[news release] Ten distinguished persons hailing from all regions of the globe have been appointed to serve on the Secretary-General’s inaugural Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Leadership Panel, the United Nations announced on Tuesday.
The Internet has become a global, complex, layered, and increasingly indispensable ecosystem. For purposes of this column, “Internet” includes the underlying digital transport infrastructure including subsea and land-based fiber and cable, orbiting satellites, the networks of routers, the Domain Name System, datacenters and their networks, edge devices of all kinds (laptops, desktops, pads, smartphones, Internet-enabled devices, and sensors), the World Wide Web, content distribution systems and, for all I know, the kitchen sink.
[news release] Access to the Internet, which facilitates communication, education, and the increase of professional skills, is gradually becoming one of the fundamental human rights. The development of networks in various parts of the world, freedom of speech, and the fight against disinformation were the subjects discussed during the third day of the UN Digital Summit, IGF 2021 in Katowice.
A founding father of the Internet, Vint Cerf, attributes its astonishing economic success in no small part to “permissionless innovation,” the freedom of Internet developers to try new business models and offer new services without obtaining prior government approval. The clear signal government sends by not overregulating the market is a reason the Internet today is a staple in our lives. Any calls for Internet regulation should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism, and before acting, the government should ensure that proposed Internet regulation is going to provide more consumer benefit than harm.
This week at the annual RSA Conference, we will hear from industry leaders on a wide range of issues, from the supply chain security crisis to breach disclosure notifications. While it’s important to talk about where we have been and what is happening in the industry right now, it is equally as important to think about where we need to go.
The Internet and the World Wide Web application have transformed daily life and work for more than half of the world’s population. And the actions of those who are online increasingly affect everyone, including the 3.7 billion who are not yet connected.
In 2011, the movie “Contagion” eerily predicted what a future world fighting a deadly pandemic would look like. In 2020, I, along with hundreds of thousands of people around the world, saw this Hollywood prediction play out by being diagnosed with COVID-19. It was a frightening year by any measure, as every person was impacted in unique ways.
Vint Cerf is widely known as a “Father of the Internet” and is the highly celebrated co-designer of TCP/IP protocols and Internet architectures. In his lecture, “The Future of the Internet of Things: Desirable properties of an IoT ecosystem”, Cerf discussed the benefits and the potential pitfalls of a massively automated world.
Two dozen Turing Award laureates including Father of the Internet, and former ICANN Chair from 2000 to 2007, Vint Cerf have endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for President of the United States and Senator Kamala Harris for Vice President. As the letter notes, it’s the first time Turing Award Laureates have endorsed a candidate.
In my last column (June 2020), I wrote about my experience with COVID-19 and the challenges involved with getting medical attention. The problem is still with us, even with the improved availability of personal protection equipment and masks. The experience of calling for a doctor’s appointment and being told I could not come into the doctor’s office was unsettling to say the least.