Meeting Sir Tim Berners-Lee 12.05.11

Hot-footing it back from Doha, I made it for the Bain & Co Q & A with Sir Tim Berners-Lee at the Audi Showrooms in Piccadilly.

Back in 1997 when I was elected to Parliament I sought a knighthood for Tim but was told he was receiving an OBE. An OBE for creating the world wide web reflected on how little the DCMS and No.10 understood about the internet.

We did make amends by giving him a knighthood in 2003 but by then he should have been a cross-bencher in the House of Lords.

Anyway, I made it to the event and asked him during the Q&A whether his new Foundation would create a cheap version of a tablet for third world countries ("No" came the answer) and whether there was a solution for enabling citizens whose despotic leaders (Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya & Syria) cut off their mobile internet access to which he gave a more helpful response. 

One of the first things David Willetts MP did as University minister back in May 2010 was to bin Berners-Lee's £30 million Science Institute at Southampton and Oxford. Why when science is the future of our society? And why given it was TBL and only £30m?? Bonkers.