BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!

Subject: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Amos
Date: 31 Dec 03 - 01:17 PM

I am delighted to see that Tim Berners-Lee has been listed for knighting as a recognition of his brilliant innovations leading to the creation of the world-wide Web part of the internet.

Very well deserved. It really is heart-warming to see someone get recognized for an innovative and creative service.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: mooman
Date: 31 Dec 03 - 01:20 PM

Agreed! Excellent nomination! (Not that I agree with the UK honours system in any way!)

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Sarah
Date: 31 Dec 03 - 09:23 PM

Absolutely! Tim Berners Lee shared his invention with the world. No patent, no exclusivity. Where would we be without it? Not on the night tonight, that's for sure! I'm in awe of his accomplishments. I'm not in awe of everything in society ... learned to be selective. But, some works of genius, like vacines, or electricity, or thories on evolution, humble me. I respectfully applaud Tim Berners Lee's overdue award. Don't you think it's overdue?
Sarah

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Dec 03 - 09:36 PM

Consider how it changed Everything!

It's the very least that can be done! Now...how about something from the US? And Canada? And Russia? And everyplace else?

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Sarah
Date: 31 Dec 03 - 09:45 PM

New Year's drinking and excitement, and typos! Meant to say ... not on the NET tonight of course (Makes not sense without reading last post)! See, hopeless really.
Anyway, the internet well deserves some type of little award. But, somehow, it just never scores big-time; and it does get bad press. Well, at least some of us really appreciate it!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Mark Clark
Date: 31 Dec 03 - 10:33 PM

I was one of the users of Berners-Lee's original browser. He developed it using a NeXT Workstation (loosely the equivalent of today's MAC OS X) and it only supported text. Still, the idea of the Universal Resource Identifier (URI) as a way to uniquely specify any resource on any networked computer in the world combined with the hypertext idea and the high-level protocols to make it work is one of the most powerful technological innovations ever devised. He didn't just contribute to the development of the World Wide Web, he flat out invented it.

I well remember using the Internet as a research tool in the years before Berners-Lee's WWW came along. How many people today know how to do a search for information using archie, veronica or the gopher (also developed on NeXT computers)? And how many remember using ftpmail to retrieve large files that were delivered as several pieces of uuencodeed text that had to be pasted back together as a single file so it could then be uudecodeed to reproduce the original file?

I'd say his Knighthood is long overdue.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Dec 03 - 10:52 PM

I can, Mark.

Actually, I think a Knighthood is too little. How about a Nobel Prize?

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Mark Clark
Date: 01 Jan 04 - 12:42 AM

I expect he's receiving some monetary reward as well. He must get huge sums of money to participate in all the conferences and panels around the world. On the other hand, he must have to decline millions in potential bribes to keep individual technology companies from tilting the open standards in their favor. I'm guessing he's declined more bribes than a US Congressman is ever offered.

I've attended conferences at which he spoke and always found him up to the leadership role he is given. Some think he takes his role as gatekeeper of the standards too seriously but I'm quite grateful. It's those open standards that permit us to keep using this amazing resource for the cost of a connection.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jan 04 - 01:31 AM

...Yes, I remember all these things,
But mostly I remember WWW.


I remember WWW
Back when HTP was new
And URLS were too,
I remember WWW

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: SueB
Date: 01 Jan 04 - 03:35 AM

Clearly the fellow's an imposter - here in America we all know that Al Gore invented the Internet!

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 01 Jan 04 - 08:32 AM

As I said in another thread, I'm amazd that people still attach any credibility to the British honours system. It's a joke.

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Jan 04 - 11:43 AM

Basically it's a way of periodically issuing a press release saying "We think these are good eggs", but in such a way that it actually gets picked up by the media and given some of the attention normally reserved for Big Borer and Pop Idle and suchlike.

Could be done a lot better of course. Such drab titles, with such dodgy associations, "British Empire" and so forth. I've always liked the sound of these exotic foreign decorations - Order of the Emerald Elephant and that sort of thing . "Order of the Garter" is OK, a touch kinky - but they could do better with the rest.

So the winning Rugby team could have been given the Order of the Golden Ball, Though, as has been pointed out, they've already been granted a far more valuable honour - the knowledge that they will never need to buy a drink for themselves in a pub, for the rest of their lives.

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Jan 04 - 12:26 PM

to show how fast things progress...When I got on the internet in 1995, in the early days of AOL, archie & veronica were still being used a lot and taught, and most images in usenet had to be decoded manually using programs like Uudecode and such. (I still have, 3 feet to my left, a Win3.1 machine with those programs on it. I used them for a year or two, and then discovered that browsers and newsreaders were doing all that work automatically.)

I marvel at the minds of people like Berners-Lee who can *see* the possibilities in technology....I suspect that the internet/WWW (I even know that they are NOT the same thing..*grin*) will someday be considered one of the major inventions in human history, right up there with moveable type and electricity.

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Mark Clark
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 10:32 PM

And now Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the first recipient of the Millennium Technology Prize and the £600,000 cash prize that goes with it. Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 11:48 PM

As I said in another thread, I'm amazd that people still attach any credibility to the British honours system. It's a joke.

I guess I find myself agreeing with this even though I don't know much about the British honours system. One of my great uncles (citizen of Bermuda) was knighted for having something to do with the Olympics (nobody has ever told me what). But I think if my great uncle Chummy can be knighted for something like that, Tim Berners-Lee ought to be nominated for sainthood.

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 11:56 PM

Ha! And now, with the help of Mr. Berners-Lee's amazing invention, I have been able to do a Google search and find out just what, exactly, it was that my great uncle Chummy did.

Thanks Mr. Berners-Lee!

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: Amos
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 02:01 AM

Keep us all in the dark, then, Carol, about ol' Chum?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Awarding Creativity: Sir Berners-Lee!
From: CarolC
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 12:48 PM

Well, firstly, I learned that he wasn't exactly a knight. He was given the honorary title of "Officer of the British Empire" (O.B.E.), which is a designation in the British Honours system that comes just a little below knight. People with O.B.E.s are members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

Order of the British Empire

Chummy (W.F. [Chummy] Hayward) was an athlete who was a member of the first Olympic team (swimming) to represent Bermuda (1936, Berlin)...

History of Bermuda's Olympic Athletes

And he was the second president of the Bermuda Olympic Association, serving from 1960 to 1972. I'm guessing this is what got him the honorary title. Still, nothing anywhere near as impressive as inventing the www.