Internet daddies win Blighty's 'Nobel for engineering' The men who helped give birth to the internet have been awarded the first Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering at Buckingham Palace. Brit pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee, along with US computer scientists Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf and Frenchman Louis Pouzin will share the £1m spoils that come with the prize. A fifth prize winner, …
It is well known that these great people were pioneers of the Internet. They are recognised and adulated by their peers and far further afield.
But is it necessary to give them a new prize now, at this stage? What purpose does it serve, to recognise them just a little bit more, to give them a bit of cash, when most of them are quite well off already? I smell a whiff of prestige and schmoozing.
Would it not be better to put this [and more] money into actual engineering and computer education instead? For instance to endow an institute dedicated to identifying and training very promising budding young telecoms, computer and electronics engineers, so that a new generation of pioneers might arise in this country and be appropriately channelled, motivated and remunerated?
Admittedly this would not give Lords and other luminaries the opportunity to schmooze with leading visionaries, not for a while at least. And it would go against the principle of government, which is, as Dickens once very aptly put it: How not to do [anything]. By giving out prizes to existing, already extensively recognised and rewarded pioneers, they are not technically doing anything, so they are not breaching the rule.
Of course there are other people, and these ones have been celebrated already; but it would make no sense not to give the prize to people who deserve it the most, just because they are already famous. It would be like giving the gold medal to the one who finished fourth, because the others are already standing on the podium.
It shows a bit of a lack of imagination on the part of the awards committee. It is like they didn't really believe that anyone else has ever contributed anything of significant magnitude to the internet... or maybe they were just too lazy to do any research and just found a couple of famous names and decided to bung them the award.
"...significant magnitude to the internet..." or any other field of engineering!
let's face it this award is just so UK politicians can pretend the UK is some kind of technology leader and grunt "look look we invented the web" etc for the millionth time.
They came up with some protocols 25 odd years ago - is that really the best we can showcase?
'Lord Browne of Madingley, chairman of the prize trustees, said that young people should remember that engineering pays the big bucks and not enough kids are getting involved.'
They're not getting involved because Big Business is outsourcing their jobs to the third world and so there is no job security. Also 'big bucks?' Since when? Engineers make their companies millions yet get treated like shit.
'Prime Minister David Cameron said: "It makes me proud that the UK is host to this international prize. Engineering is about growth and progress for both the economy and society - bringing vast improvements in people's lives.'
The only people getting 'vast improvements' to their lives are the aforementioned Big Business arseholes who get to buy another Ferrari from all the savings they made sacking their UK workforce.
Yet again more total fucking guff from the Government about the tech industry in this country. If they keep saying it enough, surely it will become true, right?
I hope you don't mean to give him too much kudos for C.
K&R C was a POS. I know. I bloody used it for some years but immediately switched to ANSI-C as soon as that came along.
C only became usable as a serious development tool once ANSI-C emerged and neither Kerninghan nor Ritchie were involved in that exercise. It seems odd that they did not get involved. Maybe they thought their baby more beautiful than the industry did and resisted progress.
Not made up at all, though he certainly gets paid big bucks.
Some readers may know him better as Des Browne, former top man at BP (joined BP as student apprentice in 1966 while at Cambridge Uni doing physics, resigned as CEO in 2007).
Some readers may know of him as the man who was terrified (also in 2007) that his homosexuality would become public knowledge after he and his partner seemingly had a bit of a disagreement (also involving the British press, and lying in court).
Some readers may know of him via Deepwater Horizon (and other incidents preceding).
Some readers may know him as CEO of Cuadrilla, the UK fracking company.
Not made up at all. Go read more if you're interested.
Leading member of the engineering profession?
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