Retro Yakking

Mr Berners-Lee was kind enough to sign my hard drive,
with a hammer no less. What a guy! 

Yesterday, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s brand new website was launched in a lavish reception at Buckingham Palace attended by high-profile computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee. Our Royal correspondent, Harry Yack, managed to drag himself away from the cress butty table to grab a minute with the very man credited with the invention of the World Wide Web.

Sixty second interview with Tim Berners-Lee

Harry Yack: Mr. Berners-Lee, father of the World Wide Web, how was the Internet created?

Tim Berners-Lee: Some people found out how to hack televisions so you could do cool stuff with a remote control. Later, techies attached rats to the sticky-out bits of scart leads and discovered a new, more squidgylicious method of controlling the television set.

HY: Oh, that sounds tasty. Please do tell, how did the world operate before the Internet?

TBL: People used to communicate by writing on walls. The cache was cleared nightly by a man with graffiti remover paid for by the council.

HY: To all the potential, er, Internetters out there, how exactly do you use the Internet?

TBL: You mash buttons until something happens. A method pioneered on amusement arcade games in the nineties, it was successfully adapted by Netologists for use on the Internet, which went a long way to making it the effective communication tool it is today.

HY: Um, right. What do you think society has learned from the Internet?

TBL: I don’t know about society, but the Internet has made me realise how much I hate the apostrophe, soapbox forums and the word ‘elite’.

HY: What is the best thing you can buy on the Internet?

TBL: Remote controlled self-lighting candles, the discerning Dennis the Menace wannabe’s choice.

HY: Why do people use email?

TBL: Stamps taste a lot worse than they used to. What’s more, the new ones don’t seem to stick once you have licked them. I find that the computer monitor tastes better than both, so it’s no surprise that email has become more popular than its traditional cousin.

HY: That’s so true! Aw man! Finally, the Internet does not work for me. What am I doing wrong?

TBL: You forgot to plug it in.

HY: Moo.

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