Vint Cerf is one of the founding fathers of the Web, being one of the men who worked on ARPAnet, the predecessor to the Internet. So when he states that the Internet still has a long way to go before it reaches its true potential, you have to stop and listen.

Writing for The Guardian, Cerf first talks about how young the Internet is, with the first three university networks connected together only 30 years ago. In 1989, the Internet became commercially accessible and it was still a decade later that it became a widespread phenomenon.

He then talks about how despite its bad side, the Internet has changed the world in ways we can, and maybe not yet fully, understand. The Web has bred creativity and information availability, has changed the way we do business, and overall increased innovation by a huge margin.

But we’re still just at the beginning, with Cerf claiming that the potential of the Internet is still not known. About one-fifth of the world’s population is currently online, and although that accounts for about 1.4 billion people, it means the vast majority of the world still has no access to the Internet.

Vint Cerf thinks that mobile Internet connections will be the next stage of evolution. With 80% of the world’s population in range of a mobile network, it is likely that many new users will experience the Web for the first time via their phone.

At this moment in time, the bulk of human knowledge is stored offline, but as more and more people become connected, that will change. As will the problems of language, with automatic translation tools bringing people from every part of the world closer together.

Cerf finishes his article by claiming to be more optimistic about the Internet and its future possibilities than ever before. In the same way that the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee thinks that there is much more to come, so does Cerf.

While some may worry about the short-term social effects of the Web, the long-term view is one of communication, innovation, and making the world a much smaller place than it was even 30 years ago. And that’s surely got to be a good thing for the human race.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 5:53 pm under Internet, Opinion, Technology.  Print This Post

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