Belated Birthday to T'interweb

April 30 2008 was the official 15th birthday of the world wide web. Forgot to send an e-card too. Anyway, the date marked the 15th anniversary of CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) announcing that the web was free to use by anyone.

UK scientist Tim Berners-Lee is credited with 'inventing' the web during the course of his work at CERN’s HQ (the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, don't you know), based in Geneva.

So what has the 'moody teenager' done for us in the past 15 years ? Well here is a round up, courtesy of MSN, on the top 15 things (in no particular order) that the internet has done for us...

1. On-demand news
An ever increasing number of people are now turning to the web as their primary source of news, rather than traditional print and TV.

2. Global reference library
The largest repository of reference material, academic and otherwise, made available to users worldwide.

3. Plagiarism
With online encyclopaedias such as Wikipedia at the fingertips of school kids and students around the world, web-enabled cheating is tempting (just like this blog actually). Some universities have actually brought in software to scan essays and reports for signs of copied web material.

4. Search engines
Very few sessions on the web are complete without a search or two. 5. Liberating information and opinion
Various governments still try to suppress and censor what appears on the web but generally information and opinion are now all but internationally irrepressible.

6. Blogs
The blog – a cornerstone of web 2.0 – gave a voice to web users the world over. 7. Webmail
It has revolutionised the way we communicate with each other, allowing users to access their inboxes via straightforward websites from any internet-accessing computer they can get their hands on.

8. Social networking
Another web 2.0 innovation, social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo have helped countless web users make new friends and catch up with old ones.

9. Distraction
The web has proved to be quite effective as an endless distraction from the things on which we are supposed to be concentrating. Like work.

10. Shopping
Online shopping, auctions, banking, price comparison, customer reviews etc. Who would have imagined the impact on retail ?

11. Identity theft
Didn’t say all of it was good. Partly as a result of online shopping, we have all shared lots of data over the web. It should be private but too much has become public. 12. Digital entertainment

Video, radio, television, music and games have all changed due to the web mainly because of the way that people now consume their content. They want it when they want. Not when they are told when and where they can have it.

13. Porn
Still one of the most searched words on the web. Supposedly adults-only material can now be accessed by all (or so I hear).

14. Time shrinking
Research. Application forms. Quotes. What used to take you days, now takes minutes.

15. Travel booking
Budget airlines probably wouldn’t have taken off (geddit ?) without the web. No more trips to the travel agents on the high street to collect a mountain of brochures…