Internet Society Internet Hall of Fame 2017 Inductees, 18 Sep 2017

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From YouTube: Internet Hall of Fame 2017 - Alan Emtage

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Alan Emtage - Innovator Inductee in the Internet Hall of Fame 2017 receives his award at UCLA, September 18 2017.

https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductees/alan-emtage

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Now we have this next person to thank for making things online easier to find.. He conceived of and implemented the world's.

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First, internet search engine, pioneering many of the techniques that our search, engines,, great and small, use today.

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Mr. alan emtage.

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Thank you everybody., as you can see,. I made it here from last night.

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We weren't diverted.

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I would like to thank the internet society..

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I am honored and humbled by this honor.

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I'm told by the secretary that.

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I am the first barbadian and the first person.

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From the caribbean to receive -- be an inductee into the hall of fame.

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So, I'm proud of that.

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As I look across the assembled crowd here, tonight,.

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It's gratifying to see how diverse this is,.

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Particularly, and how that has changed over the last 30 years.

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There are a couple things I would just like to say.

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We are in a --.

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The internet nowadays people think of as being this incredibly competitive.

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And commercial market.

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for those of us who worked on it of 30 years ago.

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And for whom commercial activity was actually forbidden,.

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This is quite a change and.

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While the spirit of altruism still continues.

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To exist on the internet, -- much of the internet works.

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On open-source software, which is contributed.

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Freely by programmers and engineers across the world.

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That spirit of altruism started very early on.

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And it is, well,.

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Without blowing my own horn,, the internet, as we know it today, wouldn't exist.

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Were it not for the fact that.

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A lot of the organizations and individuals who worked on it back then freely allowed.

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The fruit of their work to be distributed for free.

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So cern owned the world wide web,.

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Released that software into the public domain.

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Wais, brewster kahle --, that was tim berners-lee -- brewster kahle did a similar thing.

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With thinking machines and wais, mark mccahill and gopher.

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and ourselves,, we -- I'll read a little a story here. --.

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I had a conversation with vint cerf,, probably 30 years ago, and he jokingly said to me.

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Why don't you patent the techniques that you're using.

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In archie for the search engine? and we thought about it., we thought about it long and hard. and we decided.

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That to do so would sort of strangle the baby in the crib --.

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That it would restrict the ability of people.

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To use what we had learned and to expand on it.

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So the primary question I get is: why am I not a billionaire and I'm quite happy not to be a billionaire.? That's fine with me., but it was done in the spirit of cooperation and realizing that.

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While we were working on something that was big and was gonna change the world,, I don't think anybody back then really knew how much.

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It was going to change and how profound a change it was going to be.

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one, er,, two people, I'd like to mention here and thank.

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For me, being here, -- one is my business partner back then.

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My boss and business partner was peter deutsch who did a lot of work to bring archie into the wider world.

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And somebody else that a lot of the old-timers here will remember and who was instrumental.

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In what we call the user services layer of the internet.

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When I first got to the ietf back in 1991,,.

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It was just a lot of engineers.

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And there wasn't a lot of attention paid to the users, and that person would be joyce reynolds.

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Joyce reynolds,, who is unfortunately no longer with us,.

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Worked hand-in-hand with jon postel, and really nurtured the the user services group.

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In the ietf, and she has a huge hand.

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In the internet that we know and love today.

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So I really would like to acknowledge her., so thank you., I'm most honored.

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