This new Kindle has a 2-stage browser : when you request a web-page its content is accessed by an Amazon server that modifies the text and images to be 'easier' to view on the kindle. Doesn't this mean, in practise, that Amazon provides a filter through which all your surfing choices must pass.

Its only a small step away from Amazon (or Government/Big Business/etc) being able to block content that they don't want you to see, especially if you can't root it or install another browser.

the University at Champaign-Urbana lays claim to one or two projects that have some popularity ..

the Mosaic browser and its offshoots Netscape, Internet Explorer and Oracle Screens began there.

Javascript (as part of Netscape??)

Apache web server

Project Gutenburg

and, if 'travelling' across the universe fictionally counts as 'widely used outside of the university' then there is HAL in 2001, that (who?) claims to have been activated at the Urbana campus.

This jumping to conclusions "World-Wide Outage" reminds me of an infamous headline in a London paper. When thick fog caused the cancellations of ferries from the UK to France the story was headlined as "Fog in Channel : Continent Cut Off !!" It all depends on where you are looking at the problem from ... When my broadband has problems I had never seen it as a world-wide outage, although to me it is...

--- And you don't need to own a computer to use it. But you do need a internet service !!! Do you know people who have a broadband connection AND a router BUT NO computer ???