Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web and Vint Cerf invented the Internet. Some people often talk about one but mean the other.
They once wore custom-made t-shirts to help identify which invention was theirs! #aboutW3C
Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web and Vint Cerf invented the Internet. Some people often talk about one but mean the other.
They once wore custom-made t-shirts to help identify which invention was theirs! #aboutW3C
@w3c what I've always loved about this photo is the wording of the T shirts: Vint is not the sort of person who uses contractions...
@w3c I can not really explain it but I derive a lot of joy knowing these people are still alive, and Linus even if he is a bit of a dick, and old men who talk about the early cryptowars
It all happened so fast, it makes my mind race and other times the speed is a bit nauseating
@w3c This reminds me!
I once interviewed Vint Cerf for a project that never got finished (Curse you ADHD!!), he's a very chill person, who else would accept an interview from a (then) 14 year old?
(I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing him, I'll link the interview video later if you all want)
(Gods this sounds like bragging, and it kinda is, but I just think it's cool and I want to share it)
@w3c This feels like a fake. Vint Cerf in anything less than a three-piece suit? Shocking!
@w3c could we not minimize the contribution of at least a dozen people involved in inventing the original ARPAnet? Cerf did major work but so did Jon Postel and others. No single person invented the internet.
@impooortant Connecting people!
In the 70s and even still in the 90s we thought that would be an undoubtedly good thing with no downsides.
@w3c How did they expect their inventions to do good in the world?
@witch_of_winter Technically nothing untrue was stated. 😃
No one person invented the internet, neither Postel nor Cerf.
@w3c this is obviously untrue, everyone knows Jon Postel invented the Internet and web, for how could they exist without RFC, IANA, and other such critical work.
@clacke
We understand what you're saying but Vint was at the event - Bob Kahn, Louis Pouzin etc were not. If they were, they would also have gotten shirts!
Please appreciate that we have no intention to slight any of the other people who worked on the internet. We do know the history and we do tend to think so would just about any of our followers seeing the post.
It was meant to be an in-joke for the community. We also talked about one for Al Gore which said "I did not invent either."
@w3c Many people already pointed this out, but now you repeated this unfortunate phrasing, so it bears repeating:
For many people "X invented Y" implies that they were the sole inventor, rather than one of many. For the initial iteration of the Web, this is true for TBL, but no one person invented the internet.
The t-shirts in the initial post are of course entirely accurate and very funny, the explanation is potentially misleading.
EDIT: I noticed just now that the t-shirts in the video are not the same ones, so Cerf is actually wearing one that says "I invented the Internet" which I'm sure he himself wouldn't claim to have done, but he's being a good sport and indulging the joke.
Short video footage from October 2014, at #w3c 20th anniversary, when Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee donned / revealed t-shirts that @amyvdh and @koalie had custom-made, and they were good sports to agree to wear!
The audience enjoyed the memorable and unexpected stunt!
An image is worth a thousand words:
• Tim Berners-Lee invented the #Web (and in 1994 founded @w3c )
• Vinton Cerf invented the Internet.
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