Happy 20th Birthday World Wide Web! You made open access possible <http://wp.me/p20y83-Kt> My concept of the world changed on a cold November evening in Brandon, Manitoba, 1994. I attended a public information meeting put on by a new company (I forget the name) that called itself an “Internet Service Provider” (ISP, for short). The company was offering access to the Internet, a global system of interconnected computer networks, upon which I would be able to send and receive electronic mail, and most intriguing, browse across and between pages of text and image documents (hyper)linked together into a “world wide web” of freely and readily accessible information. The sell was accomplished simply by providing a live demonstration. I was totally captivated. The next day, I drove down to the local computer store and bought a SupraFAXModem 14400 to connect my Apple Macintosh Classic computer via the telephone line to the Internet. I got a 15-year old kid in town to supply me with a 3.5″ floppy disk loaded with the necessary TCP/IP and PPP software, an email client, and a copy of the NCSA Mosaic web browser. After just a couple phone calls to that same 15-year old kid to help me troubleshoot some initial configuration problems, I was on! (Incidentally, that kid went to work for Apple Computer at the age of 17.) …
Gary F. Daught Omega Alpha | Open Access http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/ Advocate for open access academic publishing in religion and theology oa.openaccess at gmail dot com | @OAopenaccess _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
