World Development Information Day 2024 is on Thursday, October 24, 2024: What is World Wide Web?

Thursday, October 24, 2024 is World Development Information Day 2024. In 1972, the United Nations General Assembly decided to institute a World Development Information Day coinciding with United Nations Day on October 24. The General Assembly had the object of drawing the attention of world public-opinion each year to development problems and the necessity of strengthening international co-operation to solve them.

In 1972, the United Nations General Assembly decided to institute a World Development Information Day coinciding with United Nations Day on October 24. The General Assembly had the object of drawing the attention of world public-opinion each year to development problems and the necessity of strengthening international co-operation to solve them.

What is World Wide Web?

The World Wide Web (commonly abbreviated as "the Web") is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks.

Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, the World Wide Web was begun in 1989 by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee, working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1990, he proposed building a "web of nodes" storing "hypertext pages" viewed by "browsers" on a network,and released that web in 1992. Connected by the existing Internet, other websites were created, around the world, adding international standards for domain names & the HTML language. Since then, Berners-Lee has played an active role in guiding the development of Web standards (such as the markup languages in which Web pages are composed), and in recent years has advocated his vision of a Semantic Web.

The World Wide Web enabled the spread of information over the Internet through an easy-to-use and flexible format. It thus played an important role in popularising use of the Internet, to the extent that the World Wide Web has become a synonym for Internet, with the two being conflated in popular use.

History

The underlying ideas of the Web can be traced as far back as 1980, when, at CERN in Switzerland, Sir Tim Berners-Lee built ENQUIRE (a reference to Enquire Within Upon Everything, a book he recalled from his youth). While it was rather different from the system in use today, it contained many of the same core ideas (and even some of the ideas of Berners-Lee's next project after the World Wide Web, the Semantic Web).

In March 1989, Berners-Lee wrote a proposal which referenced ENQUIRE and described a more elaborate information management system. With help from Robert Cailliau, he published a more formal proposal (on November 12, 1990) to build a "Hypertext project" called "WorldWideWeb" (one word, also "W3") as a "web of nodes" with "hypertext documents" to store data. That data would be viewed in "hypertext pages" (webpages) by various "browsers" (line-mode or full-screen) on the computer network, using an "access protocol" connecting the "Internet and DECnet protocol worlds".

The proposal had been modeled after EBT's (Electronic Book Technology, a spin-off from the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship at Brown University) Dynatext SGML reader that CERN had licensed. The Dynatext system, although technically advanced (a key player in the extension of SGML ISO 8879:1986 to Hypermedia within HyTime), was considered too expensive and with an inappropriate licensing policy for general HEP (High Energy Physics) community use: a fee for each document and each time a document was charged.

A NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee as the world's first Web server and also to write the first Web browser, WorldWideWeb, in 1990. By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the first Web browser (which was a Web editor as well), the first Web server, and the first Web pages which described the project itself.

On August 6, 1991, he posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.

The first server outside Europe was set up at SLAC in December 1991.

The crucial underlying concept of hypertext originated with older projects from the 1960s, such as the Hypertext Editing System (HES) at Brown University--- among others Ted Nelson and Andries van Dam--- Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu and Douglas Engelbart's oN-Line System (NLS). Both Nelson and Engelbart were in turn inspired by Vannevar Bush's microfilm-based "memex," which was described in the 1945 essay "As We May Think".

Berners-Lee's breakthrough was to marry hypertext to the Internet. In his book Weaving The Web, he explains that he had repeatedly suggested that a marriage between the two technologies was possible to members of both technical communities, but when no one took up his invitation, he finally tackled the project himself. In the process, he developed a system of globally unique identifiers for resources on the Web and elsewhere: the Uniform Resource Identifier.

The World Wide Web had a number of differences from other hypertext systems that were then available. The Web required only unidirectional links rather than bidirectional ones. This made it possible for someone to link to another resource without action by the owner of that resource. It also significantly reduced the difficulty of implementing Web servers and browsers (in comparison to earlier systems), but in turn presented the chronic problem of link rot. Unlike predecessors such as HyperCard, the World Wide Web was non-proprietary, making it possible to develop servers and clie

World History Early River Civilizations Questions?

