The World Wide Web celebrated 25 years on 12 March – although that’s really 25 years since conception rather than since birth. It was on the 12 March 1989 that Sir Tim Berners-Lee first put forward his proposal for what became the World-Wide Web.
The 34-year-old software engineer at CERN physics lab in in Geneva wrote a paper called, “Information Management: A Proposal”. The driving force was the need to not only communicate with colleagues, but also keep in contact with the many scientists who had worked at CERN and were now working elsewhere.
It soon became clear that the idea could be extended beyond CERN and in 1990, working with Robert Cailliau, proposed to use hypertext. The first Web site was created that year. Their thinking at the time was that there would be a web (the WorldWideWeb) of hypertext documents, and people could view them using a browser.
Steve Jobs is strangely linked to this story, and that’s because the first server was a NeXT Computer. These workstations were built by Jobs and his team, which included other ex-Macintosh staff. There was actually a note on the computer telling people not to turn it off. By late 1991, people outside CERN could access the Web as a service available on the Internet. By 1992, there was a server outside of Europe. It was set up in Palo Alto at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
What Berners-Lee did that was special was to combine hypertext and the Internet. He also developed three technologies that we take for granted nowadays. They are: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP); Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML); and unique Web addresses – URLs (Uniform Resource Locators).
In 1993 the Web browser called Mosaic was released. This had a graphical user interface and made browsing the Web easy and quick. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in 1994. The rest, as they say, is history.
Using the 25th birthday as a springboard, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has called for a bill of rights to protect freedom of speech on the Internet and users’ rights following leaks about government surveillance of online activity. Berners-Lee has said that there is a need for a charter like the Magna Carta to help guarantee fundamental principles.
Edward Snowden’s leaking of so many documents revealing (or confirming) that governments all over the world are monitoring Internet activity (as well phones) has brought Web privacy to the attention of the public. It seems that the NSA has been collecting personal data about Google, Facebook, and Skype users.
And now we can use the Web on our tablets and smartphones. We can buy just about anything from Amazon. We can look-up everything on Google, find out the details on Wikipedia, keep up with our friends on Facebook, watch videos on YouTube, shop, bank, and choose the best deals for insurance. We can send e-mails, and tweet about what we’re doing and who we’re with. We can also apply for a job, listen to music, read a book, and browse photos. In fact, we can do just about anything it’s possible to do.
It’s true that there is a dark side to the Web. People can find out a lot of information about you from a quick online search, and organizations, many of which are part of the government, can find out even more about your browsing habits etc. But on the whole, for most people, getting online is a natural part of the day – and it’s a very enjoyable part of their day. So well done TimBL, great idea. And happy birthday to the World Wide Web.
Showing posts with label Steve Jobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve Jobs. Show all posts
Sunday, 16 March 2014
Saturday, 22 February 2014
Getting the best from your IT staff
One of the problems that project managers, and in fact managers in general, have is that they tend to think that the road to success starts here and ends there – ie, it’s a fairly straight route. The truth is, for most success stories, that they set out on one road and met failure, they then set out on another road, and met failure, and they kept doing this until they arrived at the success they were aiming at. And it’s important to bear in mind, when carrying out those important end-of-year appraisals that this is so often the case.
Don’t believe me? Well, let’s take a look at some examples...
This person wasn’t able to speak until he was almost four years old, and his teachers said that he wouldn’t amount to much. Who was he? Albert Einstein. And you don’t need to be a theoretical physicist to have heard of him.
Or this man, who was sacked from a newspaper for lacking imagination and having no original ideas. He was Walt Disney. Or this woman – she was demoted from her job as a news anchor because she wasn’t fit for television. She’s Oprah Winfrey. Or this person who was told by a teacher that he was too stupid to learn anything and that he should go into a field where he might succeed by virtue of his pleasant personality. That was Thomas Edison. Or the would-be author whose first book was rejected by 27 publishers. That was the best-selling children’s author, Dr Seuss. Or what about the man whose fiancé died, who failed in business, who had a nervous breakdown, and who lost eight elections? That was Abraham Lincoln, who went on to be the 16th US president. Or you might be more familiar with the guy, aged 30, who was left devastated and depressed after being unceremoniously removed from the company he’d started. That was Steve Jobs and Apple.
