Morning Dew on the web in Australia: 1992–1995

Abstract

The World Wide Web arrived just as connections to the Internet were broadening from academe to the public generally. The Web was designed to support user-performed publishing and access to documents in both textual and graphical forms. That capability was quickly supplemented by means to discover content. The web browser was the ‘killer app’ associated with the explosion of the Internet into the wider world during the mid- 1990s. The technology was developed in 1990 by an Englishman, supported by a Belgian, working in Switzerland, but with the locus soon migrating to Illinois and then to Massachusetts in 1994. Australians were not significant contributors to the original technology, but were among the pioneers in its application. This paper traces the story of the Web in Australia from its beginnings in 1992, up to 1995, identifying key players and what they did, set within the broader context, and reflecting the insights of the theories of innovation and innovation diffusion.