Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sir Tim Berners-Lee Lauded For Web Efforts

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the gopher-it dept.

crem_d_genes writes "The first Millenium Technology Prize to be given by the Finnish Technology Award Foundation has been awarded to Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the 'Father of the Web', for his work in creating the hypertext program that would come to change the way in which scientists, and later the general public would access data over the internet. The rest is history."

6 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Fantastic by kedi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...Linus Torvalds next ?

  2. whatever jokes you guys make out of it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He did make what the "web" is today, the fact that you're reading this now is down to him, he did something which is far easier to do now (though still not!) in a time when this sort of concept couldn't be comprehended.

    Praise the guy.

    1. Re:whatever jokes you guys make out of it by jaoswald · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, the most interesting thing is that the original proposal by Berners-Lee offers no hint of commercial applications.

      E-commerce, or even advertising-based commercial sites like Slashdot, don't get any mention at all.

    2. Re:whatever jokes you guys make out of it by HisMother · · Score: 2, Insightful
      > couldn't be comprehended

      Uhh, yeah. Unless he had heard of Gopher/Archie/Veronica, at which point the WWW really becomes only an incremental improvement. Nobody creates something out of a vacuum. TBL was just, as is so often the case, in the right place at the right time.

      --
      Cantankerous old coot since 1957.
  3. Re:silly by blane.bramble · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because HTML and HTTP defined the World Wide Web. Note: the www is *not* the internet. Gopher is not the WWW. TCP/IP is not the WWW. Routers are not the WWW. The first people to set up the network helped invent the internet. Not the WWW.

  4. Finnish inferiority complex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    As a Finn I can't but wonder what the hell is the point in an award like this?

    I mean come on. Every two years we ship one million euros of tax-payers money abroad and get what in return? It's just stupid.

    I can see only one purpose for it: someone high up in the government/academia has a pretty bad case of inferiority complex and comes up with the idea of the prize to alleviate it. "Let's get more attention to us Finns by giving out money. Oh yeah, a great idea. The Swedes are already doing it with the Nobel prize, so let's start our own knock-off award, complete with all the pomp-and-ceremony."