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Tim Berners-Lee Attains Knighthood

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the looks-good-on-a-resume dept.

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."

3 of 539 comments (clear)

  1. Wiki-Minded Guy by LordoftheFrings · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From article:
    "The idea was that by writing something together, and as people worked on it, they could iron out misunderstanding."
    Sounds like the type of idea that got the idea of publicly editable wikis going. Somebody starts a basis of information, and the community smooths it out until it's comprehensive and intelligent (until the trolls get to it).
    --
    Canadian Cynic, canadian politics is less boring than you
  2. Re:The key to his success: he made it free by big-magic · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Well, just making it free was not enough. It was important that it was both free AND simple. It's yet another example of the dynamic "good enough is best" that occurs over and over. Making something too complicated in the beginning will kill its acceptance. But after its accepted, all the other features will be added on as users demand it. Now that the web is firmly entrenched, I wouldn't be surprised to see additional features from research projects like Xanadu being added to the web.

    Everyone should read the classic paper from Richard Gabriel that discusses this "good enough is best" in the context of lisp and unix. Although it's a little old now, it's still a good read even for those with no interest in lisp.

  3. Re:Serious Question by mrogers · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The government is now a constitutional democracy, so why is there so much homage paid to the archaic traditions and figureheads of the past?

    First, the British government isn't constitutional in the same sense as the US government - there's no single document called "the British constitution". The founders of the US followed the European rationalist tradition: decide how the country should be run, write it down and embalm it for all time. (Until you change your mind - France has had five constitutions in 200 years.) In contrast, Britain's constitution follows the empirical tradition: if it ain't broke, don't fix it; when it breaks, patch it. So the British constitution is a messy tangle of legislation, common law and long-standing conventions, developed over time in a piecemeal fashion. Sort of a "release early, release often" approach to constitutional law. If the British constitution is Linux then the US constitution is Mach. (And the Magna Carta is Unix, the European Convention on Human Rights is the BSD networking stack, and the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act was written by SCO. Enough of that analogy.)

    The book Systemantics, reviewed on Slashdot recently, claims that loosely-coupled systems developed in a piecemeal fashion are more stable than well-designed, tightly-coupled systems. I don't know if that's true of constitutions, but Britain has had a relatively peaceful (if slow) development from feudalism to near-democracy. Compared with almost any other country on Earth that's remarkably stable - even Belgium had a revolution.

    Second, I think you're wide of the mark when you say that homage is paid to archaic traditions. British people are (in my experience) rather skeptical and cynical compared to Americans. If we tolerate archaic institutions it probably has more to do with suspicion of anyone who wants to rebuild the country in his own image (*cough*Blair*cough*) than with veneration of the past. When I visit the US I'm struck by the number of flags on display and the generally jingoistic atmosphere (and not just in the last two years). Many people seem to treat the US constitution as a sacred text, so I wonder whether there isn't more homage paid to archaic institutions in the US than in Britain (although the institutions are somewhat less archaic).

    Most constitutions guaranteeing free speech and elections are as informative about the societies they allegedly define as a man saying 'Good morning' is about the weather.
    - Ernest Gellner