Matthew Dancona

A chat with the man who invented the internet

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

Imagine actually meeting Thomas Edison, or the Wright Brothers, or Newton, or Archimedes, or whichever Sumerian it was who invented the wheel in the fifth millennium bc. That, when you think about it, is what it’s like to have a conversation with Vint Cerf. Few people in the history of humanity can say with confidence that they invented or discovered something that has changed the trajectory of the species, but this genial Connecticut-born 64-year-old is among their number.

Cerf is none other than the joint Father of the Internet (Robert E. Kahn being the other proud parent), which means that if you are reading this article on the Spectator website, or plan to send any emails today, or expect to use Google, or order a book on Amazon, you are doing so thanks to him. And it is at the London offices of Google that we meet, the bearded Cerf cutting a dash in his three-piece suit amid the dressed-down web dudes who are all, in a sense, his technological grandchildren.

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.

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