[Chapter-delegates] FYI Vint and Bob's latest thoughts

[Charles Mok (gmail)]

It's an interesting read/video interview. Thank you for sharing. It
certainly brings back a lot of memories and soul searching for us who have
been working with or on the internet for a long time, and may have played a
part in the building of the infrastructure or services in different parts
of the world, and seeing the positive and negative changes. I feel much the
same way with the founders, and I have also thought of myself as a 'purist'
in many ways in my last 4+ decades on the Internet, and it was probably
really only in the last 10-15 years that I have started to feel like,
"Houston, we have a problem." Yes, the good definitely outweighs the bad, I
agree, but the more important issue we now face may be: how do we prevent
the Internet being "corrected" by those who may have their own selfish or
bad motivations, or simply do not understand it?

Charles


On Mon, Mar 25, 2024 at 10:11 AM Joly MacFie via Chapter-delegates <
chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

>
>> "I just hope that something like the internet will continue to be part of
>> the society that we live in and that maybe some, you know, in some distant
>> time, somebody will remember I had a tiny role to play in it," Cerf said.
>
>
> Pretty sure that "Internet" was capitalized!
>
> J
>
> On Mon, Mar 25, 2024 at 12:29 PM Dave Burstein via Chapter-delegates <
> chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> Founders of the internet reflect on their creation and why they have no
>> regrets over creating the digital world
>>
>> By Tony Dokoupil, Analisa Novak
>>
>> Updated on: March 19, 2024 / 11:35 AM EDT / CBS News
>>
>> In an era where the answers to the most random questions — like the
>> indoor land speed record or the Earth's weight — are just a few clicks
>> away, we often take for granted the colossal network that makes it all
>> possible: the internet. At the heart of this technological marvel are
>> pioneers such as Vint Cerf, Steve Crocker and Bob Kahn, whose
>> groundbreaking work has woven the fabric of the digital world we live in
>> today.
>>
>> Despite their monumental achievements, these innovators remain modest
>> about their contributions. "One of the big issues about the internet is
>> that most people don't really have a good idea of what it is," Kahn said.
>>
>> Their journey began with a simple, yet revolutionary, idea: developing
>> the technologies and software necessary to send data from one computer to
>> another, eventually reaching across the globe.
>>
>> "I don't think the internet is a physical thing. I think it's the
>> implementation of the internet protocols that's physical," Kahn said.
>>
>> "Bob is taking an interesting philosophical view of this," said Cerf.
>> "There are descriptions of how the thing is supposed to work and you have
>> to implement those descriptions in things called computers and routers and
>> things like that."
>>
>> "It's the description of how it's supposed to work that's important. So
>> you can keep building new things to work in new ways to make the internet
>> even more interesting," said Cerf.
>>
>> That's what allowed their early networks to blossom into a whole universe
>> of interconnected laptops and smartphones and speakers and headsets. All of
>> which changed the way we — and they — get things done.
>>
>> The astonishment never fades for Cerf, who finds incredible "all the
>> stuff that had to work" for a simple Google search to return results.
>>
>> The internet's origins trace back to a military tool — the ARPANET —
>> developed in collaboration with figures like Joseph Haughney, a retired
>> major in the U.S. Air Force who died last month. A precursor to the
>> internet, ARPANET was developed to help the military, sharply different
>> from from the internet's current role as a platform for socializing,
>> entertainment and community building.
>>
>> "We always had this technology that my dad would kind of wheel it in and
>> then show it to my mom, and no one really knew what it was," recalled
>> Haughney's daughter, Christine Haughney Dare-Bryan.
>>
>> As her father got older, Dare-Bryan, an editor at Inc. magazine, decided
>> to record his stories, building a podcast all about the founders of the
>> internet. She selected a term her father had previously used to label some
>> of these innovators for the podcast's name.
>>
>> "He called them these 'computer freaks.' He didn't want these computer
>> freaks coming on and kind of hurting or harming his beloved ARPANET. And
>> instead, we had something that was being used for, you know, socializing
>> and finding communities," said Dare-Bryan.
>>
>> But for all the ways their work has improved our lives — and there are a
>> lot of them — it's also introduced some challenges for privacy and personal
>> connections.
>>
>> The ease of spreading misinformation and disinformation has become a
>> significant concern. Cerf said he has no regrets and sees the internet's
>> misuse as a human issue, not a technological flaw. "It's their
>> responsibility," Cerf said.
>>
>> "I just hope that something like the internet will continue to be part of
>> the society that we live in and that maybe some, you know, in some distant
>> time, somebody will remember I had a tiny role to play in it," Cerf said.
>> _______________________________________________
>> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
>> to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society
>> Chapter Portal (AMS):
>> https://admin.internetsociety.org/622619/User/Login
>> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct:
>> https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/
>>
>
>
> --
> --------------------------------------
> Joly MacFie  +12185659365
> --------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
> to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society
> Chapter Portal (AMS):
> https://admin.internetsociety.org/622619/User/Login
> View the Internet Society Code of Conduct:
> https://www.internetsociety.org/become-a-member/code-of-conduct/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/private/chapter-delegates/attachments/20240325/cebc89b7/attachment.htm>