Vinton Gray Cerf was co-designer of the mechanisms known as TCP/IP that enabled the Internet’s capability to be used by >everybody.
Cerf dreamt of becoming a scientist as a ten year-old boy in California, after being inspired by the book ‘The Boy Scientist’. He hooked up with Bob Kahn to develop the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and, a little later, the Internet Protocol (IP) as well.
The digital cable and satellite television facilities now serving Britain could provide the backbone of a new broadband network carrying not just digital television feeds, but personal voice and data delivery as well.
The Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) process uses digital technology to exploit the unused bandwidth on copper telephone lines for carrying a high-speed data stream. The most common is Asymmetrical DSL (ADSL), which allows voice and data to be sent simultaneously over a standard …
Those trends are digitalisation, convergence, fragmenting audiences and the growth of the Internet.
Convergence is happening in technologies too - between computers and TV, handheld devices and mobiles. Businesses that provide applications and channels are increasingly merging with content providers to make total services available for users.
The Information Society defines everything: education, family, work and culture. The Internet Society is the organisation that ensures cooperation and coordination across the world over the technologies and applications of the Internet.
Today its focus is to maintain and develop the Internet so that organisations and individuals can work, play and share ideas that feed their common interests world-wide.
The fusion of computers, telephone networks and harmonised data protocols enabled the creation of the World Wide Web. >> The Internet represents a global information and communication resource for everybody, universally accessible from any point in an infinitely expandable network. >> The Internet has transformed computers into communications devices and given birth to the Information Economy.
Today, every Internet user has access to encryption. That battle has been lost - but the end of the Cold War has released the national security establishments in the USA and Britain to turn their attentions to the Internet in the battle against drugs smugglers and terrorists.
Only the Western democracies have the privilege of uncensored access to the Internet.