They were completely different worlds. Some day I will have reality tour, so I can ask people to use common sense and stop with all the B.S. I write that because in an early not so mobile society, people assume as you did, that women were property. Convince me of that and you win a prize. Sure men talked the talk, but women were always as they are now, full of opinions and ideas of their own.

I'll accept that a woman in a small extremely religious, tightly controlled village may have be controlled by men, but the men were controlled too. Forced into roles that they had no part in designing. Both men and women were expected to do what they were told. For the good of all, everyone had to be the same and shut up if they didn't like it.

The biggest difference I think of first, is the people that stayed in one place would eat everything within a mile of their village. That meant that men had to leave home for days at a time. If they wanted to find and gather food to bring home. While the men were away, guess who took charge and learned how to run things ? The women. You can't hold them down if your not there all the time watching them.

A human female can give birth back to back. In a primitive society, no one understood all the mechanics of reproduction. One easy fact is once a girl was old enough to marry, she did and became the responsibility of her husband. Why, because who can support a horny little pregnant girl, that keeps having babies ? A husband would because he wanted her to keep him warm at night. She wasn't as strong as a man, but she would work, if you let her keep her babies close by. Tell me how providing for and protecting a female is not a good deal, for her and her off spring ? Asking a female to be a man's equal in a primitive society, is ridiculous, if not impossible. A man that was a good provider could support more than one woman. If he had a friend with too many daughters he may agree to take one home with him. To help his friend and to help the women he already had in his hut. Women could die from complications while giving birth. A nice young girl, from a poor family could care for the children of a wife that died. She could eat good and learn how to be a wife, from the other wives. If she played it right, she could one day have her own children to care for. Even in todays modern societies, that's all women really want. Put aside all the details and that is still a major deal to most women. Whether their alive today or alive 10,000 years ago. What most women want is a child of her own that they can love. The poorest inner city girls, the sheltered Islamic girls, the rich well educated snobs and the girl in the middle all agree on that one thing.

So do me a favor and drop all this women were only exploited BS. If gender is an issue why not be original and write about how males have been pushed into dangerous and deadly situations, not because they wanted to be. No one ask them, they were told to die facing dangerous animals and angry foes. Just because they were males. Joan of Arc volunteered to go, because God spoke to her or something. Now tell me how many more women choose death, by joining the men that had no choice and died because they were male.

how information technology infuences our society and development business world?

Internet has transformed our lives and the way we communicate, how we learn, how we work and spend

free time, in essence – it has more or less changed every aspect of human society one can think of. The

significance of the Internet and information technology (IT) in both business and private field has grown

considerably in the last years, with exponential growth of Internet users and services offered.

Since – in today's business environment – people and their knowledge are company's key assets, it is

obvious and expected of each company to be aware and prepared for such changes. Not only (or not at

all) are the IT specialists ones that should be aware of the new trends and understand them, but also (or

even first and foremost) the managers.

Current Influence of the Internet and IT

The number of Internet users has grown over 300 million in year 2000 (predictions for year 2005 are set

for one billion), a third of USA's economic growth in the period 1996-99 is directly attributed to the

Internet explosion. There are over 2 billion web pages and more than 17 million registered domains

(State of the Internet, 2000). These facts already indicate that the Internet has significant effect on how,

why, where and when people work.

The Internet and IT have the most prominent influence on more educated, skilled and ambitious people,

especially those, that are regularly working with information and communication technology (ICT).

Any potential advantage of the Internet-usage, that a company can exploit to recruit, develop and retain

these types of personnel, is even more important due to the fact that there is a shortage of highly profiled

people in the workforce market.

