More Accolades for Tim Berners-Lee

How good to see Tim Berners-Lee win another award. This time the Finnish Technology Award Foundation's first-ever Millennium Technology Prize.

This man ought to get some sort of Nobel Prize, folks. He invented the World Wide Web and he gave it away to humanity. He DONATED it!

If you're buying comic books on Amazon, it's because of Tim Berners-Lee. If you're selling an old guitar on eBay, it's because of Tim Berners-Lee. If you're blogging your disdain for the Bush administration, pause, and thank God for Tim Berners-Lee. If you're surfing for free porn, pause now and genuflect before the genius of Tim Berners-Lee.

He was knighted last year by the Brits, and here's what Time had to say about him after naming him one of the top 20 scientists and thinkers of the 20th Century by Time magazine:

Unlike so many of the inventions that have moved the world, this one truly was the work of one man. Thomas Edison got credit for the light bulb, but he had dozens of people in his lab working on it. William Shockley may have fathered the transistor, but two of his research scientists actually built it. And if there ever was a thing that was made by committee, the Internet — with its protocols and packet switching — is it. But the World Wide Web is Berners-Lee's alone. He designed it. He loosed it on the world. And he more than anyone else has fought to keep it open, nonproprietary and free.

You hear about the Gates family's admittedly generous donations all the time, but, well, did I mention, Tim Berners-Lee DONATED the World Wide Web to us?!

Most people of my generation--the Gen Xers--likely don't even know his name. Our grandchildren will all know his name. Even as they know Gutenberg, Einstein and Edison. He's done much to remind us that we really are hitched to everything.