Ten Years That Changed the World

Ten years ago, Netscape went public, making the Web an ubiquitous part of our everyday life. Before that the Internet did not exist for most people or if it did, it was only as email or as a private club for the nerds. It was very difficult to use. And it was boring.

The in 1995, Netscape went public. The IPO brought Netscape a huge amount of money. It also focused public attention on the hitherto not widely known World Wide Web.

Eric Schmidt (presently Google's CEO) noted, "the day before the IPO, nothing about the Web; the day after, everything."

Netscape's IPO launched a revolution that wasn't only about hypertext links and the linking of all human knowledge.

At its heart was a new kind of participation that has since developed into an emerging culture based on sharing. And the ways of participating unleashed by hyperlinks are creating a new type of thinking - part human and part machine - found nowhere else on the planet or in history.

The Netscape IPO unleashed "a new cultural force based on mass collaboration. Blogs, eBay, Wikipedia, open source, peer-to-peer - behold the power of the people."

Wired magazine is celeberating this event with a special cover story that looks back and marvels at these pivotal ten years.

The cover story is in three features:
In Ten years that Changed the World, Wired talks to the inside players of the Web phenomenon - from Marc Andreessen to Shawn Fanning to Steve Jobs.

We Are the Web analyzes how the dot-commerce was only marginal to the revolution launched by the Netscape IPO. It looks at the cultural impact of web - "a force based on mass collaboration."

The Birth of Google is about how the obsession of two people with "backlinks" resulted in the starting of something big.

Wired's interesting and informative cover story marvels at and celeberates what it calls "a decade of genius and madness."

Technorati Tag(s): Internet, Web, World Wide Web, Netscape, Google