Escape Room Book now

“Web Genesis”: an educational escape room to rediscover the early years of the Web

Alongside the production of the audiofiction, the research team brings “Web Genesis” — an educational, completely free escape room — to two major events in the Ticino region: The experience immerses participants in a narrative in which the history of the Web risks being distorted by inaccurate information and oversimplifications. Through puzzles based on real historical sources and using technologies from the 1980s and 1990s, participants must reconstruct key events from the history of the Web in order to preserve an accurate version of its evolution.

Upcoming stops for “Web Genesis”

  • LongLake Festival (Lugano): 9–26 July 2026 Ended
  • Locarno Film Festival (Locarno): 5–15 August 2026 Book now
A journey to the roots of our digital present

Once Upon a Time in the Web

The Web has radically changed the way we communicate, work and remember, but how did it really come about? Who built it and which visions guided its development?

The roots (1945–1988)

1945

Vannevar Bush imagines the Memex: the first theoretical vision of hypertext

1962

Engelbart publishes «Augmenting Human Intellect»: enhancing the mind with technology

1965

Ted Nelson coins «hypertext» and «hypermedia» at the ACM conference

1969

ARPANET: the first computer network, prototype of the Internet

1971

Email is born, transforming communication between network users

1974

Robert Cailliau joins CERN: the co-inventor of the Web begins his journey

1980

Berners-Lee creates ENQUIRE at CERN: connecting concepts, people and machines

1984

CERN adopts TCP/IP and enters the global Internet ecosystem

1987

Berners-Lee compares ENQUIRE with HyperCard: hypertext + network + openness are needed

The invention (1989–1993)

1989

Berners-Lee submits «Information Management: A Proposal» — «Vague but exciting»

1990

WorldWideWeb is born: HTML, HTTP and URL, the three pillars of the Web

1991

The Web leaves CERN: newsgroup announcement and first server in the US

1992

The Web leaves academia: new servers, new browsers, new conflicts

1993

Mosaic and the freedom of the Web: the general public goes online

The explosion (1994–2000)

1994

The «Woodstock of the Web» at CERN and the birth of the W3C at MIT

1995

Internet Explorer, Amazon, eBay: the Web enters homes and markets

1996

Email becomes the main use of the network: Hotmail is born

1997

Blogs and streaming: new forms of digital content emerge

1998

Google and ICANN: the Web becomes more organised and easier to navigate

1999

Napster shakes up music and media: the Web changes culture

“The hyperlibrary of the World Wide Web was invented to multiply the library. The virtual character succeeds movable type. Every product of culture now forms a single hypertext, a single ecology of ideas, a single sphere of living language that will soon bring all human beings together in its dizzying expansion.”

Lévy Pierre, Cyberdémocratie. Essai de philosophie politique, Odile Jacob, Paris 2002, tr. it. Cyberdemocrazia. Saggio di filosofia politica, Mimesis, Milano 2008.

1989 The birth of the Web

Nicola Pellow, Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau

Once Upon a Time in the Web is the result of a collaboration between Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) and Scuola Universitaria della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI), translating the findings of research funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

A team of media historians, designers and communicators works together to make scientific knowledge accessible and participatory.

Discover more about us

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