PortlandWiki Calendar 2011 3 25
Friday | March 25, 2011
You're Sixteen. You're Beautiful. And You're Ours.[1]
When the World Wide Web's creator unveiled the world's first Web site on Hiroshima Day (August 6th) 1991, the browser for this marvelous "new Gutenberg" also functioned as a Web editor. Tim Berners-Lee intended that people contribute content to the Web, not merely consume it.[2] But "free market" forces--with its legions of dull, consumption-addled consumer militias functioning as its loyal enforcers--had other plans. They quickly kicked aside the "write" portion of the read-write Web. In the blink of a million glazed-over eyeballs Berners-Lee's invention, running atop the Internet's narrowband pipes, began choking on a wretched bile of pernicious porn, fly-by-night shopping malls, malicious malware, spying webbots, deranged script kiddies and oily cyberhucksters selling Internet bubbles. By March 25, 1995 Portlandian codegeek Ward Cunningham had had enough, and came to the rescue by putting the "write" back into the read-write Web. Cunningham unveiled the world's first wiki.[3][4] Today that wiki turns sweet sixteen.[5] In these bleak times--as multinational media conglomerates and their corrupt political operatives work feverishly to stuff the Internet and its World Wide Web into a pay-to-surf cesspool[6]--Wiki's sweet sixteen birthday gives the read-write world something to genuinely celebrate.
- Go to story: Happy Birthday - the Wiki Celebrates its Sweet 16
- Go to rockstar: Wiki, the Continuing & Original Web Rockstar
- Go to history: Wiki History
- Go to birthday: Wiki Birthday