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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."
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."
The thing that was the most attractive was that you could create your own little world inside the computer, and it would do what you wanted it to do. I found that ultimately beguiling Something that would happen in a machine in one place caused something to happen thousands of miles away and that was very interesting, too.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
500 years from now, pre-2000 will be referred as the dark ages and post 2010 they have 10000x per year more pictures, news stories, personal posts and what have you than from years earlier.
if vint doesn't see this then.. well, maybe he should stop listening shitty futurologists and start looking at some historians.
basically... 500 years from now.. how many pictures of the eiffel tower in year 2010 do you think they will have access to? 10? 20? 30? or 1000 per day? either way, a hell of a lot more than from 1910. in color. in reasonable quality.
they will know what people wore. they will know what people listened. they will have the speeches recorded that both put people INTO THE FUCKING MOON and they have access to speeches about how there's a really great hot dog place in new york.
maybe this sounds pompous but really it's not - we just lived through the breakthrough into the computer era and in the past century the breakthrough to worldwide media - this is a once in the history of the world kind of an event that is such a watershed moment in perspective of HISTORY that he shouldn't be that much worried about people in the future knowing what happened here now - there's more books published than ever as well, in smaller quantities per printing - photobooks included.
also the way things have been going you now have BETTER access to 1995 data than you had in 2000. you now have much easier time running software from 1981 than you had in 2000 as well. he should be able to see that curve, but apparently has spent too much time with futurologists(who are ALL a bunch of fucking idiots and wankers and I still can't believe people give them money for giving shit predictions and being just generally full of shit and out of touch).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.