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Happy Birthday WWW! The World Wide Web turns 25

In this photograph illustration a ten-year-old boy uses an Apple Ipad tablet computer on November 29, 2011 in Knutsford, United Kingdom.
In this photograph illustration a ten-year-old boy uses an Apple Ipad tablet computer on November 29, 2011 in Knutsford, United Kingdom.
(
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
)
Listen 28:39
Happy Birthday WWW! The World Wide Web turns 25

It's nearly impossible to imagine life in 2014 without the internet but 25 years ago the web was just a twinkle in the eye of a computer scientist named Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

In March 1989, he wrote a paper proposing an "information management" system that grew into what we know today as the web. A quarter century of internet connectivity has brought us countless technical innovations (and cat videos) and has fundamentally changed our lives and the way we interact with each other.

But has it all been for the better? Most young adults can't remember life without the internet as our level of connectivity expanded from the desktop computer to smartphones to wearable technology.

We've come a long way in a short period of time so can we even imagine what the future will bring? Two internet visionaries give differing views of how the web has changed us and what the next 25 years will bring.

Guests:

Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and author of 'Who Owns the Future?'

Kevin Kelly, co-founded Wired magazine in 1993 and author of the book, What Technology Wants