Internet pioneer: Make my work obsolete
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Vint Cerf may be one of the most interesting men I have met in a long time. He can readily claim the title of an inventor of the Internet - having co-written the TCP/IP technology that makes the Internet run - yet he doesn't dwell on his role. Instead, he talks about the roles that others have played, which is what he did when he spoke to Carnegie Mellon University engineering students on Nov. 18.
The room was packed beyond capacity for a speaker whose most famous inventions were created before most of the attendees were born: the previously mentioned Internet protocol and MCI Mail. (Generally speaking, MCI Mail is the first real commercial email system.)
Yet, Mr. Cerf, clad in his trademark three-piece suit, wowed the crowd through a combination of confident discussion of engineering concepts and sophisticated but subtle humor that broke up the audience at several points in his lecture.
In a world of geeky young turks who run around in T-shirts and are often inept at social graces, Mr. Cerf shows you don't have to be young, nor be badly dressed and socially inept to be a technical pioneer. (My apologies to those of you who are technical pioneers who don't fit the mold; you're few and far between.)
Now the chief Internet evangelist for Google, Mr. Cerf took his opportunity to call out early in his lecture that young people who are too young to know that something can't be done have come to him asking him to try a new technique or idea. At first he was tempted to tell them why it can't be done - based on the fact that he or associates had tried in vain 25 years earlier. But then he realized some of the reasons he couldn't do that thing 25 years ago have disappeared, so maybe it's possible after all. And he pushes them forward.
First Published November 27, 2011 12:00 am
