The World-Wide Web (W 3 ) initiative is a practical project to bring a global information universe into existence using available technology. This article describes the aims, data model, and protocols needed to implement the "web", and compares them with various contemporary systems. The Dream Pick up your pen, mouse or favorite pointing device and press it on a reference in this document - perhaps to the author's name, or organization, or some related work. Suppose you are directly presented with the background material - other papers, the author's coordinates, the organization's address and its entire telephone directory. Suppose each of these documents has the same property of being linked to other original documents all over the world. You would have at your fingertips all you need to know about electronic publishing, high-energy physics or for that matter Asian culture. If you are reading this article on paper, you can only dream, but read on. Since Vannevar Bush's article [1],...

The World-Wide Web (W 3 ) initiative is a practical project to bring a global information universe into existence using available technology. This article describes the aims, data model, and protocols needed to implement the "web", and compares them with various contemporary systems. The Dream Pick up your pen, mouse or favorite pointing device and press it on a reference in this document - perhaps to the author's name, or organization, or some related work. Suppose you are directly presented with the background material - other papers, the author's coordinates, the organization's address and its entire telephone directory. Suppose each of these documents has the same property of being linked to other original documents all over the world. You would have at your fingertips all you need to know about electronic publishing, high-energy physics or for that matter Asian culture. If you are reading this article on paper, you can only dream, but read on. Since Vannevar Bush's article [1],...