Category: Interesting

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World Wide Web turns 25 years old

Twenty-five years ago, the World Wide Web was just an idea in a technical paper from an obscure, young computer scientist at a European physics lab.

That idea from Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN lab in Switzerland, outlining a way to easily access files on linked computers, paved the way for a global phenomenon that has touched the lives of billions of people.

He presented the paper on March 12, 1989, which history has marked as the birthday of the Web.

But the idea was so bold, it almost didn’t happen.

“There was a tremendous amount of hubris in the project at the beginning,” said Marc Weber, creator and curator of the Internet history program at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley.

“Tim Berners-Lee proposed it out of the blue, unrequested.”

At first, said Weber, the CERN colleagues “completely ignored the proposal.”

The US military began studying the idea of connected computer networks in the 1950s, and in 1969 launched Arpanet, the forerunner to the Internet. But the World Wide Web was just one of several ideas to connect the public.

Berners-Lee convinced CERN to adopt his system, demonstrating its usefulness by compiling a lab phone book into an online index.

A key aspect of the design put forward by Berners-Lee was that it worked across various computer operating systems. And it offered the ability to click on links to access files hosted on computers located elsewhere.

The Web was not a winner out of the gate. There were rival online services such as US-based CompuServe and France’s Minitel but they involved fees, while Berners-Lee’s system was free.

“It started as a real underdog; no one would have predicted the system would have succeeded,” Weber said.

The Gopher system owned by the University of Minnesota was beating the Web in the early 1990s.

Weber credited former US vice president Al Gore with helping the Web topple Gopher by getting government agencies in Washington to use the system.

The launch of the Whitehouse.gov website was seen as a huge stamp of approval for the Web.

In 1993, the Web system was released free into the public, while those behind Gopher started charging, according to Weber.

“Most people don’t realize that both the Web and the Internet had competitors,” Weber said.

“Had they lost the battles, we would still be going online, but it could certainly be different, a lot more top-down control like the walled garden at Facebook.”

Web competitors were online environments controlled by operators.

Under the Berners-Lee model, people were free to publish what they wished on Internet-linked computers.

Internet titans such as Google and Yahoo were built on helping people find pages of interest as the amount of information being hosted on servers exploded.

“At its birth, many of us were guilty of a lack of imagination and just didn’t see what the Web would do to the future,” Gartner analyst Michael McGuire told AFP.

“The personal computer changed the way we work, but is was the Web that disrupted and changed a lot of industries.”

The ability to freely access files on the Web has shaken traditional business models in music, film, news and more.

“The Internet pushes power to the edges,” said Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the US-based Center for Democracy & Technology.

“Anybody can be a listener and anybody can be a publisher on the same network; there has never been anything like it.”

A powerful underlying tenet of the Web is that it is egalitarian and open, but those principles are under threat, according to Dempsey.

It remains to be seen whether the Web is hobbled with regulations and fragmented by governments walling off portions in countries.

“You will never stop the teenage kid from watching little snippets of cute cats,” Dempsey said.

“The trouble is you could limit the ability of people to criticize the government or make a tiered Internet in which it is harder for innovators, critics, or human rights activists to reach a global audience.”

Threats to a Web based on equality concern its creators, according to Weber.

While the Web unified the Internet decades ago, there is nothing “written in stone” saying it can’t fragment anew, the historian reasoned.

In the US, major Internet service providers have won the right to give some online traffic preferential treatment, and governments have shown willingness to invade online privacy or restrain Web freedom.

A big battle for the shape of the Web could be the effect of billions more people getting online with smartphones in parts of developing parts of the world.

“The Web is really only half built; it is not worldwide yet,” Weber said

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‘One Pound Fish’ singer welcomed back to Pakistan

Muhammad Shahid Nazir (Credit: dailymail.co.uk)
Muhammad Shahid Nazir (Credit: dailymail.co.uk)
Muhammad Shahid Nazir (Credit: dailymail.co.uk)

Pakistan, Dec 25 – Even in an age of instant Internet singing sensations, Muhammad Shahid Nazir’s tale might seem fishy.

