More Than a Label: Naming the World Wide Web as an Enabling Practice, 1989-96.

Authors

Deborah Barcella, Gabriele Balbi

Published in

Technology and culture. Volume 67. Issue 3. Pages 945-971.

Abstract

This article examines the process of naming the World Wide Web that took place at CERN between 1989 and 1996 to argue that naming was not a secondary act of branding or representation but a constitutive part of technological development. Drawing on archival records, press coverage, and interviews with early web actors, it reconstructs how a nameless internal project evolved through provisional, contested, and unstable designations before "World Wide Web" emerged as a workable compromise. The article shows that naming functioned as an enabling practice: it made the project discussable in meetings, recognizable within CERN's organizational culture, and legible to funding structures and public discourse. At the same time, failed attempts to standardize spellings, abbreviations, and trademarks exposed the limits of institutional control over emerging digital technologies. By foregrounding naming as a material and organizational process, the article reframes how technologies acquire visibility, legitimacy, and stability within the history of computing and communications.

PMID:
42544480
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 03 Aug 2026.

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