Use of Internet for Staffing

American research (Global 500 Web Site Recruiting, 2000) shows, that 79% of companies from the

Global 500 group (500 largest world companies by revenue) at least to a certain extent use the Internet

for seeking new personnel. Also, comparison of data for years 2000 and 1998 shows that percentage of

companies that use the Internet for mentioned purpose has grown considerably from 29% in 1998. According

to 1999 RIS-research (RIS – "Raba Interneta v Sloveniji" - Usage of Internet in Slovenia.), only

4% of companies have used Internet for recruiting in same fashion. The main advantages for Internetsupported

recruiting are (Achieving Results with Internet Recruiting, 1998):

· Lower costs of recruiting (savings in invitations for application, postal-costs, data-processing

costs…).

· Quicker process of recruitment: period from the point when the need for a new employee is

sensed until the point when he starts doing his job is, according to the research, cut for twelve

days.

· Possibility to attract better and more candidates – invitation for application published on a website

can also be spotted by those, who are currently not seeking new employment actively.

Besides the corporate websites, third-party websites are gaining importance. Not only that they act as

"work- force exchange" where supply meets demand and vice versa, many of them also publish relevant business news, articles on job-hunting, CV writing etc., which acts as additional pull mechanism for web

users, which ensures head- hunting companies that their call for applications is seen.

Use of Internet for New Ways of Work

With Internet and (more broadly) Information-and-Communications-Technology (ICT) deve lopment in

the full swing for the last two decades, organisations have been provided with 'a whole range of new

possibilities for performing work and structuring organisations' (Lindstrom, Moberg & Rapp, 1997),

which will undoubtedly extend even more in the future and therewith grasp even wider sphere of employees.

Two of new ways of work are discussed below.

Teleworking

There are many definitions of teleworking and in the field also many various terms are being used, for

example telework, telecommuting, flexiplaces, electronic cottages... Yet as the purpose of our paper is

not teleworking itself the following definition will be quite satisfactory. As outlined in European Commission's

annual report for year 2000 (Johnston & Nolan, 2001), telework is a wide concept, whose

'common element' is 'the use of computers and telecommunications to change the accepted geography of

work'. It means that we are 'moving the work to workers instead of moving the workers to work', with

help of information technologies (Nilles, 1998).

Teleworking offers significant advantages, which could be summarized and classified in three views:

individual's, organisational and macro-societal; from the second perspective, benefits of telecommuting

include higher productivity ("more work being done") and "decrease of absenteeism". Because the employees

are more satisfied and their morale is increased, they are more unlikely to be searching for another

job – organisations experience lower turnover rate; according to Dash, employee fluctuation can

decrease by 50-80% when teleworking is introduced (Dash, 1999). Besides, organisations have 'the ability

to access a broader pool of employees as the geographic tie to an "office" are diminished' (Venkatesh

& Speier, 2000). Furthermore, organizations 'real estate costs can be cut because of the reduced office

space requirements' (Nilles, 1998). Additionally, customer service improves due to flexible working

hours (twenty- four-seven concept) (Telework the Benefits – and some Issues, 2000).

According to a research, 18% of Dutch, 12% of US and 5% of German and English employees were

regularly teleworking to a certain extent (How many teleworkers, 2000), furthermore, the percentage has

been increasing with a yearly rate of 10 to 15% in all of ICT-developed countries (Gordon, 1999). In this

area, Slovenia is out of step with "developed" countries. According to a research (Raba Interneta v

Sloveniji, 2000), there were approximately 50% of companies that have technological possibilities for

teleworking yet only 29% of these companies have introduced teleworking. Viewed from the whole

work- force population and taking into account the size of the companies, only 2% of full-time employed

workers can be considered to telework in same fashion as their Dutch and US counterparts.

Project-oriented work with subcontracting

According to economics theory, two of the main reasons for pooling of human resources into companies

are the cost reduction that is achieved with partitioning of work and the need for management of work,

which is divided between numerous employees.

Though, today's ICT enables efficient collection of people with similar interest and complementary

skills, and their cooperation in short- or long-term projects. All that without necessarily being a formal

part of the company.

For the future we can predict that there will be a growing number of "portfolio people" which will not

want to be bound to a certain company but will offer their skills on a market to the best clients and customers

(not necessarily top payers!), either individually (i.e. using their-own-presentation web pages) or

via specialized (non)electronic agencies.

