Another amazing Internet icon … and what the Internet future holds
I had the opportunity to hear Vint Cerf speak at a Java conference almost a decade ago. He was an awesome person to listen too. He has an incredible perspective of the ‘Net. It was really impressive to hear him talk about the early days of the Internet and what they were thinking. He also talked about taking the Internet into the solar system, and defining the IPv6 addressing. He talked about inter-planet routing … how Internet traffic will be routed off the planet to Mars, for example.

I came across the article below and want to thank Adam for pointing it out. The quote below is an example of the depth of thought that occurs within Vint, and I can truly identify with his thoughts. I am not sure that I agree that society requires “fixing”, however I do believe that people could choose a different way to be.

Along with the things that Vint talks about, I have to admit that I never believed I would be so close to one of the largest acts of cyber-terrorism that we might witness so far in Internet history. The MyDoom virus is looking like one of the largest attacks of this type ever seen. Working at SCO provides an interesting viewpoint on how people are treated when they follow the defined judicial process, within a democratic society, in pursuing their rights and asking for their day in court. Hopefully the writers of this virus are caught and prosecuted. It would be great to see someone from the “Open Source Community” turn them in …

I hope that as world governments and global businesses evaluate their options in choosing who will control their destiny, they fully understand that they are dealing with a very amorphous entity that is able to strike outside the boundaries defined by laws, and that can choose to defy the structures that we have put in place for “modern” society to exist. No matter what people think about other peoples actions or behaviors … there is no excuse for terroristic attacks, of any kind, towards anyone. Period.

I believe that we are witnessing an aspect of one segment of society. If they are choosing to attack like this now … over this issue … then who is next on the list? First Microsoft, then SCO, then who? What will they do to a government that might find in favor of SCO? Or a company that does business with SCO? And what will be the collateral damage?

Vint Cerf: “The internet is a reflection of our society and that mirror is going to be reflecting what we see,” he said. “If we do not like what we see in that mirror the problem is not to fix the mirror, we have to fix society.” [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]