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Our Take: Vint Cerf at the Southeast Venture Conference
Big Heavy Stuff
Posted by ExitEvent
Topic: Events
2.25.10
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Vint Cerf. Father of the Internet. You just can't go wrong with that. While most of the conference focused on the here and now and short term direction, Vint went longview, with a talk that started with ARPA in 1969 and ended with the Interplanetary Internet, which is real, and has to do with modifying the software of existing spacecraft and satellites for communication and interoperability.
Some of the takeaway: A significant amount of Internet use will soon be by those who use only a mobile device to access the Internet. This is going to change a lot of things, the very nature of how we disseminate the information, for one, and we're starting to see that now with touchscreen devices. Speech to text is the next logical step, and the transition is underway as we move away from the keyboard.
Vint updated us on things we knew about, like IPv6 and Internationalized top-level domain names, and things we maybe didn't, like sensor networks and smart grid. Sensor networks, by the way, look to be a huge opportunity for the reinvention of how the data is collected and evaluated. Especially where decisions are required on actionable information. You could see companies springing to life in the form of idea bulbs over the heads of the audience. Copious notes were taken.
My main takeaway was the the Internet is not a purpose-built network, like cable or phone, and is actually flexible in ways that we haven't even discovered yet. We already know this, sure. For example, YouTube wasn't possible until the need for video brought about the advances in broadband capability. What's cool is that because of this flexibility and adaptability, some ambiguity in design and feature-set may be a good thing when plotting that next great disruptive technology.
Finally, in the near term, the most important aspects of the web are going to be what they are today: security, privacy, and policy.
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