-
What is the World Wide Web (WWW)?
It is called World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW) in computing to a worldwide network , which consists of a complex system of hypertext and hypermedia interconnected among themselves and which can be accessed through an Internet connection and a set of specialized software .
The necessary software to visit the WWW is a browser or browser , such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc., which represents in a series of text and multimedia windows each visited web page . The latter usually require an html address (HyperText Markup Language, or hypertext markup language) that starts with the initials www.
The World Wide Web, commonly referred to as “the Web” or “the Network”, was developed between 1889 and 1990 , by scientists at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland, and was published in 1993. From then, this new virtual space has grown and multiplied to become the main means of consulting digital and telecommunications information in the contemporary world.
See also: What is the ISP?
-
How does the World Wide Web work?
The Web operates on the basis of a three-step procedure, which are:
- Translation . The URL (the one that is entered into the browser) is linked to an IP address through a large distributed Internet database (called DNS). Once the IP address has been obtained, communication between the user and the web server is established, and datatransmission begins .
- HTML request . The browser then requests the resource and obtains the parts of the web page from the requested resources for graphics, text, etc.
- Rendering . The browser then follows the instructions of the html or ccs code to assemble the web page correctly, putting each graphic on its site and each text as it should look. The user can then see it on the screen and can, at his wish, jump to similar ones.
-
Characteristics of the World Wide Web
The Web is a dimension of informative exchange and multimedia , interactive and distance telecommunications , in which the knowledge , attitudes and behaviors of the human being are largely reflected .
Statistically, it was estimated in 2002 that 2.024 million existing web pages, 56.4% were in English, compared to 7.7% in German, 5.6% in French and 4.95% in Japanese, followed of 4% in Spanish.
Many accuse this predominance of the Anglo language of serving as a mechanism of imposition of the language and culture (American) in the rest of the world, operating as well as an imperialist agent at the heart of computer globalization .
However, other studies accuse the trend towards the constitution rather of a culture 2.0, that is, a culture of the digital media that would transcend the traditional limits imposed by borders and cultures.
-
Importance of the World Wide Web
The appearance of the Web changed the world forever. It allowed new and diverse forms of remote access to information , changing the way in which we investigate and overcoming enormous distances to allow communication .
The sending of confidential information, the promotion and even sale of products, the incorporation of the user to social (social networks ) and playful communities, in short, a gigantic variety of activities are available to the human being of today thanks to this new computer space.
Of course, this has also had repercussions of care, such as a new dimension of crime (computer crimes or cybercrime ), unrestricted access by users to all types of information: legal or illegal, sensitive or public, intimate or informative, which is a challenge when it comes to filtering and going to reliable sources, or to protect infants from information overexposure.
