When the world wide web goes down, my whole day comes to a grinding halt. I cannot work, I cannot play, and all that is left is for me to do something upright and worthy, like going for a walk or, heaven forbid, talking to people.

There are many people who cannot remember a pre-web world. The concept of hyperlinks can be dated back to Vannevar Bush in 1945 and subsequent developments to Ted Nelson and Doug Engelbart. In the 1980s, Vint Cerf and his colleagues developed the internet protocol and the transmission control protocol, and Paul Mockapetris and friends the domain name system.