Abstract

The Internet has recently enjoyed its thirtieth birthday. In 1969, a computer at the University of California sent a message down a wire to another in a research centre at Stanford. The message was just two letters, *LO’.1 Since then the development of the Internet—of the physical infrastructure of computers and the material or broadcast links between them, along with the digital protocols that enable it to function—has been largely an academic achievement. Up until six years ago, the world’s richest entrepreneur, Bill Gates himself, was still unconvinced of its immense importance and economic potential.2 For the World Wide Web (WWW), the most popular and elaborate application on the Net, is itself only about six years old. It is its stunning exponential growth that makes it seem to some of us as if it has been with us forever.