SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE

Only in Dalkey can it happen that we got to see and hear two of the world’s greatest inventors. Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Jimmy Wales at the annual Dalkey Book Festival which brings even more crowds to this popular seaside village during its four day feast of books and writing from 18^th to the 21^st June.

This year’s festival includes authors Salman Rushdie, Sebastian Faulks, Katriona O’ Sullivan, Anne Enright and Jeanine Cummins.  There are writing workshops for adults with Sarah Webb and Dave Rudden hosting ones for kids.

There is something for everyone in the festival as writers, economists and experts, journalists, commentators and great thinkers gather to explore and debate the state of the world we live in.

We had the great privilege to see and hear the incredible Sir Tim Berners- Lee, one of the greatest inventors in the world who created the World Wide Web and decided that the internet it should be free and available to everyone in the world.  At 71 years of age he talked of his goal that it will reach the remaining 20% of people mostly in remote parts of Africa and poorer countries and help to improve their lives.  He was interviewed by journalist Mark Little in the new big marquee overlooking the sea in the school grounds of Loreto Dalkey.

A fascinating and self- effacing man , he spoke of his relaxed childhood in England  growing up with his mathematician parents who encouraged him enquire and explore and how he would build thing out of broken transistors and bits of old televisions. Finding himself eventually in Oxford much to his surprise and then CERN in Switzerland where he began to develop this invention that would transform the world insisting that CERN would agree to it being free having no commercial reward. 

His invention has changed our world beyond recognition and although being used and adapted by some bad players, Berners -Lee still believes we have the power to change the web for the better. We were awed to be in the presence of such an intelligent, kind good man. 

Afterwards we had dinner in one of our favourite restaurants Nova before joining the festival throngs in Finnegan’s pub.

Saturday the sun shone and we were back in the Marquee again for another memorable event.  Jimmy Wales, the American inventor of Wikipedia was being interviewed by scientist Luke O’ Neill.

 A second day with another great mind who wanted to open the world to free knowledge and information for ordinary people, with experts and researchers putting up information on all kinds of topics for users to discover and also enabling them to add to the information and update it as a host of Wikipeediars from all over the world continually add and check it.

As a writer I find it a huge resource for researching books and Jimmy explained how it is crowd funded and crowd sourced.  They do ask at times for a very small donation but it is totally optional for people if they want to do so. It was incredible to see that Jimmy Wales has a similar mindset and goals as to Sir Tim Berners- Lee to continue working for the good of mankind unlike so many others.

Thank you so much to David McWilliams and his wife Sian Smyth and the Dalkey Book Festival team for giving us the incredible opportunity and privilege to hear these two great men speak.

JIMMY WALES OF WIKIPEDIA