Kahn’s co-winner and partner in developing the TCP/IP protocol that makes Internet traffic possible is Vincent Cerf, now a vice-president of Google. He wore a Google Glass Internet micro-computer.

“The significance is not the winning. The significance is the existence of the prize at all, especially with Her Majesty’s name attached to it. It elevates engineering to the same level of visibility and recognition as the Nobel Prizes,” Cerf said.

Both men say their satisfaction comes from the broad use of the Internet and the fact that their basic technical architecture still underpins it.

But they acknowledge the privacy and security issues the Internet has created, highlighted most recently by revelations about U.S. government surveillance programs designed to fight terrorism.

“We are still in the middle of this rapid evolution of the Internet and its applications. And we are going to have to learn, as a society, which things are acceptable and which things are not, what we should prohibit, and what things we should punish people for doing,” Cerf said.

“Those are not tensions that are just easily resolved - check the box and proceed this way or that way. They require constant attention, especially in democratic societies,” Kahn said.

Kahn says technologies always have had what he calls “plusses and minuses,” and the Internet is no different. But he also says that even after 40 years, there is no foreseeable end to the demand for the technology he and his co-winners developed.