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Thursday 4 December 2008

The future of the internet

A chat with the man who invented the internet

Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the Web, looks to the stars

A mathematician by training and a computer scientist by vocation, he now devotes much of his time to explaining why it all matters, and what it all means; since 2005 he has been Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist (he asked for the title ‘Archduke’ first, before the unfortunate precedent of Sarajevo, 1914, was pointed out to him). It is a role that suits both his countenance — fastidiously turned-out wizard, with a twinkle in his eye — and his unusual talent for explaining in layman’s terms and with infectious enthusiasm the thing he helped to invent.

As a scientist, Cerf’s genius was to see the potential of the so-called ‘packet switching’ system of sending data along shared links to enable computers to talk to one another at high speed — initially to solve the US military’s communications problems. Many would set the date of the internet’s invention as 22 November 1977, the day when one such ‘packet’ travelled 88,000 miles across three networks (the US Defense Department’s Arpanet, the Packet Radio Network and the Atlantic Packet Satellite network).

‘There wasn’t a eureka moment,’ Cerf says, ‘a sudden hallucination or vision.’ Instead, he identifies an earlier period of dynamic thinking at Stanford in 1973: ‘How could we make something that was very, very flexible, expandable, future-proof and everything else? Within about six months we figured out what is today’s architecture, the basics, and in that sense there was an ah-ha [moment]: “I see how it’s solved this problem, I see how it’s solved it in a very, very general way.”’

But the real eye-opener came much, much later, in 1988, at an internet show. ‘I recall I went to a booth from [the technology company] Cisco, and I said: “How much do these things cost?” He said, “Well, maybe a quarter of a million of dollars.” I remember thinking that there was a real market for this technology and it can’t be just the academics. So I realised, literally at that moment — “My God, we can do something to create an economic engine. Because if we don’t, the internet won’t be available to the general public.” I resolved that day to start lobbying the US government to allow commercial traffic to flow over government-sponsored back-up.’ The following year, the internet became fully commercial — which is why, as you read this, your teenage son is in his bedroom on Bebo or Facebook, your husband is checking a cricket statistic online and your best friend wants an iPhone for Christmas.

More articles from: Matthew d'Ancona | this section

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