We interrupt our regular blog posting to give props to two outstanding individuals, whose exemplary achievements have made our valuable online interactions possible.
We honor Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, the English computer scientist who’s widely considered as the inventor of the World Wide Web. The internet as we know it started in March of 1989, when he proposed an innovative information management system, and proceeded to implement the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol or HTTP client and server around eight months after.
Famously known by his handle TimBL, he is also the director of the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C, which oversees the continued development of the Web. The consortium is composed of member organizations that make up a dedicated staff who are committed to the development of standards for the World Wide Web.
We also want to give a hearty shoutout to Jakob Nielsen, the Danish web usability consultant, human–computer interaction researcher, and co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group. He is a former VP of research at Apple, and he’s widely known as the one who established the discount usability engineering movement. In short, he’s responsible for making the internet easy to use and wholly accessible to all of us normal folks.
To Sir Tim and Mr. Nielsen, thank you for making our lives easier, and for giving all of us the means to make more meaningful human connections.
And now, back to our regular programming.