What would we do without the Internet? Using dictionaries is one answer but they take a bit of updating. Shopping, planning travel, reading reviews, gathering information we use it all. Forget it when Picard asks the Enterprise’s computer to tell him everything about the Roman Empire or something we can do that sort of thing right now. All of human knowledge (some of it admittedly false) and experience is hidden away on the world wide web. All of it good, bad and ugly, all just a click away. Scary isn’t it? It’s provision is the idea of one man, Tim Berners Lee.
Berners-Lee recognised that a unified information system, accessible by computers on a network scale, was a possibility after working at CERN 1989. Here the computers could talk to each other and share information; they were the most powerful computers in existence at the time. Electronic mail was already a thing developed by the military in the event of a nuclear war but this took things a step further.
He was able to link information to an existing system of distribution (it is very technical). Crucially he did not patent the idea meaning that the Internet could be made for the world and not just to line his pockets as it’s inventor. It means that Web Design Maidstone or anywhere can exist. A very noble man indeed.