Vint Cerf comes over all Bono and guest edits the Guardian Media. Whatever that means. Anyways, the man who came second to Al Gore in inventing the internet gets to lay the smack down on what he feels is the state of the aforementioned internet. And he doesn’t mention his job not doing any evil once.

What Cerf does do though is take a good snapshot of what, after thirty or so years of bottom down development and growth, the internet is allowing us to do.

It takes decades if not generations to fully understand the impact of
such inventions. We are barely two decades into the commercial
availability of the internet, but it has already changed the world. It
has fostered self-expression and freed information from the constraints
of physical location, opening up the world’s information to people
everywhere.

He’s not wrong. But the next point is fascinating, particularly given his employers’ upcoming mobile spectrum bid(s):

And it still has a long way to go. Today, barely one in five people
around the world has access to the internet. Yet around three-quarters
of the world’s population lives within reach of a mobile network. In
the decade ahead, many people, especially in developing countries, will
have their first contact with the internet via a mobile phone.

This is a big point on a number of levels. Google are serious about being a big provider of what is looking like the planet’s primary platform for internet delivery. On top of that layer they are the undisputed heavyweight champ when it comes to organizing the information on that platform.

The second interesting point Cerf seeks to hightlight from what surely could have been a very long list is this:

Unlike previous communications technologies, the internet enables both
one-to-one and one-to-many communications, as well as many-to-many
(such as wikis or Digg). Distinguishing between these forms of
communication isn’t always easy. But the net is still a young medium,
and discerning where personal contact blends into public broadcast will
become easier as time passes.

Taking on Postman’s reading of McLuhan, message, medium and all the rest, this is a huge communications development we’re at the cusp of. How will true many-to-many communications for the masses transform the very nature of how we think and organize ourselves as a society. What sort of impact will this have on democracy as well as popular entertainment?

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