HTTP is the conversation between your browser and servers—a request-response dialogue that makes every web page possible.
HTTP was designed for sharing academic papers. Then we put our bank accounts on it. The S is what keeps strangers from reading your postcards.
A URL is three addressing systems bolted together: how to speak, where to go, and what to get. The fragment at the end is stranger still—a note you pass to yourself that the server never sees.
URLs tell you where something lives. URNs tell you what something is. Both are URIs. The difference matters when things move.
HTTP has amnesia by design. Every request arrives from a stranger. Here's how we built memory on top of forgetfulness.
HTTP has been rewritten five times—not because engineers were bored, but because each version hit a wall. This is the story of those walls and the clever hacks that got around them.
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