3. World Wide Web Introduction
"Thus my theory is that the Web arose from the chaotic behavior of a delicately balanced packet ecosystem. Somewhere in Argentina, perhaps, a butterfly flapped its wings. A gentle breeze was felt in Brazil. Storm clouds gathered in New York City, and a hurricane blew in Europe. The Web was born. An instantiation of chaos theory: Deus ex machina."
-- Robert W. Lucky. Reflections--Where did the Web come from? IEEE Spectrum. vol. 32, no. 7, July 1995. p.15.
The World-Wide Web system [Ber92] originated around 1989 at CERN in Geneva as a practical initiative to bring a global information universe into existence using available technology. Contrary to most examples presented later in this book, the primary goal of WWW was never to further extend hypermedia research, but to apply existing technologies and standards now to get a working, world-wide hypertext web.