Happy Belated Birthday, Internet! Celebrating 23 Years of Porn, Spam and Cats ‘Hazzing’ Cheeseburgers

We owe so much to Tim Berners-Lee, computer nerd extraordinaire from Merry Olde England. Half of it useless, the other half ridiculous. All of it brilliant and life-affirming.

Quite apart from having the most magnificent receding hairline the world of technological fatcats has ever seen, he is the founding father of HyperText Markup Language (HTML). This week --July 7, precision fans!-- saw the first successful use of HTML, and the birth of the World Wide Web as we know it.

It's a powerful force, and one that has to be --but is damn well never-- used responsibly. Do we want to drown the world in nerdly forum arguments, pointless trivia, unsolicited emails about viagra and lolcats? DO WE? Hit the gallery for a snark-flavored look at how the Internet has enriched our lives.

Porn-y statistics provided by itworld.