Twenty years ago, in a research establishment in the Swiss Alps, a British-born computer scientist dreamt up a new way for academics to share information around the globe.
Little did he realise that his invention would break out from the confines of academia and give birth to the world wide web.
Two decades on, there are over 200 million websites and over one trillion unique URLs. An astounding 1.6 billion people use the web worldwide, and here in the UK the figure stands at over 70 per cent of the population.
To celebrate this milestone, we're looking back on how and why the web came into being, taking a look at how the web's key technologies have changed since the early '90s and investigating how it has affected our society and culture.
Illustrate how vividly things have changed, we'll take a snapshot of the web at four stages in its development – at five, 10, 15 and 20 years old. And to complete our commemoration of the web at 20, we've consulted an expert to find out just how different it could look in another five years' time.
