Google Speaker Series: Vint Cerf,the father of Internet in India live!!!

22nd February 2007,5:30 PM was a date(and time) to remember since, people in India could hear the "Father of Internet" live in Ambedkar Bhavan,Bangalore.Yes,I am referring to Sir Vint Cerf,the brain who co-invented the TCP/IP protocol and has been in this internet stage since the early days of ARPANET.He is also called as the "Father of Internet".

Google has launched the Google Speaker Series and this is was the first and the most memorable one in the series.The talk by Sir Vint Cerf was about "The future of Internet" and what all innovations can be done using the internet.You can know more about Sir Vint Cerf here


Discussions at the Talk:
The talk started around 5 minutes late[which is acceptable as per Indian standards ] and Prasad Ram,CTO at Google India inaugurated the event and gave a warm welcome to Sir Cerf.Well, even though there was darkness in the auditorium, I was able to take down notes of some of the interesting points Sir Cerf mentioned about the internet.They are mentioned below:

1. Internet should make the world's information accessible across all the platforms
2. There has been a huge growth in the internet usage across the world and there are total 400 million internet users in Asia of which 40 million(10%) are in India.Along with the internet,mobile has also been becoming more and more important in day to day life.
3. All of us know internet operates with the transmission of packets from the source to the destination.Well,but Sir Vint Cerf had a point "Do the internet packets have the intelligence to know what information is going across the internet(ie. whether it is audio,video etc)"?
4. Things which we cannot predict in this industry:

• How long would it take to write a program
• How many bugs would we find in our code
• Does the program do what it was supposed to do
• Is this message spam?
• And many more......

5. Security issues in the internet:

• OS security
• DNS and BGP authenticity
• Dual core chips and project MAC's

6. Technology called as "Semantic Networking" can help make search better."Auto Tagging" can be used to make this happen.For eg. If you want to search for "Tommy", you might be referring to "Tommy Dog" or "Tommy Hilfigher" hence, a tag like "Dog" or "Hilfigher" against "Tommy" would help make search simple.
7. This is not Web 2.0 but it is the arrival of new phase of internet hence it cannot be tagged as 2.0.Technologies like Google Maps,Wikipedia and many more contribute to "Sharing of information which contributes to the power of internet"
8. Now this one is really called as "Out of the Box" thinking.There was a talk about "Refrigerator having intelligence to know what is there inside the fridge,what is the expiry date and this would be possible with RFID.Imagine,the Fridge sending an mail to the owner about the recipe that he can make with the vegetables kept inside the fridge.This is the power of RFID and the way Sir Cerf was speaking , it seemed that this age is not so far

Interesting inventions with the internet:
a. Project called "Interplanetary Internet".The objective of the Interplanetary Internet project is to define the architecture and protocols necessary to permit inter operation of the Internet resident on Earth with other remotely located internet's resident on other planets or spacecraft in transit.You can know more about "Interplanetary Internet" here. And yes important to know that is it not a Google Project

b. A guy thought that he cannot use the internet while he sliding and this led to the invention of the "Surf Board".So now he can slide as well as surf the internet at the same time

The session had a Q&A session where most of the questions were targeted to the recruitment in Google and hence was not as per the expectation

End of the Talk:
The memorable 1.5 hours session ended at a very nice note.There was a comment from the audience:
"Now I know why browsing on the internet is called "CIRF(ing)"(Surfing).Thanks to the Sirf Vint Cerf, the Father of Internet. -From the Son of Internet.

Photo Gallery:
Thanks to Lakshman Srikanth for his photo courtesy.You can find photographs covering the entire event here.

Memories from the event:
My friend Abhay Kumar was able to get Sir Vint Cerf's autograph in this PDA phone and that would be on my blog once I get his autograph