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All that's true, but it doesn't contradict the basic point: Tim Berners-Lee has one of the greatest contribution to least fame & fortune ratios in the field of

All that's true, but it doesn't contradict the basic point: Tim Berners-Lee has one of the greatest contribution to least fame & fortune ratios in the field of computing. > Tim has received many, many honors. The average person uses the web all the time but has never heard of Tim Berners-Lee or any of the awards you mention. But they know who won the Oscar for a movie they watched for 90 minutes. > There was a large amount of right place/right time to what he did. That's also true of (for example) Bill Gates, but he made a massive fortune and is well-known by the public. > He didn't invent networking or hypertext. You can make that kind of comment about everything ever invented in human history. Everyone builds on top of something.

alayne 11y ago
Engelbart demoed hypertext in the 60s. There are many underappreciated people in history, but TBL is not one of them.
chrisseaton 11y ago
> The average person uses the web all the time but has never heard of Tim Berners-Lee He was in the opening ceremony of the last olympics, right alongside the pop stars. I don't think any other computer scientist has ever been honoured in such a public, pop-culture way.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  Working on an actual NeXTCube as well. Now that's attention to detail! http://i.imgur.com/8KxqM.gif http://i.imgur.com/8KxqM.gif
- ThinkingGuy 11y ago
  And how did the presenters introduce him (at least on the US broadcast)? "I have no idea who this guy is."
wolfgke 11y ago
> The average person uses the web all the time but has never heard of Tim Berners-Lee or any of the awards you mention. But they know who won the Oscar for a movie they watched for 90 minutes. Then I ask: Does the typical user of a mobile phone know who invented the frequency hopping that is used in modern mobile network standards (hint: it was an actress): https://goo.gl/fVYYbY https://goo.gl/fVYYbY The same could be said of about lots of other major technical inventions.
- no_short_links 11y ago
  https://goo.gl/fVYYbY https://goo.gl/fVYYbY -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

alayne 11y ago

Engelbart demoed hypertext in the 60s. There are many underappreciated people in history, but TBL is not one of them.

chrisseaton 11y ago

> The average person uses the web all the time but has never heard of Tim Berners-Lee He was in the opening ceremony of the last olympics, right alongside the pop stars. I don't think any other computer scientist has ever been honoured in such a public, pop-culture way.

SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
Working on an actual NeXTCube as well. Now that's attention to detail! http://i.imgur.com/8KxqM.gif http://i.imgur.com/8KxqM.gif
ThinkingGuy 11y ago
And how did the presenters introduce him (at least on the US broadcast)? "I have no idea who this guy is."

wolfgke 11y ago

> The average person uses the web all the time but has never heard of Tim Berners-Lee or any of the awards you mention. But they know who won the Oscar for a movie they watched for 90 minutes. Then I ask: Does the typical user of a mobile phone know who invented the frequency hopping that is used in modern mobile network standards (hint: it was an actress): https://goo.gl/fVYYbY https://goo.gl/fVYYbY The same could be said of about lots of other major technical inventions.

no_short_links 11y ago
https://goo.gl/fVYYbY https://goo.gl/fVYYbY -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr