The World Wide Web (WWW) is a system that connects computer networks around the world. Software engineer Tim Berners-Lee is credited with the creation of the Web through the application of hypertext to networked computers. Hypertext includes hypertext markup language (HTML), which is used for creating documents with hypertext links; and hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) for specifying how networks respond when a user clicks on the link. In addition, a system of universal resource locators (URLs) provides each item on the Web with a unique �address.� Hypertext was first proposed by engineer Vannevar Bush in 1945 and had been used by researchers to interlink material among different files on individual computers. During the 1980s, while working at CERN (a European particle-physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland), Berners-Lee developed a system to allow nuclear physicists at CERN using a closed computer network to access documents created by different individuals and groups within the laboratory. In 1991 Berners-Lee expanded the hypertext system he had created at CERN and made it available on the INTERNET. As he stated in an interview, �What was really new with the Web was the idea that you could code all the information needed to find any document on the network into a short string of characters.� These strings, originally called universal document identifiers, are now known as URLs. Berners-Lee did not set out to create the Web. Instead, as he states, �It was something I needed in my work. CERN is composed of a variety of bright and creative people from institutes in many countries. When they work together on a project, the result can be a tangle of complexity. . . . I found a tremendous need to be able to find out what was going on, particularly the interdependencies�what work was related to what.� It did not take long for the Web to move from a resource for document sharing among physicists to a global system of information access. In 1995 Netscape co-founder Mark Andreessen received the Stewart Alsop Industry Achievement Award for his �choice of HTML as the Web standard.� Andreessen introduced the Netscape Navigator in 1994, significantly improving access to the Web. For several �generations,� Netscape Navigator dominated World Wide Web access before being surpassed by Microsoft�s Internet Explorer, the subject of a major antitrust lawsuit. In addition to serving as a system of access to documents, the World Wide Web facilitated the creation of cyber-businesses, businesses with no �brick and mortar� locations, existing only in the electronic files on computers around the world. Even though the dot-com industry first flourished and then imploded, the Web will continue to evolve and expand as a home for E-BUSINESS, E-COMMERCE, and INTERNET MARKETING.
See also CYBERSPACE.