Now that's (more or less) a date!
Considering all the possible events that merit (some more, some considerably less)
commemoration as a Boidem date tie-in, the birthday of the World Wide Web certainly
ranks high among the possible candidates. That being the case, it's an honor to post
this edition of the Boidem on the date that the
Wikipedia tells us
The World Wide Web was born at CERN.
The problem, however, begins when we try to verify that date, or even to ask precisely
what the meaning of being born actually means. Did anything distinct about the
web actually take place on April 30, 1993? One
timeline that refers to that particular date tells us:
April 30, 1993. CERN announced that anyone may use WWW
technology free of charge.
Does that constitute being born? Frankly, as much as I might like to answer in
the affirmative, and in that way justify the use of this particular date, it just
doesn't seem right. Even if a technology such as the World Wide Web can actually
have a specific birthday, an announcement that the technology will be free, though
undoubtedly important, just doesn't seem to correspond to what we ordinarily consider
birth. I'd be much more comfortable with, let's say, the day the first page was
posted to the web, or perhaps the date the first link was clicked upon, or even
when the first web browser was publicly used. Not finding such a date, however,
we'll simply take this opportunity to note that an important event in the development
of the World Wide Web took place on this day (as probably happened on plenty of
other days as well) and we'll leave it at that. After all, there's nothing
wrong with unbirthdays, is there?
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