Start here · Essential guide
The History of the Web and Search
An overview of how people learned to publish, find and share information online, from dial-up boards and file indexes to the web and modern search.
Networks and the Web
Web and Search
How people came to publish, find and share information online.
Bulletin Board Systems and Early Online Communities
How hobbyists used modems and spare computers to run dial-up boards where people traded messages and files before the web, and what they left behind.
Early Search Engines Before Modern Search
How the first search tools indexed file names on public archives and then moved on to web pages, and what limits shaped their results.
How HTML and Markup Shaped Web Pages
What markup means, how HTML grew from earlier document formats, and how the web gradually separated a page's structure from its visual style.
How Link-Based Ranking Changed Search
Why treating links between pages as signals of importance improved search results in the late 1990s, how the idea works in outline, and its limits.
Hypertext Before the Web
A look at linked-document ideas and working systems that came before the web, from a 1945 essay on the memex to the 1960s experiments and HyperCard.
The History of Electronic Mail
How email grew from notes left on shared computers in the 1960s to the networked systems, standards and everyday habits that connect people worldwide.
Web Directories and Human-Curated Lists
How hand-organized catalogs of links helped early users find websites, how they worked, and why automated search eventually overtook them.
Wikis and Online Encyclopedias
How collaborative editing sites and digital reference works changed encyclopedias, from CD-ROM titles to wikis, and what trade-offs readers should weigh.
Related topics