In January 1994 Justin Hall a 19yearold student began posting to the WWW as it was then known something inhabited mostly by grad students scientists and a handful of precocious teens like him The web had been invented at CERN the international physics lab in Switzerland so researchers could more easily share their work Hall saw something else an opportunity to share his life Link by link he built a hypertext edifice of autobiography a dense thicket of verbal selfexposure leavened with photos and art In January 1996 on a dare he began posting a daily blog and readers flocked to the spectacle of a reckless young man pushing the boundaries of this new medium in every direction at once 