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Sir Tim Berners-Lee Named Greatest Briton

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the particularly-exemplary dept.

mOoZik writes "BBC News is reporting that Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, has been named the Greatest Briton of 2004. Berners-Lee had this to say about the honor: 'I am very proud to be British, it is great fun to be British and this award is just an amazing honour.'"

6 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And typically there are some doubters by ninthwave · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Thats odd as one of the points Sir Tim Berners-Lee was making with all the British papers who were asking him how rich he would be if he had patented "his" idea, was it was not his idea, it was just using things already invented together, and tweaking it for sharing. He himself seems to acknowledge the simple principle that science and technology is a building process off the works of our forefathers in our fields.

    He is very humble about it as he does not see it as a pure invention, the press on the other hand just can't be bothered to learn. The web needs an inventor. Did Edison invent the light bulb?

    Something in the human condition needs this widget here was made by inventor Goosebury. Why I don't know, maybe we understand ideas better when we have a psychology to project the idea onto.

    --
    I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
  2. More important than Sir Berners-Lee is ... by Dark$ide · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Jane Tomlinson

    At the same awards ceremony, Jane Tomlinson (who suffers with a terminal cancer) was awarded "Greatest British Campaigner". I think that is just a little bit more significant. She has raised £1,150,000 (~USD$2,170,970) for Cancer Research.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/ 4215561.stm

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    1. Re:More important than Sir Berners-Lee is ... by DJCF · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This week, Bill Gates donates 100,000 dollars to help fight AIDs over the next 10 years. In other news, Bill Gates also donates 10 million dollars to help fight linux over the next ten years.

      Bla bla. Above figures made up, etc. But you see my point?

    2. Re:More important than Sir Berners-Lee is ... by bc90021 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Amen. Thanks for the great post.

      Another, more "pragmatic" way to measure the value of what someone did (versus another person) is to see which of them used what the other created. Did TBL use money that Tomlinson raised in his efforts to create and/or expand the usefulness of the World Wide Web? I would suspect not.

      However, is it likely that Tomlinson used the World Wide Web in raising the money that she so admirably raised? I would suspect so.

      So in the long run, Tomlinson's goals were BETTERED by TBL's achievements, and not the other way around. This isn't to say that neither achievement was important; on the contrary, they are both very important. However, since TBL's is the enabler for others, it can safely rank higher than others on the importance list.

      --
      libertarianswag.com
  3. Looked up some historical links... by Jugalator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    OK, I did some searching for the Neowin article on this, and can just as well post it here too.
    It's a bunch of fun historical documents. ;-)

    - Screenshot of Tim-Berner Lee's web browser/editor gizmo (apparently two apps in one suite, kinda like Mozilla?)
    - Web page (from 1992) describing a very early version of HTML
    - Description of the web (from 1992)*
    - The original WWW proposal from 1989**
    - History of the web

    * = It tells you why the WWW was made... "Tim decided that high energy physics needed a networked hypertext system and CERN was an ideal site for the development of wide-area hypertext ideas"

    ** = excerpt: "Note that the only name I had for it at this time was "Mesh" -- I decided on "World Wide Web" when writing the code in 1990."

    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  4. Re:And typically there are some doubters by nagora · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Did Edison invent the light bulb?

    No. That's why Edison was forced to go into partnership with Joseph Swan who beat him to it, forming the Swan Edison United Electric Light Co. (Ediswan). After Edison bought Swan out he re-wrote history to take the credit, as he normally did with other people's inventions.

    There's not much Edison himself did invent other than FUD and the invention-as-slavery, your-thoughts-belong-to-us conditions which prevail to this day in the IP clauses of large companies.

    TWW

    --
    "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"