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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."
One wonders where we would be today with the WWW if Tim had chosen to patent his invention?
During the early 90's his research was put down by other Hypermedia researchers. Their view: "we've been there, done that; your implementation is too simple, too restrictive; our research is towards two directional linking..., other systems before you are better...". His first paper was rejected by the Hypertext Conference in 1991, and he settled for a demo table in the same venue.
The key to his success is that he made it simple and free (as in beer)! Others, like Nelson's Xanadu, were too ambitious. Others, like Hypercards, Hypernotes, Hyperdisco, etc were never free.
The BBC article highlights that in one of the side boxes: "Offered free on the Net".
I'm glad to see TBL get some more recognition. The original concepts behind html and semantic markup were well designed for their time and deserve more recognition. 99% of web designers today seem to have no idea why they should be using 'em' instead of 'b' tags, nor do many seem to even care about semantics and platform neutral markup. TBL and his semantic web ideas need all the recognition they can get.
It's not political. Politically, the British monarchy doesn't do much of anything. It is mostly a cultural thing. The monarchy is a cherished institution of Great Britain. It represents the history and culture of a great country. It has endured for hundreds of years as one of the most stable governments in the West. The British monarchy has one of the oldest democratic traditions in the world, and Britain gave birth to the philosophers from which our founding fathers derived their inspiration. Getting rid of the British monarchy would be like getting rid of the monuments of Greece, because they take up space that could be put to better use.
There is no need for everything in the world to be cold and logical. If a country wants to hold onto a 'silly' institution as a symbol of their nation, so be it.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Al Gore made an honest claim about something that he was justly proud of. And somebody deliberately misquoted him to make it appear that he was claiming to have "invented the internet".
It wouldn't be so annoying if this deliberate campaign hadn't been so successful at painting this honest (if dull) politician as a "liar", and possibly costing him the election (which was stolen anyway).
Look, I've been on the Net since 1988 (via world.std.com, the first commercial ISP), and I can assure you that Al Gore was the first person in the Senate to take it seriously. He provided funding when the NSF was going to pull the plug, and the all the commercial internet providers were squabbling over peering agreements. Read some back issues of "Boardwatch" magazine to learn about all this, OK?
Just because you don't like to hear it doesn't mean it's not true. And something isn't funny just because it's repeated a lot.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
To do what he claimed would have required time travel. The internet ALREADY EXISTED. His bill just added more infrastructure to it. That's no small thing, yes, but it's still a smaller thing that what he claimed it did.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.