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

Tsu Doe Nihm

[Shky]

"Tim Berners-Lee", of course, is just a clever pseudonym for Al Gore. The article failed to mention this.

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

Re:Tsu Doe Nihm

[DunbarTheInept]

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.

Well...

[LordK3nn3th]

..now he can slay orcs and save princesses like the best of us.

Wiki-Minded Guy

[LordoftheFrings]

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).

hmmmm....

[freidog]

Tim Berners-Lee Attains Knighthood does that come with +2 armour?

Re:Don't you have to be English to be knighted?

[dotwaffle]

No, you don't have to be English, you can get an honourary knighthood. And Tim Berners-Lee IS English. And ARPA didn't invent the world-wide-web. Just the internet (www implies HTTP and HTML)

Re:Don't you have to be English to be knighted?

[The Famous Druid]

1. No, you don't have to be English.
A great many Scots, Welsh, Irish, Canadians, etc have been knighted.

2. Some things weren't invented by Americans, the Web is one of them. Deal.

What if...

[FlashpointWork]

One wonders where we would be today with the WWW if Tim had chosen to patent his invention?

Re:What if...

[mcpkaaos]

Two words:

go pher.

The key to his success: he made it free

[dgerman]

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".

Re:The key to his success: he made it free

[big-magic]

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.

Good

[HRbnjR]

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.

Re:Fuck Tim Berners-Lee

[be-fan]

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.

For services to the Porn industry?

[The Famous Druid]

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Re:Don't you have to be English to be knighted?

[be-fan]

Tim Breners-Lee *is* English. He was born in London and graduated from Oxford. While ARPANET was an American project, Breners-Lee worked on the web while he was at CERN, and it was first made available at CERN in 1990.

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:Knighthood...

[lurker412]

So, the next time England goes to war are Elton John, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger going to be leading the charge?

Re:Don't you have to be English to be knighted?

[shadowcabbit]

Ah, here's the correction, from some article on knights in E! Online (hardly a credible source, but the first credible source I could find after 5 minutes googling):

A few Americans--Rudy Giuliani in 2001, for example--have received what's called Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. American knights can't use Sir before their names, but they can choose to add KBE to the end. So, the next Indiana Jones movie will be directed by Steven Spielberg KBE.

OK, then, that's settled.

Re:Serious Question

[mrogers]

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

American Royalty same as British Royalty

[tjstork]

In America, the royals are the sons and daughters of the greatest of all the robber barons.

In Britain, the royals are the sons and daughters of the greatest of all the feudal barons [which is the same as robber].

In America, you are allowed to become a noble or start a new line of nobility by getting filthy rich and then buying yourself a Senator. You can then pass your wealth to your children so they can be nobles for having done nothing.

In Britain, the Queen hands you a medal, and then you can possibly get a seat for yourself and your descendants in the House of Lords. You can then pass your wealth to your children so they can be nobles for having done nothing.

At least in the UK, the monarchy has a lot of interesting history behind it, and some way cool outfits. Swords and capes! Now that is cool. Plus, the titles are awesome - for the king when the next one is: "His Most Britannic Majesty".

In America, well, we just say, "Mr.Gates".

Re:Don't you have to be English to be knighted?

[kalidasa]

On Americans receiving honors from foreign states:

US Constitution

I.9.8: No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Re:Knighthood...

[MrCreosote]

BBC link explains nothing

This explains all.

There is a difference between KBE and CBE - the K confers knighthood

And about time too!

[marnanel]

Good for him! and about time too.

And why stop at a knighthood? They should make him an Url.

Re:And about time too!

[curunir]

You think that's bad?

- In his response to the queen, all he sent was a cookie.

- The queen sent a typical GET request (Marie Antoinette who was sent a HEAD request.)

- I wonder if he had to fill out a form to receive his new POST.

- He made a bit of a scene when he searched his host's colon for some kind of port (ugh...bad wine joke)

- I guess he now has a 'close' connection with the queen.

Re:Geez man, get the pickle ...

[K8Fan]

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.

The Name You're Looking for is Declan McCullagh

[FreeUser]

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".

That "someone" who deliberately misrepresented what Al Gore said (and whose misrepresentation was then repeated by other, lazy journalists ad nauseum) would be Declan McCullagh of WiReD magazine, whose yellow journalism redefines the color yellow, and who enjoys enough of a rapport with slashdot editors to have his byline placed on any story of his slashdot links to (unlike, say, this story here, and just about every other story linked to).

He single handedly drew attention to the LiViD (Linux DVD) project by publishing a hysterical article about DVD pirates writing software (before it was even working, and knowing full well that the project wasn't about copying DVDs, it was about playing them on Linux, something one couldn't do back then. He subscribed to the mailing list, he knew exactly what he was doing.)

His career is littered with the destroyed public image of more people and projects than I can reasonably count, and his deliberate, premeditated sabataging of Al Gore by deliberately misquoting and misrepresenting him places him at the lowest level of journalism ... right down there with Fox News and the National Equirer.