The Internet is a grand collaboration of over 5,000 networks involving millions of users, hundreds of thousands of hosts and dozens of countries around the world. It may well do for computers what the telephone system has done for people: provided a means for international interchange of information which is blind to nationality, proprietary interests, and hardware platform specifics.
Predictor: Cerf, Vinton G.
Prediction, in context:This August 1991 Request For Comment – No. 1251 from the Network Working Group – includes biographies of Internet leaders. The RFC includes information from Dr. Vinton Cerf, IAB Chairman. In 1972-1976, Cerf was the founding chairman of the International Network Working Group (INWG). He writes: ”The Internet is a grand collaboration of over 5,000 networks involving millions of users, hundreds of thousands of hosts and dozens of countries around the world. It may well do for computers what the telephone system has done for people: provided a means for international interchange of information which is blind to nationality, proprietary interests, and hardware platform specifics.Ó
Biography:Vinton G. Cerf was one of the key figures in the Internet Society in the 1990s. He earlier worked with C.S. Carr and Steve Crocker to publish the first ARPANET host-host protocol in 1970. In 1972, he was appointed first chair of International Network Working Group which was initiated to establish common technical standards to enable any computer to connect to the ARPANET. In 1973, he doodled the basic architecture of an Internet on the back of an envelope in a hotel lobby in San Francisco; also in 1973, he presented basic Internet ideas with Robert Kahn at an International Network Working Group gathering. In 1974, he published (with Bob Kahn) a paper on Packet Network interconnection that details the design of a Transmission Control Program (TCP). Also in 1974, he published the first technical specification of TCP/IP with Stanford graduate students Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine. In 1999, he served as the first chair of the Internet Societal Task Force, formed by ISOC. (Pioneer/Originator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1991
Topic of prediction: General, Overarching Remarks
Subtopic: General
Name of publication: Requests For Comments
Title, headline, chapter name: RFC1251
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1251.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne