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Comment by Posibyte | Hacker News Reader

This absolutely had my inner geek exploding in giddiness. It was one thing for the London Olympics to recognize him as a key part of the modern era, but to also place the (same model?) NeXT Cube next to him just topped it off. This made it memorable for me.

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It made me very, very happy to see Tim there.

A lot of the media in the UK is very populist and anti-intellectual, celebrating questionable people (pop stars et al.) for their less than desirable achievements.

So it was good to see Tim being given such a platform celebrating his input into the world.

I don't think that's just a UK problem...

That's why Danny Boyle did such a good job. If the British media had been in charge of the ceremony in could have very easily been a cringeworthy ordeal featuring a cast of z-list celebrities dancing about. The inclusion of Tim Berners-Lee and the NHS section were excellent ideas.

I thought the NHS section was stupid. You might as well as had bin men.

NHS is our largest employer (5th in the world apparently, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786 - c.5.8% of the working population when coupled with data here http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/f...) and, despite it's failings, is an area the UK have led in (nationalised health care), and an important element of nearly everyone in the UKs life at one time or another.

Refuse collection is worthy and widespread but not really something the UK leads in I feel nor would it likely provide the visuals the designer was aiming for ...

I know the NHS is a huge sacred cow and is fetishised here in the UK, but I'm not sure the rest of the world would care how we pay our doctors and nurses.

If you don't think bin men are important, try living in Naples.

Excellent attention to detail by Danny Boyle. They could have had him on any old PC and 90% of the audience wouldn't have noticed.

http://i.imgur.com/bthc3.jpg

I noticed that too. As the house was lifting, I pointed out that the computer should be a next cube. If not, they did it wrong.

I realised that the whole event was probably going to be interesting when they had an engineer reading Shakespeare at the start.

NB My personal favourite was the NHS/GOSH/kids-fiction section.

Tim sent this tweet https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/228960085672599552

pretty much right at the moment he was revealed, sadly it wasn't from the computer he was using (it was from his iPhone) but a nice touch!

Also a wonder of the modern world: He got phone reception in that heavily crowded stadium.

It should have been an Acorn Archimedes, at CERN all those years ago.

They used Archimedes at CERN? Truly one of the greatest computers of all time.

The actual computer he used to create the web was a Next Cube, so that was more historically accurate.

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