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  3. The Father of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee, who received one million euros ($1.2 million) cash prize for creating the

The Father of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee, who received one million euros ($1.2 million) cash prize for creating the

admin2010-03-26  31
问题                      The Father of the World Wide Web
    Tim Berners-Lee, who received one million euros ($1.2 million) cash prize for creating the World Wide Web, says he would never have succeeded if he had charged money for his inventions. "If I had tried to demand tees, ... there would be no World Wide Web," Berners-Lee, 49, said on June 5 at a ceremony for winning the first Millennium Technology Prize, awarded by the Finnish Technology Award Foundation. "There would be lots of small webs," the prize committee agreed, citing the importance of Berners-Lee’s decision never to commercialize or patent his contributions to the Internet technologies he had developed, and recognizing his revolutionary contribution to humanity’s ability to communicate.
    His creation spun a generation of youthful millionaires and billionaires, lit the spark for the New Economy and paved the way for massive new industries such as e-commerce. Burners-Lee, who is originally from Britain, has mostly avoided both the fame and the fortune won by many of his Internet colleagues. Despite his prize, he remained modest about his achievements. "I was just taking lots of things that already existed and added a little bit," said Berners-Lee, who now runs the standard-setting World Wide Web Consortium from an office at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
    "Building the Web, I didn’t do it all myself," he said. "The really exciting thing about it is that it was done by lots and lots of people, connected with this tremendous spirit." Berners-Lee indeed took concepts that had been well known to engineers since the 1960s, but it was he who saw the value of marrying them. Pekka Tarjanne, chairman of the prize committee, said "no one doubts who the father of file World Wide Web is, except Berners-Lee himself." Finnish President Tarja Halonen presented the biannual (一年两次的)award, subsidized by the government. The cash prize is among the largest of this kind, and Berners-Lee is the first recipient.
    The prize committee outlined the award to be given for "an outstanding innovation that directly promotes people’s quality of life, is based on human values and encourages sustainable economic development." "Isn’t this like a definition of the World Wide Web’?" Tarjanne asked. Berners-lee first proposed the Web in 1989 while developing ways to control computers remotely at European Laboratory for Particle Physics, the European nuclear research lab near Geneva. He never got the project formally approved, but his boss suggested he quietly tinker (摆弄) with it anyway. He fleshed out the core communication protocols (草案) needed for transmitting Web pages. By Christmas Day in 1990, he finished the first browser, called simply "World Wide Web." Although his inventions have under- gone rapid changes since then, the underlying technology is precisely the same.
    His recent project -- which experts say is potentially as revolutionary as the World Wide Web itself -- is called the Semantic Web. The project is an attempt to standardize how information is stored on the Internet. "It is an exciting new development that we’re making," he said. In his acceptance speech, Berners-Lee focused on technology as an evolving process that was just in the beginning. "All sorts of things, too long for me to list here, are still out there waiting to be done.... There are so many new things to make, limited only by our imagination," he said. "And I think it’s important for anybody who’s going through school or college wondering what to do, to remember that now."
    For years, the British scientist’s colleagues have said that if computer science was a pure science, Mr. Berners-Lee would have merited a Nobel Prize for his invention. He did receive a knighthood this year, but for the most part his name remains unknown to the masses who use his creation every day. "His picture belongs up on a wall with Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell," said Rick Broad head, a technology consultant and author. "The Web will go down as one of the greatest innovations of all time. Think of the industries and jobs it has created. It has transformed the world’s economy in a way we can’t even begin to imagine."
    The Internet had been in existence for nearly 20 years when Mr. Berners-Lee launched the world’s first website in August, 1991. But the Net was little more than a collection of computers connected with cables. It didn’t have a means of sharing information between different kinds of computers running different kinds of software. As a young scientist working at CERN in Geneva, Mr. Berners-Lee became sidetracked from his physics work as he sought a better way to organize and link electronic research documents. His solution was to connect documents and other information using hypertext links. The universal hypertext language he created allows all kinds of computers using all kinds of software to communicate with each other.
    The invention could have made him incredibly wealthy, even by Internet standards. But Mr. Berners-Lee never patented his creation, and by leaving it in the public domain he enabled the internet to adopt an open and universal method for sharing information. Many of the entrepreneurs and scientists who did use it became rich. On his own website, he explains why he never sought to cash in: "It was simply that if the technology had been proprietary, and in my total control, it would probably not have taken off. The decision to make the Web an open system was necessary for it to be universal. You can’t propose that something be a universal space and, at the same time, keep control of it." The decision also sat well with his own modest character. "The fame thing I don’t like," he confessed once. "There’s something very frustrating when you meet somebody at a party and they say, ’ Oh, you invented the World Wide Web.’ Suddenly, they’re not talking to you any more."
    It’s Berners-Lee’s world; we just live in it. But you’d never get that impression from Sir Tim himself, the man with nary a thought of power or glory, fame or fortune. The computer wizard (奇才) dubbed (绰号为) the "father of the World Wide Web" has received a knighthood for services to the Internet. As a Britain citizen, Berners-Lee is able to use the title "Sir Tim". He said that it never occurred to him that his creation could lead to him receiving a knighthood. The modest, publicity-shy physicist is at pains to point out that he did not invent the Internet itself and insists he is "quite an ordinary person."
    Berners-Lee was horn in East Sheen, southwest London, in 1955, the eldest child of two mathematicians renowned within the computer industry for their work on Britain’s first commercial computer, He studied at the Emanuel School in Wands worth and went on to read physics at Queen’s College, Oxford. After graduating with a first-class degree in 1976, he spent several years in Dorset, working for Plessey Telecommunications in Poole, southern England before heading for Switzerland. He wrote the program which would later become the Web for his own private use while working at the CERN. Then Sir Tim went on to write the first Web browser and Web server, both of which he gave away on the Internet in 1991, and the Web was born. While other Internet pioneers went on to. become multi-millionaires, he insisted that his creation should be free and globally available, nd ha? sought to ensure the Web was never privately owned. He was hailed by Time magazine as one of the top 20 thinkers of the 20(上标)th Century. He said, "it’s a great honor. It’s a link to Britain for me, which is nice. Links with Britain are very important to me."
Through Berners-Lee’s invention, all his family members and colleagues have become rich.
选项 A、Y
B、N
C、NG
答案C
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