[loup-vaillant]

> The World Wide Web would get my vote as mankind's single greatest achievement,[…]

I'd place the Internet before the world wide web. The www makes great use of many-to-many communication, but the Internet enabled it (which was its entire point, I think).

[tomelders]

It's true, there's no WWW without the Internet, but I don't think the Internet would be what it is today without the World Wide Web. Perhaps something else (something better?) may have come along in it's place, but it didn't.

I think the success of the web is it's ease of use, which has enabled anyone with an internet connection to contribute, and it's these contributions, both large and small, technical and non technical that make it mankinds greatest achievement.