Tim Berners-Lee and the Freedom of The City

By @edent · necropost worldwidethanks · 850 words

Originally written in 2014 - but lost somehow.

Last week, I had the privilege of being invited into the Guildhall to watch Tim Berners-Lee receive the Honorary Freedom of the City. I was one of a dozen bloggers and tweeters asked to live tweet the ceremony. As The City moves into the digital era, it is beginning to modernise and so this was the first ceremony open to bloggers and the first to be live broadcast on the web.

I got a pretty good seat for the ceremony :-)

The ceremony was full of the pomp and circumstance you'd expect.

Horse-hair wigs, a golden mace, ceremonial chains - the full works.

The ceremony was fairly short, about 30 minutes, mostly taken up with Sir Tim's speech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XIUaOyaAds

2024: The video is dead, but you can read a transcript of his speech.

TimBL, as he's known, gave a power talk about how spying on citizens is even more insidious than outright censorship. Why network neutrality must be a cornerstone of any future Internet development. And the overwhelming needs for these rights to be codified in a "Digital Magna Carta."

A passionate and compelling argument - for more information, visit The Web We Want.

Thanks to the City for inviting me, and to Sir Tim for these inspiring words:

The Internet needs to be open so the web can serve humanity - and so that humanity can thrive.
Tim Berners-Lee

You can see contemporary tweets at https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%23worldwidethanks%20since%3A2014-09-23%20until%3A2014-09-25&src=typd

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