Vinton Cerf
Vinton Cerf
Vinton Gray Cerf ForMemRS,is an American Internet pioneer, who is recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet", sharing this title with TCP/IP co-inventor Bob Kahn and packet switching inventors Paul Baran and Donald Davies, among others. His contributions have been acknowledged and lauded, repeatedly, with honorary degrees and awards that include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Marconi Prize and membership in the National Academy of Engineering...
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth23 June 1943
CityNew Haven, CT
The Internet reflects the societies in which we live, and so the content on the Net and some of the abuses that you see on the Net are reflections of that.
Of course, I've done small company things, too, but most of them have been nonprofit organizations, such as the Internet Society, and I'm on the board of a number of small companies.
I started thinking about the past 25 years as the Internet evolved, and I thought, 'Gee, what should we be doing now so that in another 25 years, we are ready for whatever's coming?'
Allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success.
It took 30 years to get the Internet to where we are now. Thirty years from now, we have to assume there will be colonies on the moon, colonies on Mars and other planets and research stations all over.
This is not a new interest for me, ... It's just that I've spent the last decade or so working more on basic Internet infrastructure evolution at MCI. But I've been increasingly interested in focusing back on the application level, higher layer stuff. So this is a wonderful opportunity to pursue that.
It's Chief Internet Evangelist, which suggests I should go from three-piece suits to some sort of ecclesiastical robes.
There are things that have excited me to no end, and it's the sharing of knowledge that has come about on the network, and I see at an increasing pace this ability to share what we know.
I'm still a strong proponent of getting IPv6 rolled out,
People need to be exposed to what the various problems are in various parts of the business. And you can become isolated from that in a large company.
If you need to understand it to make policy, you should turn first to people who are scientists and engineers for factual information.
I expect that the entertainment industry will have gone through its own convulsion in the same way the telecom industry will have gone through its.
So one of the most important things we can do in the industry is make sure that the threat of cyberattacks is minimized as much as possible.
Of course, you do have to get accustomed to being satisfied a little bit at second-hand by people who actually do some of the key work.