By Bob Morgan, Jr.

Twenty years ago in 1989 (the exact date is unclear), the World Wide Web was created and the rest, as they say, was history.

According to an Associated Press article, the inventor of the Web was a Swiss physicist named Tim Berners-Lee, who married two concepts, the internet and hypertext, a way of presenting information sequentially. As explained on the Webopedia site, while the internet is a massive network of computers linked together that can communicate with each other, the Web is a way of accessing information over the medium of the internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the Web to share information. The Web also utilizes browsers as Internet Explorer or Firefox to access Web documents called pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.

The advent of the Web has revolutionized our lives in many ways.

For one thing, the Web, by facilitating Web-based email services such as hotmail, Yahoo and gmail, which are primarily intended to be accessed through a Web browser, allowed the widespread use of email technology by non-business users. (Emails themselves are sent on the internet.) Web-based emails (like all emails) have the immediacy of a telephone message without the interruption factor. And many users, particularly younger ones, have sped up the email process further by the use of instant messaging services hosted by the Web-based email services.

Shopping and commerce have been changed markedly by the Web. An almost unlimited array of goods and services is available on the Web and thanks to arrangements with shippers like UPS and FedEx, purchased items can be shipped very quickly, sometimes overnight. Through popular auction sites like eBay and "name your own price" sites like Priceline, consumers have increased control over pricing of the products.

The Web has also revolutionized the flow of news and information. An incredible variety of information is available on the Web almost instantly. Additionally, because news websites can be updated many times during the day, rather than just once a day, the concept of the news cycle has been changed and speeded up. Traditional news organizations have all had to add to add significant Web capability to compete with newer Web-based sites.. Of course, blogs and newsgroups relating to all conceivable topics and points of view have greatly expanded the public square where ideas are expressed, even if many of the voices in the square are very shrill.

None of this is to say that the World Wide Web has been an unmixed blessing. Because of its unregulated nature (on balance one of its strengths), the Web has been associated with numerous frauds and scams, such as web emails from fake Nigerian heirs, "phishing" for unauthorized financial information that can lead to identity theft and a wide variety of harmful internet viruses. The Web's anonymity has also been used by a few to prey upon unsuspecting children and adolescents. Some newspapers have been damaged considerably by the Web (there have been recent closures in Denver and Seattle) and sometimes community stores have been hurt by competition on the Web, which effectively is not subject to sales tax.

But like many great innovations (many of which, like the automobile, have a good number of downsides), the World Wide Web is both a great net benefit in our daily lives and here to stay.