06 July 2010
Who Invented the Internet Again?
Most of us can remember Al Gore saying:
I took the initiative to create the Internet...
If you don't remember it, or think that for some reason I'm making it up go here.
I don't know how many of us knew for sure that Al Gore didn't have a hand in it. But we certainly had a good laugh when the story broke that the Internet was really a tool created by the military. This tool grew to become a platform on which networks, businesses and people could build and interact. But no one person could really take credit for it.
So it was with great interest that I read the following article: The 10 Founding Fathers of the Web on mashable.com.
I love the twist the writer takes in not attributing the "invention" of it to a person or people, but instead the creation of ideas that greatly enhanced the use of the Internet.
Read it for yourself, but here are some highlights:
- Tim Berners-Lee: Created the World Wide Web (not the Internet). The use of web servers and HTML in the first browser. Currently works with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to oversee web standards and future of the web.
- Rasmus Lerdorf, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski: The development of PHP - the open source programming language that allows for dynamic web content.
- Brendan Eich: Creator of javascript and currently the CTO at Mozilla.
- John Resig: Creator of jQuery - a javascript library that has opened up the power of javascript to countless designers with little programming knowledge.
