35 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
35 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
# World Wide Web
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World Wide Web (www or just *the web*) is (or was, if we accept that by 2021 the web is basically dead) a network of interconnected documents on the [Internet](internet.md) (called *websites* or *webpages*). Webpages are normally written in [HTML](html.md) language and can refer to each other by [hyperlinks](hyperlink.md). The web itself works on top of the [HTTP](http.md) protocol. Some people confuse the web with the Internet, but of course those people are retarded: web is just one of many service existing on the Internet (other ones being e.g. [email](email.md) or [torrents](torrent.md)). In order to browse the web you need an Internet connection and a [web browser](browser.md).
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An important part of the web is also searching its vast amounts of information with [search engines](search_engine.md) such as the infamous [Google](google.md) engine. It also relies on systems such as [DNS](dns.md).
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Web is kind of a bloated [shit](shit.md), for more [suckless](suckless.md) alternatives see [gopher](gopher.md) and [gemini](gemini.md).
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The web is perhaps the best, saddest and funniest example of [capitalist](capitalist_software.md) [bloat](bloat.md), the situation with web sites is completely ridiculous and depressive. A nice article about the issue, called *The Website Obesity Crisis*, can be found at https://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm. There is also a tool for measuring a website bloat at https://www.webbloatscore.com/: it computes the ratio of the page size to the size of its screenshot (e.g. [YouTube](youtube.md) currently scores 35.7).
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Back in the days (90s and early 2000s) web used to be a place of freedom working more or less in a decentralized manner and on anarchist principles – people used to have their own unique websites, censorship was difficult to implement and mostly non-existent and websites used to have a much better design and were safer, as they were pure [HTML](html.md) documents.
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As the time went web used to become more and more [shit](shit.md), as is the case with everything touched by [capitalism](capitalist_software.md) – the advent of so called **web 2.0** brought about a lot of [complexity](complexity.md), websites started to incorporate runnable scripts ([JavaScript](javascript.md), [Flash](flash.md)) which lead to many negative things such as security vulnerabilities (web pages now have power to run code) and more complexity in web browsers, which leads to even more possible vulnerabilities, [bloat](bloat.md) and to browser monopolies (greater effort is needed to develop a browser, making it a privilege of those who can afford it, and those can subsequently dictate de-facto standards that further strengthen their monopolies). Another disaster came with **[social networks](social_network.md)** in mid 2000s, most notably [Facebook](facebook.md) but also [YouTube](youtube.md) and others, which centralized the web and rid people of control. Out of comfort people stopped creating and hosting own websites and rather created a page on Facebook. This gave the power to corporations and allowed **mass-surveillance**, **mass-censorship** and **propaganda brainwashing**. As the web became more and more popular, corporations and governments started to take more control over it, creating technologies and laws to make it less free. By 2020, the good old web is but a memory, everything is controlled by corporations, infected with billions of unbearable ads, [DRM](drm.md), malware (trackers, [crypto](crypto.md) miners), there exist no good web browsers, web pages now REQUIRE JavaScript even if it's not really needed due to which they are painfully slow and buggy, there are restrictive laws and censorship and de-facto laws (site policies) put in place by corporations controlling the web.
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## History
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World Wide Web was invented by an English computer scientist [Tim Berners-Lee](berners_lee.md). On March 12 1989 he was working at [CERN](cern.md) where he proposed a system called "web" that would use [hypertext](hypertext.md) to link documents (the term hypertext was already around). He also considered the name *Mesh* but settled on *World Wide Web* eventually. He started to implement the system with a few other people. At the end of 1990 they already had implemented the [HTTP](http.md) protocol for client-server communication, the [HTML](html.md), language for writing websites, the first web server and the first [web browser](browser.md) called *WorldWideWeb*. They set up the first website http://info.cern.ch that contained information about the project.
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In 1993 CERN made the web [public domain](public_domain.md), free for anyone without any licensing requirements. The main reason was to gain advantage over competing systems such as [Gopher](gopher.md) that were [proprietary](proprietary.md). By 1994 there were over 500 web servers around the world. WWW Consortium ([W3M](w3m.md)) was established to maintain standards for the web. A number of new browsers were written such as the text-only [Lynx](lynx.md), but the [proprietary](proprietary.md) [Netscape Navigator](netscape_navigator.md) would go to become the most popular one until [Micro$oft](microsoft)'s [Internet Explorer](internet_explorer.md) (see [browser wars](browser_wars.md)). In 1997 [Google](google.md) search engine appeared, as well as [CSS](css.md). There was a economic bubble connected to the explosion of the Web called the [dot-comm boom](dot_com_boom.md).
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Between 2000 and 2010 there used to be a mobile alternative to the web called [WAP](wap.md). Back then mobile phones were significantly weaker than PCs so the whole protocol was simplified, e.g. it had a special markup language called [WML](wml.md) instead of [HTML](html.md). But as the phones got more powerful they simply started to support normal web and WAP disappeared.
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Around 2005, the time when [YouTube](youtube.md), [Twitter](twitter.md), [Facebook](facebook.md) and other shit sites started to appear and become popular, so called [Web 2.0](web_20.md) started to form. This was a shift in the web's paradigm towards more [shittiness](shit.md) such as more [JavaScript](javascript.md), [bloat](bloat.md), interactivity, websites as programs, [Flash](flash.md), [social networks](social_network.md) etc. This would be the beginning of the web's downfall.
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## See Also
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- [teletext](teletext.md)
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- [WAP](wap.md)
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- [Usenet](usenet.md)
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- [TOR](tor.md)
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- [Gopher](gopher.md)
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- [Gemini](gemini.md)
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- [BBS](bbs.md)
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- [Freenet](freenet.md)
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- [Internet](internet.md) |