At one point, in contravention of a great many regulations we managed, together, to buy a computer out of project funds. And after a good bit of time, we put Unix on it and got that to work.
Archive (Page 13 of 14)
As I was coming over toward Brussels in the airplane, happened look down the window and there were the Straits of Dover. And the melody just came to my mind, you know, “I’m flying over the white cliffs of Dover,” the World War II melody. And it reminded me that I am not of this Internet generation.
I was just in charge. I was just directing things. But all those people with me, and all those people with you, we have to thank them all for doing this.
For me it is a fairy tale quite similar to that of the ugly duckling. Perhaps you know. And from the ugly duckling we can learn if you are in such a miserable situation what to do. And what did the little ugly duckling [do]? It went into the world and look for birds of the same feather.
He would say to you that you are all wrong and that he never should have been chosen to receive this award. He was a fairly humble guy and would sit here—and it’s been a recurring theme—he would begin naming the names of all the people who really did the work. And he would sort of just say, “I was there.”
Aaron fought tirelessly to make information free, and keep the Internet free, and to make academic research available for free, among other things.
This honor for me is too high. At this exciting moment, my sincere gratitude first of all goes to the initiators and creators of the great Internet, which has changed and is changing the world, including my country.
It occurred to me belatedly that I really should just tweet my acceptance speech. Except I don’t have Twitter account, so that makes it harder.
I know this honor is not for me alone but also for the billions who still do not have the benefit of the Internet. But I accept it and thank everyone on their behalf as well.
The second phase is nobody cared. That’s a really good thing. Because you can actually do engineering work without having grand ambitions or having lots of people, say at other standards organizations, suddenly get interested. They didn’t know what was hitting them.