Tim Berners-Lee Attains Knighthood

sandalwood writes "Tim Berners-Lee has been promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for coming up with that 'intarweb' thing we all use. Characteristically modest, he said that he was an ordinary person who created something that 'just happened to work out.' He will join luminaries like Isaac Newton, Francis Drake, and... Mick Jagger."

Comments

Re:Serious Question

[squiggleslash]

It's not a constitutional democracy, it's a constitutional monarchy. Elections are provided on a routine basis to elect lawmakers (which is what makes the country democratic - the legislature is accountable to the people ruled, but note that there is no constitutional guarantee of this, it just happens, and while it does, Britain is democratic), but on a technical, constitutional basis, if the Queen wanted to veto a law, disband a government, or do many other things we'd consider undemocratic, she'd be within her technical, constitutional, rights.

She'd also be overthrown the next day.

As far as Diana goes, that had little to do with the Royals. By all accounts, the royal family and Diana disliked one another immensely. Diana was a ludicrously popular woman whose marriage to Charles was what brought her into the public eye. By all accounts, talking to my American friends, almost as many Americans went nuts after her death as Brits. It wasn't because people saw her as a royal.

Re:Tsu Doe Nihm

[K8Fan]

Sorry, but this is a pet peeve of mine. What Al Gore claimed was:

During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

A statement that is, in fact, true. All any politician can do to assist in any venture is to get a bill written to provide funding. Al Gore did that. At the time, he was considered a space case by his fellow Senators for insisting that the Internet would be important. Phillip Hallam-Baker of the web development team at CERN said:

In the early days of the Web, he was a believer, not after the fact when our success was already established -- he gave us help when it counted. He got us the funding to set up at MIT after we got kicked out of CERN for being too successful. He also personally saw to it that the entire federal government set up Web sites. Before the White House site went online, he would show the prototype to each agency director who came into his office. At the end he would click on the link to their agency site. If it returned 'Not Found' the said director got a powerful message that he better have a Web site before he next saw the veep.

...and the creators of TCP/IP said this:

Al Gore and the Internet

By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective.

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship. Though easily forgotten, now, at the time this was an unproven and controversial concept. Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.

As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks into an "Interagency Network." Working in a bi-partisan manner with officials in Ronald Reagan and George Bush's administrations, Gore secured the passage of the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991. This "Gore Act" supported the Nati