Part 4 and the conclusion of the interview with Vint Cerf, "Father of the Internet".
In the first part of the
interview, Cerf voiced his concern about the idea of trying to
centralize everything, and that a Washington appointed "czar" to assume
control over technology policy could be compared to the "War on Drugs"
or "War on Poverty". He feels it never quite works, but suggests a cabinet- level person, comparing this to his "evangelist" position at Google, wherein he does not make decisions. What he does is "lobby like crazy". Any comments on this premise? Marlene
By Edward Cone 2008-09-25
http://mobile.cioinsight.com/device/article.php?mid=4&CALL_URL=http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Expert-Voices/Vint-Cerf-Keeping-the-Internet-Healthy/
Should government play a role in building out infrastructure or is that best
left to the private sector alone?
Cerf: It sometimes takes steps
to illustrate the existence of a market to motivate the business sector. In the
late 1980s, I asked the Federal Networking Council for permission to put a
commercial electronic mail system up on the Internet. My motivation, in part, was
to allow commercial traffic to flow on the government-sponsored backbone as a
way of demonstrating to the business sector that there might be a market that
[businesses] should invest in.
Getting rid of
that barrier created an opportunity for commercial Internet service without
having to build the backbone. Once that market was demonstrated, it didn’t take long before the
government said: Gee, we don’t
need our government-sponsored backbone anymore, because everybody can buy
commercial service.
With
Google unveiling its Android operating system to challenge the iPhone, I’m reminded ofJonathan
Zittrain’s thoughts on “generative” technologies, open platforms that allow people to tinker and innovate, versus closed or tightly
controlled platforms like the iPhone. What kind of phone are you carrying, and
what does it say about you?
Cerf: I use a RIM BlackBerry. I’m anticipating the use of
an iPhone or something like it. What I’m eager for is a phone that runs the Android
operating system, because of the openness of the design. It’s the evolving flexibility
of mobile platforms that’s so critical.
One can understand
some of the decision-making that went on at Apple when preparing the iPhone.
A closed device
has the benefit that people can’t
make changes to it that may cause it to stop working.
The counterpoint
is that almost every information technology I can think of, as it becomes more
useful and competitors arise, leads to demands from users that interoperability
is paramount. In the case of the Internet, the TCP/IP protocols turned out to
be demanded by the buyers of new equipment, so that they wouldn’t be locked into any
particular manufacturer. So standardization has this wonderful benefit of
leading to interoperability, and it also creates a platform on top of which new
innovations can happen. But there’s this tension between differentiation and
interworking that repeats itself over and over again as time goes on.
What do you see
the Internet
- and
the society around it - looking like in 20 or 50 years?
Cerf: Looking ahead, we can say
several things. There will be substantially more connectivity available. No
matter where you are, you will have access to this online facility. That turns
out to be very important, because the cloud computing notion has utility only
if you can get access to it whenever you need it, in the capacity that you need
it. I see a lot of utility in cloud computing, and I anticipate that it will be
increasingly available.
Another change I’m pretty sure will happen
over the course of the next 20 to 50 years is the way we interact with these
online systems, or even with local ones. Today, it’s keyboards and mice, but I
expect interactions,
conversational
interactions, gestural interactions, to be normal. I may be personally instrumented in
some ways, so that my locale is known, or at least my devices know where I am.
That way, my questions can be related to this information, something like,
Where is the nearest restaurant?
I expect to see
much more interesting interactions, including the possibility of haptic
interactions: touch. Not just touch screens, but the ability to remotely
interact with things. Little robots, for example, that are instantiations of
you and are remotely operated, giving you what is called telepresence. It’s a step well beyond the
kind of video telepresence we are accustomed to seeing today.
This image of little robots is different from the typical autonomous robot you see in the artificial intelligence world. It could be sitting in a conference room, representing me, not autonomously, but allowing me to be in more than one place at the same time. They could move around, interact with things, talk to people, see like everyone else can.
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