"The Father of the Internet"

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend Vinton Cerf's lecture this past week. He is an invaluable source of information! I learned so much.

Surprisingly, the crowd was about 90% native-spanish speakers....Why is that you ask???

Well, the main topic of the night happended to be bringing information to Latin and Central Americas...more importantly, bringing information and technology even to the poorest in those countries. There is an alliance between "Microsoft, Intel, and One Laptop per Child [Organization], " that will aid in this massive effort in information sharing.

He encouraged people to think about infrastructure and not just temporary fixes. Often times the U.S military, and even the Peace Corps will enter a foreign country with great intentions and help "fix" a problem. Often times, when they leave, the village collapses. This is a direct cause of this lack of building infrastructure.

I found it very interesting the change in internet usage over the past 30 years. Asia is leading in internet usage with a whopping " 380.4 million users", to North America's "227.5 million" users.
Europe follows close behind and Latin America is running a distant fourth. Cerf pointed out the fact that these numbers, while they seem inconsequential, are very important in determining, "content, products and services of a country. In "1997 there were a mere 22 million computers, now there are over 600 million." This milestone does mark the advent of a new type of consumer, thus is imperative that the market change in order to cater to this new consumer.

His most important point of the night was, "Information is not power, it's the sharing of information that's power." Power is multiplied when we share it... he gave a great example dealing with the scientist of the human genome project:

Scientist who wish to publish any information on the human genome must share the information with the scientific community. He explained in detail how they keep a check on this information sharing while ensuring to promote research and developement.

Sources:
Vinton Cerf Lecture