Every year, Time magazine puts out an issue titled Person of the Year, that states the editors’ opinion of who or what was the most consequential force of the previous year. Many people seem to think that it implies favoritism, which is completely wrong. It means what or who has made the most difference in America and, I guess, the world at large. The person I would nominate for Person of the 21st Century, not only a year, is Tim Berners-Lee.

Al Gore has been credited with saying that he “invented the Internet”, which, in fact, he never said. There were several people who really did invent the internet, which actually started as a military project. The one that I would call the father of today’s internet is Tim Berners-Lee. The thing that makes the internet easily navigable without having to know coding is the hyperlink. These blue letters are a hyperlink. Berners-Lee made the World Wide Web navigable to non-nerds by inventing the hyperlink. The internet and the World Wide Web are not the same thing. In fact, as compared with the entirety of the internet, the Web is a small percentage of the internet.

Without the invention of hypertext (same as hyperlinks) and HTML (hypertext markup language) used to code it, the internet would be of use to business and science, but not to the average Joe or Jane. Back in 1995 when I rented a computer and used the Web for the first time, the whole thing was in its infancy.

I used to be a real computer fanatic. I was a regular at a shop which used to be off Cambridge St. near Webster Square in Worcester. It later moved to Shrewsbury opposite the old Spag’s, and finally closed shop about five years ago. It was fun back then. The computers weren’t all that fast, certainly not by today’s standards, but you could tinker with them and customize them. And actually save some money by doing so, since the price of a computer back then was in the thousands of dollars. As time has gone by, and Moore’s Law has worked its magic, the price of a computer has come way down and, in many cases, it’s just better to buy a new computer rather than repair an old one. Which I actually did a couple of months ago, when my computer wouldn’t stop crashing. The only thing is, unless you have backed up your files, when you lose a computer you lose all your files. Which I did, but many of them are in my phone as well.

Which brings me to my next topic, the cell phone. I used to have a scanner in my apartment, and I could listen in on people’s cell phone calls, back when they were analog. Now they are all digital and ubiquitous as horse dung. In fact, sometimes I find horse dung to be of more value, especially if I see somebody, like I saw the other day, riding a bicycle while texting. A nice horse patty might have found its way to his cell phone, knocking it out of his hand. No, just kidding, that might cause him to lose control of the bike. I digress. Anyway, I don’t bother customizing computers any more. It has become a parasitic nuisance. Cell phones, obnoxious web sites, obnoxious people using cell phones and websites. It all comes down to human nature, in the end. Any tool that can be used for good can also be used to do harm.

Which brings me back to Tim Berners-Lee. Without him, there would not have been a World Wide Web. Without the Web, there would be no laptops or digital cell phones. Or divisive, fiction-filled partisan web sites which many people trust more than they trust the mainstream media. In fact, the “MSM” is used as a derisive term by conservatives, mainly. There are charlatans on both sides, witness Bernie Sanders’ unsuccessful bid for the presidency, but by far, most of the partisan parasites are on the right. We all know their names. They are largely responsible for the elevation of Donald Trump and the debasement of our political process. Thanks, Tim. You should have been a carpenter.