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Interview
3 July 2016 2.00 h

'The internet grows100% every year'

The inventor of network protocols was in Barcelona to receive an honorary degree from the Ramon Llull university

Did you ever imag­ine that the In­ter­net would have its cur­rent global reach?
We could not have known how it would evolve. And even less imag­ine that it would be­come a world­wide phe­nom­e­non. At that time, at the be­gin­ning of the 1970s, we were pro­gram­mers. We were look­ing for a global trans­mis­sion sys­tem for di­verse types of data to com­put­ers all over the world. It was a com­mis­sion from the US De­fense De­part­ment. The net­work was later com­mer­cialised, with in­vest­ment was put into de­vel­op­ment, into equip­ment... firms saw a busi­ness op­por­tu­nity.
How long did it take?
From 1973 to 1983 we did test­ing. We were not given per­mis­sion until 1989; they did not take us se­ri­ously. In San Diego there is a lot of surf­ing and as it was about surf­ing the net­work, we wanted to call the com­pany 'Surf'. There was a re­search lab­o­ra­tory using that acronym and so we changed it to my sur­name: 'Cerf Com­pany'. But in re­al­ity we wanted to be called, Cal­i­for­nia Ed­u­ca­tional Re­serch Foun­da­tion, re­sem­bling my sur­name.
Was that when the boom came along?
In 1991, www do­main names were cre­ated, but no one paid any at­ten­tion. Two young men in the na­tional su­per­com­put­ing cen­tre de­signed the browser and also cre­ated a web­page with text and pho­tographs. They were crazy, they said. Then we cre­ated a mo­saic to input all the in­for­ma­tion we might want, with Marc An­dreessen, the co-founder of Netscape. In 1995, it was re­leased to the pub­lic and every­one went crazy when they saw the place­hold­ers for the in­for­ma­tion. That is how web­pages are made now. We went to Sil­i­con Val­ley to cre­ate email... At the turn of the cen­tury, in­vest­ment began to pour in.
Where are we now?
The in­ter­net is still grow­ing 100% every year. But it de­pends on where you live. In China they are slow­ing it down. India is quickly wak­ing up to it... The rest of the world is be­com­ing con­nected through seven bil­lion mo­bile phones. In the West, ac­cess is al­most uni­ver­sal. But that's not the case in poor coun­tries. In­ter­net will be­come an in­di­ca­tor of the level of wel­fare.
When will every­one have ac­cess to it?
In 2020, be­tween 80% and 90% of the world pop­u­la­tion will have ac­cess to the In­ter­net, whether it be by satel­lite or through bat­ter­ies.
What will they do with it?
What­ever takes their fancy. It might be cars that park them­selves, ap­pli­ca­tions for health, sen­sors that help you out…
And cen­sor­ship?
It's the worst part of it. There are states like China that want to con­trol in­for­ma­tion, and the spirit of the net is pre­cisely that in­for­ma­tion cir­cu­lates with­out any bar­ri­ers. Where the in­ter­net is con­cerned there is a bit of every­thing: cer­tain­ties and big mis­takes. Cred­i­bil­ity is a prob­lem, I have to admit. But the net is a medium, it does not dis­tin­guish be­tween truth and lies.
Is this dis­tinc­tion a chal­lenge the in­ter­net is fac­ing?
And de­ci­pher­ing whether in­for­ma­tion or data is cor­rect or false. But this task does not de­pend on the cre­ators of the net or the providers of brows­ing ser­vices, but rather it is the com­mon re­spon­si­bil­ity of the whole of so­ci­ety. Of all of us who are using it now. We show chil­dren how to be­have cor­rectly and we show them what is good and what isn't, and to dis­tin­guish be­tween in­for­ma­tion and risk. Well, we also need to apply this ed­u­ca­tional spirit.
Truth used to be found in books, where is it now?
There are also badly writ­ten books and bad in­for­ma­tion that can be well pre­sented! Al­bert Ein­stein was also thought to be wrong for years... and then he opened our eyes to the world of sci­ence. There is much more knowl­edge than we are ca­pa­ble of know­ing. The Uni­verse is there to be dis­cov­ered and it is not stand­ing still. It lives through trans­for­ma­tion. In­for­ma­tion is also alive.
Has the In­ter­net of Things ar­rived? Are we ready for it?
Ab­solutely not, be­cause we are ge­net­i­cally pre­pared for other ac­tiv­i­ties. But we'll as­sim­i­late it be­cause it helps us to do those ac­tiv­i­ties.
Will tech­nol­ogy end up get­ting the best of us?
It's an­other chal­lenge for the in­ter­net. We need to pre­pare de­vices or ob­jects so that tech­nol­ogy does not come to dom­i­nate human knowl­edge.
It al­ready does. Google knows every­thing about us.
But it is not only in­ter­net com­pa­nies that have in­for­ma­tion about us, it is also those that pro­vide elec­tric­ity, gas, water... And do they use this in­for­ma­tion for bad? The in­ter­net is not the only dan­ger. I admit that we need to im­prove pri­vacy, se­cu­rity and trust­wor­thi­ness.
Shouldn't net­works for dis­trib­ut­ing tech­nol­ogy be pub­lic, like water or elec­tric­ity?
Being pub­lic does not guar­an­tee they work bet­ter. Per­haps we need more guar­an­tees of ac­cess and more so­cial rates. Yet, these ser­vices are not so de­mo­c­ra­tic, as they tend to be mo­nop­o­lies.

THEORY AND PRACTICE

Every time we connect to the internet we should spare a thought for Cerf. This US engineer and technologist invented the basic network architecture, email and the way to create websites, all due to a search to find a way of interconnecting computers. He was in Barcelona to receive an honorary degree from the Universitat Ramon Llull at the bidding of the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Enginyeria Electrònica i Informàtica La Salle, as part of the main events in the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Escola de Telecomunicacions.

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