Everything is there and easy to find. Nowadays, many web pages have so much clutter that I feel like I'm playing "Where's Waldo", and I was never very good at that.

I agree. The never ending quest for the almighty dollar has spawned a plethora of junk and useless information on every page whereas before it was a great source.

My pet peeve is having to watch a 30 second, mind numbing advert and then being told that I need this or that download to watch the flaming 20 second news item.

And you wonder, "Why must I download something to view the main piece when I can view this advert without my doing anything at all? What is it I'm really downloading, and why do I 'need' it?"

In the 'Find Waldo' category, Yahoo!'s home page is among of the worst. Yahoo! is owned by Microsoft - you know, the folks who still haven't figured out that More is not Better?

I've given up on them. Their news and other videos are the most frustrating of all.

Of course, I remember when there were no commercials on FM radio.

I gave up on Yahoo! more because they, along with Cisco Systems, actively help the Chinese government censor the Internet within China's borders, in exchange for market share. They'll even help the government track dissidents who then disappear, never to be heard from again. Other companies implicated in Human Rights abuses:

Nortel

Oracle

Motorola

EMC

Sybase

L-1 Identity Solutions

IMHO, every person at these companies who have consented to or pursued this course of action should suffer the same fate.