Fergus Cassidy

The crossroads hotel

TEN minutes into a scheduled flight from Toronto to Washington National airport last Tuesday, the captain announces a recently-added security requirement for planes travelling into Washington. All passengers must remain seated for 30 minutes before landing. He doesn't say what will happen to anyone who gets out of their seat and no one intends to find out.

Welcome to the political capital of the United States, where the Stars and Stripes flying from the apartment windows are in memory of the appaling events of last September and have nothing whatsoever to do with the World Cup. The belated interest in the beautiful game is wrapped around the topless picture of Team USA striker Landon Donovan and carries the caption 'for your viewing pleasure'. Defeat against Germany will put the World Cup back to where it has been for the last three weeks in the sidebars at the bottom of the page.

To the serious business in hand and Washington is host to Inet 2002, the 12th annual conference of the Internet Society (Isoc). Founded ten years ago Isoc is a global non-profit organisation headquartered in the US. It was formed to act as an umbrella group for the various technical standards bodies that oversee the nuts and bolts of the internet.

As Lynn St Amour, the president and chief executive explained: "we have seen the internet grow from a network known mainly in the research and educational communities, to an enabler that has become an extremely important part of the world's economy and a critical partner in many aspects of our everyday life."

Ten years in internet time is like twenty in human time and the child that was midwifed by academic and military research has grown up quickly and now wants to be taken seriously. The theme of the conference is 'Internet Crossroads: Where Technology and Policy Intersect'. Richard Perlman, one of the main conference organisers, expanded on its meaning.

"As governments, institutions, businesses and people seek to understand the world community in which events in one city affect people around the world, we find ourselves at a crossroads. We see that the intersection of law, policy and customs that were once local, are now suddenly global".

The crossroads of which Perlman speaks was always coming on the information superhighway. Now that it's here there are feelings of nervousness mixed with ones of relief. Nervous about what the future has in store and relief that a definite phase in the emergence of the net can at last be put to rest.

The madness of the gold rush when investors in dotcoms selling bottles of air watched their money float away on the delayed and harsh thresher of the Nasdaq. The new language of disintermediation, matrix and cyborgs. The new economy which was going to consign the business giants to the wastebasket of history.

But what of the future? A crossroads can be a perturbing and confusing place to be. Unless there is dancing going on and that hasn't happened in a long, long time and in a land far, far away.

This conference hasn't got any answers because there are none. Well none that can be offered without going down the same road as before and there is absolutely no appetite for that. The Internet Society is taking a deep breath and steadying itself. And if nerves are in need of a balming solution there is no better rub than the shoulders of giants.

On the stage of the football pitch arena that is the ballroom of the Crystal Gateway hotel, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn sit side by side. They chuckle with one another with a rapport that hints of a lifetime of friendship and collaboration. Both are fondly referred to as 'pioneers' and 'the fathers of the internet'. The computer code that allows information to be carried over different networks was written by them.

Between them they conjured up a protocol called TCP/IP and have received the highest honours possible for their work. Both are still keenly involved in initiatives that promotes the public interest of their invention. They have come to Inet 2002 to do their bit to keep some of the magic alive.

Later on in the opening day there is a press conference in a room so small that it is hard to avoid rubbing shoulders. Both men are still giggling away to themselves but discreetly now. An air of seriousness and caution is never far from a press conference, especially one that is being telecast around the world.

There are the expected questions on the future of the net and various policy issues but then The Sunday Tribune asks about the magic and will it ever come back again. Both men's eyes expand like balloons as they both make a dive for the microphone. Bob Kahn wins.

"Of course it will come back. Look, what has happened over the last 30 years or so is like the tide. It comes and goes. I remember back in the 1960s being told that the digital revolution was over. This period is just another turn of the tide. Some amazing things are going to happen in the next few years".

Vint Cerf grabs the mike. He is very much at ease speaking in public and is never short of a funny story or three.

"There were unreasonable expectations of what the network could do. It was the modern equivalent of the settling of the wild west." He sees broadband as having critical importance to the next phase. And his definition of broadband? "It's the amount of capacity that you can't afford," he chuckles.

He sheds some insight into his mind as he recounts an idea he has that fuses information technology with one of his other great passions - wine. He is imagining embedding intelligence into the cork of a wine bottle and being able to track its history from the time it was corked.Where it was stored, what temperature and when and how often it was moved. If his vision and passion could be bottled, it would be a new world bestseller.

He estimates that 2.2bn people will be connected to the net eight years from now. He explains that the world has overcome seemingly insurmountable problems with technology before. "Book publishers were convinced that the Xerox photocopier would put them out of business and that never happened."

On his own dreams he once again returns to what he calls the interplanetary internet. His occasional work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a partner of Nasa, involves dreaming it all up again. Mankind's next big space mission will focus on a Mars landing and he wants to extend the internet and link the planets in preparation for those missions.

Both Cerf and Kahn could never have foreseen the impact that their invention would have on the world. They are still crusading to progress and expand the internet, sure in the knowledge that people will embrace and cherish it.

Cerf though is at pains to point out that this doesn't apply to the interplanetary internet. "Build it and they will come? I certainly hope not".

The room erupts with laughter. And relief.

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LINKS

Internet history
Good history of the internet by the people who were involved. link

Isoc Conference
The full program from this year's Internet Society conference held in Washington last week. link