Past & future Environments of the Web, “Honoris Causa” from UPM
T. Berners-Lee and Vinton G. Cerf are new doctors “Honoris Causa” from UPM. It is a recognition for their contributions to the Internet and World Wide Web development, which has positionated them at the forefront of the digital revolution.
The Internet and the Web complement each other and both constitutes together the most powerful global information system ever created in history. These are approaches aim for support communication, knowledge creation, collaboration or social interaction. During the last few decades, our society and economy has experimented a huge change, which was sparked by “The Information and Communication Technologies Revolution” which would have never happened without the Internet and the Web.
Today, Technical University of Madrid has recognized the role the authors of these changes have played of the creation of information society through the investment as doctor “Honoris Causa” of Tim Berners-Lee, developer of the World Wide Web and Vinton G. Cerf known as “ the Internet’s Father”, The academic ceremony was attended by Javier Uceda, rector at the Technical University of Madrid, taking place in the Paraninfo of the Technical University of Madrid.
The professor of UPM, Juan Quemada commenced the ceremony with a reading of “the laudatio”. Also he addressed their great vision as engineers and researchers with capabilities for technical innovation and management, as well as, “a deep understanding about social and economical implications of technology deployment”.
To talk about World Wide Web is to talk about Prof. Tim Berners-Lee, the Developer of “W3”.A structure based on URL´s, HTTP and HTML, application development revolution, which now is turning its XX anniversary. Born in London (1955) Berners-Lee graduated in Physics from Queen´s College at Oxford University in 1976.
During its 20 years of existence, the Web has created a pillar over which a new dimension of human society has started to grow, “the network society”. Berners-Lee, currently continues his engagement in the development and tuning of the Web, not only as Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, but actively participating in the technical developments, for example in the Semantic Web or in the Linked Data Movement. He has received important awards, among them, “the Príncipe de Asturias Award for Science and Technology” in 2002.
Vinton G. Cerf, who is also a new Doctor “Honoris Causa” of UPM received the same award in this year. Born in Connecticut (1943). He graduated in Mathematics from Stanford University in 1965. He worked with Robert Kahn to invent the TCP/IP architecture, which separated routing and information transmission control into two separated layers and which became standard for Internet communication in the early eighties. In 2005, Vint and Bob received Presential Medal of Freedom.
Since 1982 Vinton Cerf has held many outstanding positions in companies or organizations such us the Vice-president of MCI, Vice-president for Technology and Senior Evangelist of CNRI, Chairman of the ICANN Board, Founding President of the Internet Society, Honorary Chairman of the IPv6 Forum and Vice-president for Technology and Senior Evangelist of Google where he remains now. During this period he has continued his engagement in the development and tuning in the development and tuning of the Internet Protocol (IPv4).