Take a Look at the World's First-Ever Website

The World Wide Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while he was working at CERN, a laboratory in Geneva. And the first ever website lays Berners-Lee's vision for a simple information-sharing network between scientists and scholars: "The WorldWideWeb (W3) is a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents."

In its project summary, the W3 claims to "merge the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system." It goes on to say, "The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone." The only categories of available information then were aeronautics, astronomy and astrophysics, biosciences, computing, geography and law.

Click below to watch the world's first website load. 

In response, @millionaire.mogul.mindset said, "We’ve come a long way." @alexmathewmendoza thinks, "It’s the greatest invention of all time. All time." @wyatt_osthus thoughtfully adds, "I think the internet has far exceeded any vision Berners-Lee could have ever had. Information and knowledge are more widely available now than ever, to academics and non-academics alike, so much so that post-secondary education is faltering. I don’t think Berber-Lee could have ever imagined what the internet would do."

One commenter, @pinguinohijueputa, summed up his opinion with this: "I'd say the internet was not hitting its potential until social media took off. Now, for better and for worse, we're all more connected than ever before, and that is both equally exciting and terrifying. I'd love to believe the internet can ultimately help us to realize a world that isn't so fucked up, but that will depend on our desire to get away from centralized banks and religion, for starters."

Do you think the Internet has fulfilled Berners-Lee's vision? Is there more work to be done? What would you say is the purpose of the web now?