When Tim Berners-Lee penned a memo to his boss at CERN in March 1989, he was looking for a better way to manage information about complex evolving systems. He proposed an interconnected network of information that would improve communication at the facility, but there was no way of knowing what a tangled web we would weave. That memo would eventually spawn the world wide web and the various memes, crowdfunded gadgets and user-generated porn sites that it made possible. Hell, you wouldn't be reading Engadget if it weren't for Sir Berners-Lee. In homage to that great network of information that we all know and surf today, we present you with 25 things made possible by the big ole' W3.
1. Keyboard an4rchy
Freedom is a good thing. Until it's applied to the rules of grammar. So if you downloaded some sw337 warez? Or ju5t pwnd some dude on Counter-Strike? Why not l3t teh w0r1d kn0w about it in teh m057 ann0y1ng w4y p0551bl3. Sure, leet/1337/l33t speak predates Berners-Lee's invention, but the good, old World Wide Web was the platform it had been waiting for.
2. Anonymous: Power to the people
From l337 h4x0r to, well... elite hackers. Or hacktivists in the case of rebel group, Anonymous. The nebulous organization has no set form or motivation, but is best known for its very public shaming of corporate entities such as the RIAA and MPAA over the world wide web, or its defense of The Pirate Bay . As for its largest contribution to popular culture? Either the popularization of Guy Fawkes (or V for Vendetta, depending on whom you ask) masks, or the reminder to the suits that there's power in numbers. You decide.
3. Tesla: Advances in the electric car
Hang on, wasn't this a list about what's only possible thanks to the web? Yes, it is, and still is. Electric cars didn't come to us via the internet, but Elon Musk -- head honcho of Tesla -- arguably did. Musk co-founded X.com, which ultimately became PayPal. The success of this (and other online ventures) lead to Musk's disruption of the EV market with Tesla. We just wish we had enough money in our PayPal accounts to buy a Model S.
4. Crowdfunding: Veronica Mars lives on
It may seem like a fogy, old buzzword now, but crowdfunding is an everyday part of the web. Its crowned monarch? That'd be Kickstarter. The website has birthed everything from the useful to the bizarre, but it was the reinvention of axed series Veronica Mars as a fan-funded feature film that truly signaled crowdfunding's cultural coming of age. You've already ordered your ticket, right?
5. GIFs
Divided by the pronunciation; united by their message.
6. Getting over stranger danger
James Potter