Tim Berners Lee never came across as large than life personality. I would say he had quite a profound impact on things. More than "larger than life" type Steve Jobs IMHO.

You're speaking of real history, not the watered down version that gets taught to school children.

Unfortunately, without concerted effort, the public will willfully reject an alternate history if it's more nuanced. Exhibit A, who invented the telephone?

That is a really bad example to use as there is no general agreement on the issue. The Italian government obviously has a biased opinion in wanting to credit one of their citizens(I’m actually confused if he was Italian or American because it said his invention was in New York).

I don’t know what skin in the game Canada has when they passed a resolution recognizing Bell Graham as the inventor.

Honestly to me it looks like there is not a clear answer. You can pick either of them you want, draw an abitrary line in the sand about what a ‘telephone’ really is and use that line to defend your choice.

Any rational argument on the topic will have to start with both parties agreeing on what a telephone is first and then looking at the two parties to see which invented their agreed definition.

There were other competing ideas to http and html. They were better but unfortunately lost out. Tim is incredibly lucky that what he wrote for his PhD unexpectedly took off - he is also a one hit wonder. Steve’s story is vastly different.

Yeah, I appreciate TBL, but I don’t think he can take credit for the web. The web picked his project as its nest, more than he did anything to conjure it.

It's also their mothers.

Masayoshi Son nearly destroyed his entire business during the dotcom crash, and was really only saved by his investment in Alibaba, an essentially state-owned technology company. It’s weird to frame his success in some “great man of history” terms when the only reason he’s still wealthy and powerful is because of his alliance with the world’s largest authoritarian regime?

... and they reach their great heights of monumentousness without help, learning, encouragement or support from useless people like caring mothers, fathers, teachers, and mentors /sarcasm

It's more Standord that Ivy Leagers.