Technology

The global web project I am running in my professional life is reaching it’s notional half way point. I say notional – in that creating, maintaining and managing a web presence never ends and I certainly hope the web development efforts will continue long after I’ve moved on. But it is a relevant time to capture some lessons learnt so far that may in some way be useful for others contemplating or undertaking similar projects.

The developments that shaped the last two decades in technology and beyond – namely the arrival of the web in the 90s and the rise of Google in the ‘noughties’ – began life in the previous decades. The upcoming celebration of the 20th anniversary of Tim Berners Lee’s proposal for the web (13th March 1989) illustrates the existence of the idea before the immense impact it had in the following decade and, likewise, Google’s incorporation as a company in late 1998 before its introduction of Adwords in 2000 and subsequent massive growth.

As a hardened web veteran I tend to take the view that nothing is new. For example, all the core elements of today’s massively popular social networks were seen in the first generations of business collaboration solutions back in the mid to late 90s.