Vint Cerf Reflects On The Last 60 Years (computerworld.com)

Computerworld celebrated its 50th anniversary by interviewing Vinton Cerf. The 73-year-old "father of the internet" remembers reading the early issues of the magazine, and reflects on how much things have changed since he gained access to computers at UCLA in 1960, "the beginning of my love affair with computing." I worry 100 years from now our descendants may not know much about us or be able to read our emails or tweets or documents because nobody saved them or the software you need to read them won't exist anymore. It's a huge issue. I have files of text that were written 20 years ago in WordPerfect, except I don't have WordPerfect running anywhere...

Q: Do you think [creating the internet] was your greatest accomplishment?

No. Getting it turned on was a big deal. Keeping it running for the last some odd years was an even bigger deal. Protecting it from hostile governments that want to shut it down and supporting new applications at a higher capacity are all evolutions. The evolution continues... I don't know if I can point to anything and say that's the biggest accomplishment. It's one big climb up the mountain.
Looking ahead to a future filled with AI, Cerf says "I worry about turning over too much autonomous authority to a piece of software," though he's not overly concerned, "not like Stephen Hawking or Elon Musk, who are alarmists about artificial intelligence. Every time you use Google search or self-driving cars, you're using A.I. These are all assistive technologies and I suspect this is how it will be used."

He also acknowledges that "I probably don't have another 50 years left, unless Ray Kurzweil's predictions come true, and I can upload my consciousness into a computer."

Comments

Vint, your vanity is comical.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vint said : "I worry 100 years from now our descendants may not know much about us or be able to read our emails or tweets or documents because nobody saved them or the software you need to read them won't exist anymore. It's a huge issue."

Most people are not going to have even the slightest interest in such stuff.
The sad truth is that when you die, life will go on without you.

Here's a poem Vint needs to read, after he takes a couple of Xanax chased with
some 18 year old Macallan to soothe his por little ego.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

                                                      - Percy Shelley

Re:Vint, your vanity is comical.

[Anonymous Coward]

Vint said : "I worry 100 years from now our descendants may not know much about us or be able to read our emails or tweets or documents because nobody saved them or the software you need to read them won't exist anymore. It's a huge issue."
He is not talking about himself.
It's about being left with a pile of unreadable historical documents in general. None.
No papers left for historical research.
No poems left for you to refer to.
Got it ?

Re:Vint, your vanity is comical.

[Wootery]

the crap IPv6 design on the world, arguably one of the most expensive blunders in the history of technology

Am I missing a /s?

The Internet has a short attention span

[Anonymous Coward]

I worry 100 years from now our descendants may not know much about us or be able to read our emails or tweets or documents because nobody saved them or the software you need to read them won't exist anymore.

Back in the '90s when I was new to the web, I built up a large collection of bookmarks. About five years later I went through them. A quarter of the links were down and most of them were too old for the Internet Archive to have saved them. The sites are gone forever.

In the 1990s everybody knew that the Palestinians were a recently manufactured terrorist organization with no legal right to Palestine. When the Palestinians attacked Israel in 2000 they put their propaganda online on well produced websites like Indymedia, Electronic Intifada, and later the Daily Kos. Israel didn't. Now the most basic information about the conflict that everybody knew 20 years ago is difficult to find online.

Wikipedia is scrubbing information that conflicts the political agenda of the administrators who run the site, and they ban anyone who tries to keep the encyclopedia neutral. Their excuse is that everything in life is political, but it is not okay for their political opponents to try to do it. Their political opponents are not even allowed to use Wikipedia. They will ban you if your account has the same name as a Twitter profile that mentions reading Breitbart.

The Internet Archive has been deleting old books from their archive because they don't like the politics of the author. It is starting with white supremacists. It will not end with white supremacists.