Sir Tim Berners Lee and Simon Cowell
Saturday, July 28, 2012 at 12:40PM Without question, the biggest surprise for me in the opening ceremony of London 2012 Olympics was the sudden reveal of Sir Tim Berners Lee.
A house lifted up and there was some old bloke sitting in front of a computer screen. I say old bloke as I’m much the same age, okay, he’s not that old, he’s a mere 57.
‘Who’s that?’ Asked 90% of the UK population, ‘Yeah. Who is that?’ asked 90% of the worlds population and they asked it through a system that he was absolutely a primary figure in inventing.
Anyone reading this will know who he is, I’m sure you all do, we think of him as ‘the father of the internet’ or more accurately ‘the bloke who invented the world wide web.’
Yes, he’s been knighted for his services to the developing digital revolution, yes he’s a figure fully immersed in keeping the internet free, open and available to everyone. We know all that because we live in a techie, Google+ bubble.
I would posit that on an international fame level, he is not widely known.
Now let us consider Simon Cowell. Sadly we all know who he is, sadly if the house had lifted up revealing his fake hair, tan, teeth and monstrous sense of self importance, 90% of the global audience probably would have known who he was.
Okay, maybe not 90%, I hope there are people in China, India, South East Asia who would have no idea and wouldn’t care, but lets face it, a lot of people would recognise him
So why have I picked Simon Cowell as a cruel measure of our cultural development? I could have chosen Tom Cruise, David Beckham, Beyonce, Madonna, loads of people.
Well, I suppose the reason is he represents, to me and possible quite a few others, the victory of the non event, he has managed to raise the role of seedy booker of singers and dancers on a cruise ship to a global cultural phenomena.
In a bygone era he would have been some moustachioed Lothario who inveigled young women into his lower deck cabin with promises of stardom. He defines the terms seedy, untrustworthy, shoddy, short-term, exploitative, corrupt and dull, and yet we’ve all heard of him.
He’s ubiquitous and powerful and why? Because the people who set such agendas, the people who make such decisions have for the last 20 years, gone for the easy option. The people who run the television industry, and I say this as someone who knows them, are under pressure to produce the shimmering illusion of ‘entertainment’ to maintain audience share and therefore profits above all other consideration. That’s fine, that’s a free market, it was never any other way. I’m not trying to give the impression that television was ever any other way, 30 years ago 90% of TV output was unfathomably bad, it still is, there’s just more of it.
So last night it felt like something happened, someone from outside the shallow gloss and short term blinkered world of British TV was given free reign, a film director who has instantly become the darling of the nation. He painted a picture of our country that was very different, he included things that the world of the X Factor, the Voice, Strictly Come Dancing and the endless sewer surge of audio visual bilge studiously ignores.
Our cultural history, the industrial revolution, the women’s suffrage movement, the NHS and Tim Berners Lee. A scientist, a computer engineer, a man who has never sat in judgement of someone’s ability to sing or dance.
I’m anything but a nationalist, I could criticise my country for a year and praise it for an hour, but I was thrilled and intrigued by this incredibly refreshing representation of the stuff we got right, even though as we sat watching it, most of what was celebrated was under threat from a Cowell-esque, shoddy, short term government.
Danny Boyle for PM.
Reader Comments (6)
Glad you enjoyed the ceremony. It was indeed wonderful and great to see Berners-Lee there.
I felt you made a misstep with this line:
"So why have I picked Simon Cowell as a cruel measure of our cultural development? I could have chosen Tom Cruise, David Beckham, Beyonce, Madonna, loads of people."
Three of those are American so wouldn't have played a part in a celebration of Britishness. I know you know that and I know you were talking about culture in general at that point. But given your piece was about the ceremony and you say "*our* cultural development" it was momentarily confusing.
Bravo Bobby :)
The ceremony was utterly and completely British and amazing. The things the Danny Boyle included astonished me, including the Sex Pistols' Pretty Vacant was particularly bold. But I hadn't considered the things he left out. Not going for obvious British celebrities that would be known around the world, and instead highlighting quirky British heroes and eccentricity made him a legend last night.
Tim Berners Lee is a very bright, and very decent chap. Indeed his decision not to try and make a fortune from
However, and it's a big however, is that something very similar to the WWW would have happened anyway, simply because what was he started was essentially a means of providing a hierarchical access system with a rudimentary mark up language. The structure of HTTP is one of many functional systems that IP comms allows for. It's the sort of natural extension that many people in IT at the right time would have come up with given the right time and the right opportunity (go look at SMTP, NTP, NFS or any number of other things). Indeed I think it very likely that several such systems where thought of, but one just happened to work out.
The WWW was not the fundamental breakthrough of the Internet and IP addressing upon which it sits. Something like it would have happened anyway, in the same way that social networks have been re-invented many times. Like many things, right person, with the right opportunity which he/she is willing and able to grasp.
So, Tim Bernard Lees deserves the thanks of those that use his system, and his altruism in not trying to tie it up with IPRs. However, what HTTP is not, is some form of magical, genius insight. It's one of many slight variations on what was a logical development of the underlying infrastructure. What people think of as the WWW is based on a vast number of other technical insights and standards, many of which are invisible. Look up things like DSP, Public Key Encryption and a host of other things to see more fundamental breakthroughs which enable what the WWW actually does for us.
Very well said Sir.
I absolutely revelled in the ceremony - not being one for sport, but certainly for theatre, art and creativity; and, boy, we were not disappointed.
There were many superb decisions made as you have pointed out. But as I pondered on the whole spectacle afterwards, another remarkable realisation occurred: somehow Danny Boyle had been allowed to express his ideas and creativity without the apparent meddling of bureaucrats and control freaks. (Though, of course, we shall never know what other gems may have been cut).
Yet another (behind-the-scenes) triumph.
Yes, it was wonderful to see this amazing man be given the stage entirely to himself at that point!
While it's true that someone else could possibly have created the internet, it is also highly likely that this mythical other person would NOT have given it to the world to use freely. I sincerely hope that Sir Tim enjoyed his moment in the spotlight because it was the one point in the night where I got all weepy and realised what a big role this tiny island played in shaping the world through his one creation alone.
I also derived huge pleasure from imagining Prince Philip's face when Dizzee Rascal started rappin'!
Danny Boyle pulled off an event that was, pretty much, a poisoned Chalice after Beijing (who can compete with TAHT?!). To effectively draw a line under that state spectacle, he celebrated what it means to be British - and he did us proud!
Ali x
Well said Bobby!!!