On the film and musical montage section of the OC
The one thing I captured from the film and music montage section of the opening ceremonies was this:
Everything we yanks started, and then got tired of, the British picked up and turned into a bigger success and reinvigorated it. Sitcoms (The Office?), soap operas (they invented the idea that one could go prime time), war movies, sports movies, rock and roll (remember, in America, the music died in February of 1959, and everybody at the time expected it to stay dead), and much more*. They didn't invent the art forms, but they turned them into something that can last and continue to be built upon where-as the Americans burn out an idea almost instantly and tire of it thinking there's nothing more to do.
Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent the internet, but he invented a technique that reinvigorated it in a way that nobody could ignore. And THAT is why he was there - what he did to internet technology was exactly what each of the British film and music groups represented in that section had done to the genres of American pop music they developed from.
*(game shows, for example, though the montage didn't include that genre)
[This is distinctive from the Canadian presentation 2 1/2 years ago, where the overall expression was "you know all that stuff you like? well, some of that is actually us, thank you very much...]
Everything we yanks started, and then got tired of, the British picked up and turned into a bigger success and reinvigorated it. Sitcoms (The Office?), soap operas (they invented the idea that one could go prime time), war movies, sports movies, rock and roll (remember, in America, the music died in February of 1959, and everybody at the time expected it to stay dead), and much more*. They didn't invent the art forms, but they turned them into something that can last and continue to be built upon where-as the Americans burn out an idea almost instantly and tire of it thinking there's nothing more to do.
Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent the internet, but he invented a technique that reinvigorated it in a way that nobody could ignore. And THAT is why he was there - what he did to internet technology was exactly what each of the British film and music groups represented in that section had done to the genres of American pop music they developed from.
*(game shows, for example, though the montage didn't include that genre)
[This is distinctive from the Canadian presentation 2 1/2 years ago, where the overall expression was "you know all that stuff you like? well, some of that is actually us, thank you very much...]