Profile America — One of the engines of business and personal life in the 21st century is just 23 years old this month — the World Wide Web.
The concept was developed and released by two scientists at the Cern Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. At 23, the Web is quite a bit younger than the U.S. median age of 37, but in its brief life has come to shape our days with searches, shopping and communication. It took some time to get going, though: In 1997, there were just a million sites on the global network. But by 2003, that number reached 3 billion.
About 75 percent of households in the U.S. have Internet access at home, which takes in some 95 percent of all homes with computers. Over a quarter of Americans over the age of 3 have multiple avenues and devices to connect to the Web.
You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau, online at www.census.gov.
