Over 25 years ago I spent half of my gap year (between school and university) working on a building site as a plasterer's labourer. Hard work but a lot of fun. My boss - a veteran plasterer known - I still have no idea why - as "Chap" (or "Chappy" to his best mates) - would introduce his musings on the world by sighing and asking "So, what's it all about, Ade?". I'm not in touch with him now, and in fact he's probably not around any more, but I would love to be able to show him this list of the 75 million answers, courtesy of Google, retrieved in the blink of an eye:

I think that more or less sums it up (especially if you're a gifted, asthmatic victim of internet fraud). And, strangely, not an adult site on the front page. Courtesy of Google, but ultimately of course of the World Wide Web, whose birth - when its intellectual property was released to the world was 30 April 15 years ago.

I thought I would have a look at a slightly more serious side of the Web's general usefulness. At university, I had real problems trying to complete a couple of essays about the history of science. It sounds simple enough to find and compare different sources and commentators, but the relevant works (in English) were often unobtainable. Trying to come to independent, balanced conclusions about the what exactly various individuals thought about the world hundreds, or thousands, of years ago was hard. For a lot of work (at University College. London) I used their library resource computer network, called EUCLID to find sources. It made me think then that in another twenty years students would be typing in natural language questions and getting all the sources they needed.

How did the Web perform (again, using Google)? This time, two blinks, 2000 results. And again, no adult sites. Add wikipedia to this list (including the discussion page) and this is far better than I was able to manage at the time. My conclusion - maturing nicely. Just how good is it going to get when the semantic web finally arrives? I think I'll try these searches when it turns 20.