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The World
Wide Web ("WWW"
or simply the "Web") is
a global information medium
which users can read and write via computers
connected to the Internet.
The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet itself,
but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as e-mail also
does. The history
of the Internet dates
back significantly further than that of the World
Wide Web.The hypertext portion
of the Web in particular has an intricate intellectual history; notable
influences and precursors include Vannevar
Bush'sMemex, IBM's
Generalized Markup Language,
and Ted
Nelson's Project
Xanadu.
The concept of a home-based global information system goes at least as
far back as "A
Logic Named Joe",
a 1946 short story by Murray
Leinster,
in which computer terminals, called "logics," were in every home.
Although the computer system in the story is centralized, the story
captures some of the feeling of the ubiquitous information explosion
driven by the Web.
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