The main advantage of this way of work, company wise, is inflow of new, fresh ideas and higher workforce-

efficiency (no need for recruiting "on stock"); what is more, such "portfolio employees" have

extensive experience from working with other companies and can – in such part time relationships –

gain huge amount of new knowledge. On the other hand, disadvantages include higher fluctuation level,

lesser degree of loyalty to a company and wounded security of confidential business info rmation.

Additionally, the question of social and health insurance will have to be solved – in the United States,

some agencies that offer subcontractors, have decided to cover mentioned costs for "their" workers for

the time when they are not subcontracted (Flynn, 2000).

Use of Internet for Employee-Development

Acquiring new and supplementing existing knowledge is one of the top- level motivational factors for a

person that has covered his basic existential needs, therefore as it a key success factor for an individual it

is also critical for successfulness of organization as a whole. Internet-based technology offers numerous

possibilities for getting hold of new knowledge and skills. Firstly, company wise, it offers much quicker

access to latest scientific and technological innovations of other companies and research institutions

(Jerman-Blazic, 1996). For each individual it offers itself as vast searchable database of web pages,

newsgroups, mailing lists, online courses, forums, etc.

Effect of ICT and Internet on Organization

Information and communication technology and the Internet have not affected only the IT professionals

and those employees that use IT for their work on a regular basis but also the environment of the organization,

organization itself and the "social universe" (Drucker, 2001). Managers need to be aware of these

changes, try to sense them in advance and adapt to them appropriately.

Especially in the field of employee-motivatio n we can expect essential changes. Even though visionaries

predict deep and fundamental shifts in society, authors believe that first and foremost task of managers

will remain motivating employees: firstly to arouse needs in employees and secondly to show them the

way how to satisfy those needs in a manner, which contributes to achievement of organizational goals.

Yet if the fundamental concept remains the same, the changes will most definitely occur in employees'

values and consecutively in their needs and in a manner in which their needs are satisfied. It is expected

that "traditional" needs, i.e. salary and benefits, guarantee for permanent situation, loyalty to the company

etc., will gradually lose their meaning. Infoworld's research (2000), that was undertaken between

IT professionals, reveals that most of them feel that the most important benefit, expected from a company,

is possibility to work from home, with salary and chance for promotion being less important (Ba ttey,

2000). IT professionals are, na turally, more susceptible to novelties, therefore the cited research

cannot be taken as representative situation in other professional fields, yet very similar changes can be

expected elsewhere as well.

Changes in information management and exploitation of knowledge

"Managing your company's knowledge more effectively and exploiting it in the marketplace

is the latest pursuit of those seeking competitive advantage," (Skyrme, 1998).

Acquisition of knowledge by individual is relatively easy compared to successful exploitation of all the

knowledge that resists in organizations' employees' minds. According to American research (Gopal,

1995), companies take advantage of only 20% of the knowledge that exists inside their employees.

Information and communication technology offers numerous possibilities to improve information ma nagement

in organizations and therewith make better use of employees' knowledge. One of such options

is use of intranet as internal information system of a company, which is based on Internet protocols and

services (Turk, & Jaklic, 1998). It enables relatively inexpensive and simple storage, organization, processing,

maint enance and sharing of information between organizations' members; all these tasks are essential

for good information management, according to (Marchand et al., 2001). At the same time such

information is (in technological manner at least) securely kept from the outside world.

There are many other ways besides intranet for better use of stored knowledge (and for processing of

information from piles of data), i.e. data warehouses, data mining, expert systems…

Contemporary state-of-the-art soft- and hard-ware solutions offer support for knowledge-use, yet the

main obstacle is the one of the content and of the people – how to achieve that existing knowledge will

be shared, stored and transferred organization-wide with help of IT in the best way. Better business performance,

according to a twenty-eight month research which included over 1.000 senior managers

worldwide, comes not just from information technology but also from information management and

management of organization's people (Marchand et al., 2001).

I hope that answers your question.

Thanks.