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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

‘People were denied access to the means to communicate, because all the media was under the control of a relatively small group, compared to the general population. Then the internet comes along and absolutely blew that up. If there is anything which I think is cool about the internet, it is that it blew up the absolute control of the media, to create a real honest-to-God, two-way contributory system.’ And it threatens hierarchies? ‘Oh, does it ever! It whacks them, absolutely flattens them.’

And what about all the rubbish and horror on the internet? Well, says its creator: if you hold a mirror up to humanity, you will see the cloven hoof as well as the halo. ‘Do you know that people print stuff on paper that is really offensive? Have you ever watched the television and watched something you felt had negative value? So each medium can clearly have worthless content, and it is the same on the internet.’

Not content with wiring up the world, Vint Cerf now wants to conquer the stars — or at least the solar system. His new project is to facilitate exploration of Mars by standardising communications in space, so that every new mission can benefit from information sent by the remnants of old ones. ‘The consequence of this over time is an interplanetary background which will support new missions, and that’s how the internet works. The standard is there to use any assets out there. We are ten years into this project and we have gone through four generations of design....Of course it’s exciting, going out into the universe, and I love science fiction. But as a pragmatist I want a hell of a lot more robotic explorations before we send people out there. So I am very excited about what we are doing right now.’

You get the feeling that he will succeed, too. Vint Cerf is the sort of man you could shoot the breeze with all day. But our audience is brought to a close by a phone call. And wouldn’t you know it? It’s Nasa holding on line one.

More articles from: Matthew d'Ancona | this section

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