by KLINT FINLEY
Tim Berners-Lee speaks during a conference in May 2011 PHOTO/Luis Tjido/EPA
today, Tim Berners-Lee unleashed the World Wide Web, publishing the first public webpage. Well, maybe. The exact date is controversial. But now is as good a time as any to check in on the state of the web, which did more than any other technology to take the Internet mainstream. From its humble, and uncertain beginnings it became a platform for just about everything we do online, from email and instant messaging to voice chat and video.
The question is whether it ever fulfilled its promise.
In recent years, the web has lost some of its mojo. It hasn’t quite lived up the lofty ideals laid down by Berners-Lee and so many of his disciples. Facebook makes 84 percent of its money from its mobile app—not the web. Tinder, Snapchat, and many other newer apps aren’t even available on the web.
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