[GOAL] Tribute to Timbl (Tim Berners-Lee) at WWW2016 (Montreal)

[Stevan Harnad]

*Introducing Tim Berners-Lee
<http://www2016.ca/keynote-speakers.html#keynoteTim>*
WWW2016 <http://www2016.ca/> Keynote Speaker
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1175-.html

*I.*
Jim Hendler,
has strictly allotted me exactly three sentences
to introduce Tim Berners-Lee,
and now I’ve gone and used up one of them *telling* you that,
but fortunately,
because of the nature of language
*Comma *
I can still add that each of us is, in a sense, unique,
but the uniqueness of some of us
approaches the cosmic;
*Pause *
and Tim Berners-Lee has changed the world
for all future generations,
forever
*Period.*

*II.*
Nor can we remind ourselves enough
*Comma *
that although,
because of today’s absurd intellectual property and patent laws,
Tim’s uniqueness *might* have been that he became the world’s richest man
*Pause *
he has instead opened his contribution to every one of us, and to all
future generations
*Comma*
opening access to the web, world-wide,
opening the door to open science, open data, open knowledge,
on a scale for which the only analogy in human history
is the advent of language itself
*Period.*

*III.*
Thanks to Dame Wendy Hall,
we can call Sir Tim Berners-Lee our colleague
at the University of Southampton, Hants
*Open Parenthesis*
(although his physical body spends rather more real-time in Cambridge,
Mass),
*Close Parenthesis*
but if Southampton has made some contributions of its own to Open Access
those contributions,
like so much of what is being done by just about everyone on the planet
today
would not have been possible
without the gift
and the gifts
of Sir Tim Berners-Lee
*Period.*
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