It is said that the millennial generation consists of those who were born between 1981 and 1996. Of course that is merely one definition, but it seems to be a popular one.
By that reckoning, the World Wide Web, which was born thirty years ago on this day — the twelfth of March, in the year 1989 — falls squarely in the middle of the millennial generation. It would be fair to say that the Web is a millennial baby.
But has it truly really reached maturity? Perhaps these first thirty years have merely been a stage of incubation.
The Web may only truly come alive when everyone is experiencing it all the time through their wearables, as an integral part of the physical world. What was it that Yeats said, exactly a century ago?
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Mountainview to be born?”
The current web is similar to the terrible twos. A two year old is the most interesting delightful and frustrating being on the planet.