That's Sir Tim to You

andrew_j_w writes "British born creator of the web Tim Berners-Lee has finally received his Knighthood from the Queen. It's nice to a pioneer, who certainly not a household name, get such a high honour from the establishment. Hopefully more people will now recognise the great work he did!"

Comments

A strange move

[Albanach]

Isn't it a little strange that someone who pioneered the web - free of class distinctions, where every IP address and domain name ranks equal - would choose to take an honour from the monarch and with it endorse the class system?

It's entirely reasonable that the creator of the web should be recognised by society, but the British Honours system is recognition by the establishment, not by society. Further to that, holding the second highest rank in the Order of the British Empire seems a lot less noble when we consider the persecution under which many countries within the empire existed.

Just my 2p worth. Others may wish to stand up for the system. Personally I think it sucks.

Re:Wait...

[Yosi]

When I tell people I work for the inventor of the Web, their first response is always,

``Didn't Al Gore invent that?''

Then I have to go into a long tedious explanation about how Al Gore invented the Intenet, and the Web is only one application of it.

I personally would prefer that Tim would keep on going on these long trips to get awards. Getting things done on Cwm without direction from Tim on what Cwm should actually do is getting hard. I've been spending more time at work on slashdot as result.

TBL's Computer

[CdBee]

To anyone with an interest in the birth of the web, one of the CERN NeXT Cubes used by Lee can be viewed in the Science Museum in London.

Anyone familiar with the NeXT machine and its current Mac descendents will doubtless find it quite an interesting exhibit.

Isn't it the case with Knighthoods

[BillsPetMonkey]

that even our American friends wouldn't mind one? Not having to tick the Mrs/Mr/Dr/Ms box is nice.

But I worry about the whole honours system because it's outdated, outmoded and even unwanted in some cases.

My wish for TBL is that he refuse the award. Seriously. Why accept an award from a monarch seeking justification for her burden on taxpayers? As long as she brings in more in tourism than she spends, then no problem, but don't legitimise her privilege by accepting token medals and titles from her.

Nominate The Bell Labs Team

[defsdoor]

I was thinking about honours the other day - before the government raised their desire to rename them all.

I was thinking that the orignal Bell Labs guys should be nominated - after all where would we all be today if it wasn't for Ritchie, Thompson, Korn etc... ?

We all are truly standing on the shoulders of giants.

At least he got it in time

[twem2]

What with the current move to try and get rid of knighthoods (why I can't understand, would the French get rid of the Legion D'Honour?)

Re:Oh Sure He's Knighted....

[kryptkpr]

Your post actually prompted me to look up the history of duct tape, and find out just who did invent duct/duck tape..

The readers digest version is that it was a faceless employee of Johnson&Johnson, and we'll never really know who to knight :)

Re:Knighthood==recognition?

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you missed the history lesson Arthur lived in the time of the Britons, who lost their fight against German invaders - Angles and Saxons - and were eventually destroyed.

No, the Angles (Englar) and Saxons where lowland Germans, in other words Germanic, not German just as the French are largely Germanic but definetly not German.

The Angles and Saxons had something of a reputation for genocide,

Quite the opposite, they came to Britain fleeing genocide and they did not invade, it happened over a long period of time, much too long to be considered an invasion, it was just a migration of an ethnic group, something that has happened a thousands of times in Europe in the last couple of thousand years and is still happening, just too slowly for most people to take notice, take Kosovo for an example.

Archealogy shows that families of Anglosaxon and British cultural heritage lived side by side in towns and villages for a long time before the 2 cultures fused.

The "reputation for genocide" was awarded posthumously by politically motivated nationalistic Irish "Historians" and has no basis in contemporary writing, it should be taken as seriously as the assertion by the same group of people that an invasion of Ireland a German army lead by a Dutch/German individial is an "English invasion" etc.

and it's rather certain that if any Briton blood survives in the modern-day British people it's very, very weak indeed. The modern British are primarily descended from these German barbarians (hence the term 'anglosaxon'), along with a liberal dose of Norse (Norman) from 1066 on.

In fact modern genetic research has confirmed what has always been suspected, ie that the genetic legacy of the Normans, Vikings and Anglo Saxons in the current native British population is much smaller than that of the orignal(Keltic) Brits, it's in fact smaller than that of people of Medeterrian origin (Supr. a whopping 30% or more), which makes your above statement rather laughable.

The fact that the common language spoken is a bastardisation of lowland and north germanic languages means nothing, plenty of ethnic groups all over the world nativly speak languages that are not their aborignal ones.