Lesson 1: The Big Picture or Why the World    Wide Web Waited until the 1990s

---

In this Lesson:

1. The Revolution of Electronic Computers
2. The Introduction of Personal Computers
3. The Advent of the Graphical Users Interface
4. The Evolution of the Internet
5. The Rise of On-line Services
6. The Explosion of the World Wide Web

No technology exits in a vacuum, but is built upon a foundation of prior technology. Before focusing on the World Wide Web, we need to take five steps back and gain a wider perspective of the world of computers and of the Internet. The phenomenal growth of World Wide Web could not be possible without two generations of technological innovation. Bill Gates, the CEO of Microsoft, identifies three revolutions - or paradigm shifts -- in the world of computing. ·

The first occurred with the invention of the electronic computer during the 1940s. · The second took place with the marketing of the personal computer in the late 1970s. · The third is happening with the explosion of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. Bill Gates believes that the big winner of the first revolution was IBM. He contends that Microsoft was the big winner of the second revolution. Mr. Gates is belatedly positioning himself to be the big winner in the third revolution of the World Wide Web.

Lesson 1 addresses these three revolutions in computing as well two "mini-revolutions" that Mr. Gates does not mention: the entrance of the graphical users interface in the mid 1980s, and the rise of the on-line service in the late 1980s. To explain how the Web got to be the Web, we take five steps backward to reach the summit.

Go Back to Lesson One ............................ ................... Go Forward to Step One