March 12 2019 was a significant birthday for the current world of communications, promotion, information exchange and research. It was on this date in 1989 that the World Wide Web was nominally launched and opened to the world. 
Of course in the early years there was limited growth and it was not until the early part of the 1990s that it became available to the general public, although it was starting to be used by academia and some corporate organizations. Personally I recall the first instances were I was able to access 'the web' by using an account granted through McMaster University and working with a dial up modem over phone lines at speeds around 300 baud. It was a text based world at that time and you didn't get images or video due to the very low connections speeds.
I migrated to my first personal commercial account through Net Access in 1994 being one of their early customers. Still access was through pretty slow dial up connections but it could be instant and cover long distances at no additional cost.
Contrast this to the norm for communications in those days with phone, mail and fax being the most dominant forms available. Before fax became available telex was the key quick communication for governments and larger corporations. For the public it really was phone and mail which dominated communications.
Two generations now know only the WWW world
As we move from the last part of the second and into the third decade of the twenty first century there are now two full generations who have grown up knowing only the instant world of the World Wide Web and the millions of enhancements it has undergone over its thirty years of existence.
At a recent conference held at CERN in Switzerland the Inventor Tim Berners-Lee says "it's not what we wanted 30 years later." One of the concerns he offered was that about 50% of the world population is online and therefore able to use the WWW tools. The remaining are increasingly left behind in access to information, research and other benefits. Even though he says it is not what was intended, for those unable to access the breadth of the system they become disadvantaged and therefore there is an imperative to equalize the ability to take part.
For those who can remember the communications of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s and who have had to learn to handle the world of the web there is an understanding and exposure to the shifts that it has brought. Not always good but certainly something that has impacted our daily lives and which we have rapidly come to expect to be available.
When combined with the growth of the mobile communications world (cell phones) the ability to carry out a significant part of daily transactions has been provided by the strength of the World Wide Web. As people have become more comfortable with the use of electronic devices to support and carry out their transactions the use expands and grows. If you take the time to observe how often each day these changes occur you may find yourself surprised at how integrated with normal life they have become.
I leave it to each person to decide whether they should thank Tim Berners-Lee or not. Certainly the work he carried out has had a profound affect on human existence over the past 30 years.
Lee K
