March 13th
Mar. 13th, 2009 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knoxOkay, so today's March 13th. It's a Friday the 13th, and it's the second one of three to fall this year (the last is in November, IIRC).
On this day, twenty years ago, Sir Tim Berners - Lee launched the World Wide Web.
Also, and entirely unrelated to the above, on this day back in 1996, Thomas Hamilton went berserk and shot dead a bunch of children in a primary school in Dunblane.
I was actually in college at that time, during my freshman year, catching up on online news feeds. March 15th, 1996, was the first time that I had actually used a news client to get news - and the feed scooped the main broadcast news by something like an hour.
Of course now, they all use feeds, and RSS has become one of the de facto standards for getting the news in fast. But back then, if you wanted to learn something you had to wait until one o'clock and get it on the Beeb. Then you'd get it on Teletext, and finally, a long way down the line, somebody in the press would print it out on rag, a day late for them to do anything about it.
I'd say that the event that we ought to be celebrating on March 13th, the one that has had the most influence on the world, has got to be the 1989 anniversary.
Thank you, Sir Tim. It'd be worth imagining there's a heaven, because I imagine that when it's your turn you're guaranteed a place there.
Sitting in a windowless room in the basement, monitoring the servers. *sigh*
On this day, twenty years ago, Sir Tim Berners - Lee launched the World Wide Web.
Also, and entirely unrelated to the above, on this day back in 1996, Thomas Hamilton went berserk and shot dead a bunch of children in a primary school in Dunblane.
I was actually in college at that time, during my freshman year, catching up on online news feeds. March 15th, 1996, was the first time that I had actually used a news client to get news - and the feed scooped the main broadcast news by something like an hour.
Of course now, they all use feeds, and RSS has become one of the de facto standards for getting the news in fast. But back then, if you wanted to learn something you had to wait until one o'clock and get it on the Beeb. Then you'd get it on Teletext, and finally, a long way down the line, somebody in the press would print it out on rag, a day late for them to do anything about it.
I'd say that the event that we ought to be celebrating on March 13th, the one that has had the most influence on the world, has got to be the 1989 anniversary.
Thank you, Sir Tim. It'd be worth imagining there's a heaven, because I imagine that when it's your turn you're guaranteed a place there.
Sitting in a windowless room in the basement, monitoring the servers. *sigh*
