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Did the Web begin at CERN?

The Web began as a solution to the problems of one research lab, but soon became a world-wide phenomenon. Watch Professor Les Carr explain more.

To help you understand the nature of the Web and to see why it provides challenges as well as benefits, it is useful to examine where it came from, and how it differed from previous attempts to build a world-wide information system.

The Web was a solution to the unusual problems of a highly collaborative, international research centre in the 1980s.

So it was quite surprising that it became adopted across the world, and was enthusiastically used by all kinds of people for all kinds of purposes.

But it wasn’t the only attempt at devising a way to gather and use information from across the world.

In this video, and in those in the following two steps, Professor Les Carr examines where the Web came from and how it differed from previous attempts to build a world-wide information system.

Presentation slides

This video contains presentation slides. If the slides are moving too quickly for you, you may find it useful to either select the pause button on the video controls or to download and print off the slides which are available in PDF format to view / download from the bottom of the page.

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Web Science: How the Web Is Changing the World

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