After all, it’s not every day that an unsung immigrant from Pakistan makes a respectable challenge to the top of Britain’s Christmas pop chart with a ditty about the “very, very good” fish he hawks on the streets of London. But the millions who have heard Nazir crooning on YouTube can understand: It’s easy to get hooked on his song “One Pound Fish,” named not after the weight of the day’s catch but its cost in British currency.

“I never thought my song would become famous,” the 31-year-old newly minted recording artist said. “My real name is Muhammad Shahid, but the people call me the ‘One Pound Fish Man,’ and I’m so happy.”

Nazir, a father of four who hails from the little-known Punjab town of Pattoki, set out for Britain on a student visa a year and a half ago, hopeful, like many Pakistanis, of forging a better future for his family. He landed a job as a fish monger but says he soon knew he would not be a very competitive salesman. He didn’t like to shout about his wares, as many fish sellers do to attract customers.

But through a stroke of divine intervention, a new approach to advertising his fish came into being. “On the spot, God put the song in my mind,” he said.

The simple sales ditty goes: “Come on ladies, come on ladies! One pound fish. . . . Very, very good and very, very cheap. One pound fish!”

That’s pretty much it. But a large part of Nazir’s charm lies in the sheer earnestness with which he belts out the tune to the female shoppers within earshot at Queens Market in London, entreating them to “have a, have a look” at his wares.

Soon enough, somebody made an amateur video of his jingle and posted it on YouTube. As the views mounted to 6 million, Nazir joined the likes of Rebecca Black of hyper-annoying “Friday” fame and Psy, the South Korean pop star whose “Gangnam Style” video had millions around the world dancing as if they were riding imaginary horses.

An enterprising producer decided to polish and expand “One Pound Fish.” The latest rendition took on added zest in a music video that features sexy dancers in Bollywood-inspired outfits, flying fish and, of course, a splash of Autotune. That version had nearly 7 million views as of Monday.

Nazir’s song made it into the U.K. Top 40 after just two weeks on the charts. That gave it a shot at joining the ranks of fabled No. 1 Christmas singles — those songs that top the charts in the week that the holiday falls.

Past Christmas singles have included the predictable and improbable. The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was No. 1 in 1963 (one of the group’s four Christmas chart-toppers); Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” succeeded twice, in 1975 and 1991; Band Aid’s “Do They Know it’s Christmas,” also twice, in 1984 and 2004. Then there are only-in-England novelties like comedian Benny Hill’s 1971 “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)” and Mr. Blobby’s “Mr. Blobby” in 1993.

This year, Nazir’s novelty number faced tough competition against stars such as Rihanna and Justin Bieber. The top tune was announced Sunday: A version of the Hollies’ “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” by the Justice Collective, a group of stars who recorded the charity single for victims of a 1989 soccer-stadium stampede that claimed 96 lives.

“One Pound Fish” remained in the wallows, reaching just 29 on the chart, but not bad for a singer who got booted off of television talent show “The X Factor.”

This week Nazir returns home to Pattoki with his visa status in question, but in triumph: He is most certainly Pakistan’s first viral video singing sensation. Everyone in the town an hour’s drive southwest of Lahore has heard of his fame and fortune.

“You can go to any street or market of this town and will see small children singing this ‘One Pound Fish’ song,” said one of Nazir’s brothers, Saith Khalid Nazir, a lawyer. “Almost everybody has seen it on the Internet, and they are crazy about it.”

As a child, Muhammad Shahid Nazir was known for singing religious songs as a member of a devout family that prayed at the mosque five times a day. Sometimes other congregations requested his vocal talents.

“Nevertheless, the entire family had never thought or imagined that he would become a singer,” his brother said.

Muhammad Shahid Nazir said he will spend the Christmas holiday with his family. He described his town as a tolerant one where Christians are welcomed and their religious practices respected. After the holiday, he will apply for a visa to work as an entertainer in Britain.

It’s pretty clear that he’s become a better self-promoter than fishmonger.

“Now my song is available on iTunes in the U.K.,” he said in an interview from London. “My song is becoming famous in France, in Germany, in Canada, in America.”

Then, unprompted, he burst into a joyful rendition of his signature tune