Andrew Evans of National Geographic Traveler went to Switzerland to visit the place where the World Wide Web was born. It was at CERN that Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau sent the first "page" through the internet, using hypertext transfer protocol (http). Evans took a tour, which concentrated on the facility's large hadron collider. He finally asked about the web milestone, and was taken to a nondescript office with a small plaque. Scientists were at work there who had no idea of the history of the room.
This is where I take issue with particle physicists—they are just too darn understated and modest. They go to work and build anti-matter and collide protons and unravel the universe for us, but most of the folks I met at CERN were very ho-hum about it.
And when I talked about a monument to the web—a place that all humanity can come and visit in Switzerland, where they can celebrate the digital age and the way it has brought us together more than any kind of United Nations or League of Nations (also invented in Geneva)—the scientists looked at me as if to say, why?
Because the web is monumental and it was born at CERN, that’s why.
Read more about Evans' visit and his ideas for a monument marking where the web was born at Intelligent Travel. Link -Thanks, Mariilyn!
(Image credit: Andrew Evans, National Geographic Traveler)
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I think that to build a physical monument is to miss the point. In my mind, the correct homage would be a special "push pin" on every Internet map. A small, very permanent, physical monument would also be appropriate so that visitors could have some something to see and touch when they arrive.
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