The Web At 40: Online World Stills Surprises 'Net Pioneer
The Internet is Incomplete, Says Its Co-Designer, Vinton Cerf

InfoWorld: When you participated in development of Internet technologies, did you think the Internet would ever materialize into what it's become today?

Cerf: The honest short answer, of course, is no, but the honest longer answer is we did know -- Bob Metcalfe and I, anyway -- knew in 1973 that we had an incredibly powerful technology here. We'd already had a lot of experience with Doug Engelbart's work at SRI and a lot of other things that we don't have time to go into, so we both knew that whatever it is that was going to happen, we had very powerful stuff. Then the question was would it be something that could be rolled out to the rest of the world? We didn't know for sure but when we worked on it, we decided not to patent, not to copyright, not to control, but to share everything we knew about the Internet design to the general public all around the world. What's amazing is that it was a Defense Department project and we were in the middle of the Cold War. In spite of all that, we made all of this completely available to everybody and the only reason it was possible is nobody paid any attention to us.

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InfoWorld: Legislation has been proposed that would give the government power to take control over private networks on the Internet in the event of an emergency. Do you think the government has too much control over the Internet? [Editor's note: The bill in question recently has been revised, appearing to tone down language pertinent to presidential powers.]