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Tech

The Internet Hall of Fame Isn't Inducting the Famous People on the Internet

Where are Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, MySpace Tom?
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired

The 33 pioneers and innovators who will be inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame this year were announced today, and the initial reaction is more or less… “who?” There aren’t a lot of internet stars on the list. In fact, save a few famous names, you probably haven't heard of many of them.

What gives? Well, the Internet Society, the nonprofit that established the Internet Hall of Fame last year, is interested in the people interested in keeping the web a free, open, global force for good—following the Society's mission of "promoting the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world."

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In that altruistic vein, the late Aaron Swartz, the much-beloved privacy and information hacktivist, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this year. So will the founders of the Free Software Foundation (Richard Stallman), Electronic Frontier Foundation (John Perry Barlow), and Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales.

Last year, the 32 inductees were the genius minds behind inventing the internet: "fathers of the internet" Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn, who invented the TCP/IP protocol; Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web; and oddly, Al Gore, who claimed to invent the internet. Oh, and Ray Tomlinson, who came up with the idea for electronic mail and decided we should use the @ sign in email addresses.

This year’s list takes the natural next step, honoring the people that expanded the internet throughout the globe. Leading that group is J.C.R Licklider, who envisioned a worldwide computer network well before it was built. He’s joined by the pioneers who helped bring the internet to Thailand, Japan, the Netherlands, Africa, Sri Lanka, Southern Africa, Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and China.

That’s really nice, but notably missing from this Internet Hall of Fame are, you know, the famous people on the internet. The people behind the biggest web companies in the world. The people getting rich off the internet. Where are Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Peter Thiel, Bill Gates? What about MySpace Tom?!

The Internet Society also has yet to recognize any of the innovators in the thriving content industry and social networking space—the fun stuff on the internet. The men and women (well, men) that brought us YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Hulu, Netflix, Napster and Megavideo will not be receiving this particular honor. These stars will have to be content with Webby Awards—and legacies that will go down in history.

Last year’s list included thought-leaders like the Mozilla Foundation's Mitchell Baker, who helped spearhead open source applications; Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux open source operating system; and Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame (who also built Craig Connects, a social change project). But this year's list makes no mention of celebrity hacktivists, like moot of 4chan’s “moot”, Anonymous, or Reddit's Alexis Ohanian. (Note: The Internet Hall of Fame’s Advisory Board only reviews nominees that were, well, nominated, which anyone can be. So if you feel strongly someone should be considered, it's partially on you.)

A Modern Primate blog post analogized the Internet Hall of Fame to a Baseball Hall of Fame with no players, "A Hall of Fame for team owners, managers, stadium architects, rule makers, bat designers, and the guy who first put a soft pretzel on a stick."

At the same time, players have to be retired to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and it's clear that Zuck and friends are far from calling it quits. Personally, I applaud the Internet Society for recognizing the folks behind Oz’s magic curtain—the ones that built the backbone of the internet, and more importantly, are fighting to keep it a democratic platform with the potential to revolutionize society, not just entertain it.