If you like sport, there was the lad who was dropped from his high school basketball team, who went home, locked himself in his room, and cried. That was Michael Jordan, six times NBA champion, five times NBA MVP, and four times NBA all-star. Or the 11-year-old boy who was dropped from his football team after being diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency that made him smaller than most children his age. That was Lionel Messi, who became three times FIFA world player of the year.
Then there was the high school dropout, whose personal struggle with drugs and poverty culminated in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. That was Eminem, who became a 13 times Grammy award winner. Perhaps, most famously, was the popular beat combo who were rejected by Decca recording studios because they didn’t like their sound. Decca added that the band had no future in show business. That was The Beatles, arguably the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed band in history
The argument is that if you haven’t failed, you’ve haven’t tried anything new. So maybe, in your team, you’re not seeing the potential in someone, who may go on to become a great success.
But how do you motivate someone? The argument is usually between the carrot and the stick approach. You motivate someone away from pain and towards pleasure. With the stick you threaten them with losing their job if they don’t improve. With the carrot you dangle a promotion in front of them if things go well. But really, you need to know your team and what their values are and what their goals are. That way, you can offer them appropriate incentives to get them to do good work on the project as a stepping stone towards achieving their life goals.
And while not everyone you meet will be an Edison or Einstein, I think it’s important not to write them off as talentless, until you’ve had a chance to explore what talents they have and what they can bring to an organization.
Don’t believe me? Well, let’s take a look at some examples...
This person wasn’t able to speak until he was almost four years old, and his teachers said that he wouldn’t amount to much. Who was he? Albert Einstein. And you don’t need to be a theoretical physicist to have heard of him.
Or this man, who was sacked from a newspaper for lacking imagination and having no original ideas. He was Walt Disney. Or this woman – she was demoted from her job as a news anchor because she wasn’t fit for television. She’s Oprah Winfrey. Or this person who was told by a teacher that he was too stupid to learn anything and that he should go into a field where he might succeed by virtue of his pleasant personality. That was Thomas Edison. Or the would-be author whose first book was rejected by 27 publishers. That was the best-selling children’s author, Dr Seuss. Or what about the man whose fiancé died, who failed in business, who had a nervous breakdown, and who lost eight elections? That was Abraham Lincoln, who went on to be the 16th US president. Or you might be more familiar with the guy, aged 30, who was left devastated and depressed after being unceremoniously removed from the company he’d started. That was Steve Jobs and Apple.
If you like sport, there was the lad who was dropped from his high school basketball team, who went home, locked himself in his room, and cried. That was Michael Jordan, six times NBA champion, five times NBA MVP, and four times NBA all-star. Or the 11-year-old boy who was dropped from his football team after being diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency that made him smaller than most children his age. That was Lionel Messi, who became three times FIFA world player of the year.
Then there was the high school dropout, whose personal struggle with drugs and poverty culminated in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. That was Eminem, who became a 13 times Grammy award winner. Perhaps, most famously, was the popular beat combo who were rejected by Decca recording studios because they didn’t like their sound. Decca added that the band had no future in show business. That was The Beatles, arguably the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed band in history
The argument is that if you haven’t failed, you’ve haven’t tried anything new. So maybe, in your team, you’re not seeing the potential in someone, who may go on to become a great success.
But how do you motivate someone? The argument is usually between the carrot and the stick approach. You motivate someone away from pain and towards pleasure. With the stick you threaten them with losing their job if they don’t improve. With the carrot you dangle a promotion in front of them if things go well. But really, you need to know your team and what their values are and what their goals are. That way, you can offer them appropriate incentives to get them to do good work on the project as a stepping stone towards achieving their life goals.
And while not everyone you meet will be an Edison or Einstein, I think it’s important not to write them off as talentless, until you’ve had a chance to explore what talents they have and what they can bring to an organization.
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