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Open-source software could be part of the solution to the "digital divide," according to Internet pioneer Vint Cerf.

It offers a middle course between big company products, which are expensive for the home user "but at least give you someone you can yell at if it goes wrong," and freeware, which is usually unsupported, Cerf believes.

With open source you get reduced cost but some advice readily available from knowledgeable people. Also, a large number of people are willing to add cheaply to the software pool and ensure that faults will be diagnosed and corrected.

Cerf spoke recently in Wellington, New Zealand, at a function arranged by the U.S. Embassy. The engineer who co-designed the TCP/IP protocol said universal Internet access is a laudable objective and is ever more attainable as the cost of access technology falls.

This will not just be due to technological advances in PC design and increasing competition, but will come about as less costly non-PC devices are increasingly used to access the network, Cerf said. He also cited cybercafes as an economical way of getting onto the Internet.

A member of his audience countered that software cost, not hardware cost, is likely to be the big inhibitor, and Cerf responded with his comments on open source.

Better Communications

A lot of rubbish is available through the Internet, as well as countless sources of useful and accurate information, Cerf acknowledged, while contending that combination can be positive by encouraging critical thinking and a talent for discriminating the good from the bad.

Asked whether the Internet could encourage a narrow focus, where online users only read things and associate with people that confirm their prejudices, he said Nobel laureate Arno Penzias had raised that fear many years ago, "but he hadn't seen Google." Search engines expose the user to irrelevant material, which just might pique their interest. "The Internet, aided by serendipity, broadens the mind, it doesn't narrow it," Cerf added.

He sees the Internet moving increasingly into the telephone's marketplace. One key bridge is Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which provides IP signaling for phone calls.

Along with voice-over-IP, this will tend to drive out circuit-switched protocols from the telephone network, and render telephone, Internet, and other media more interoperable, Cerf said.

The emerging Enum standard will, subject to user-driven privacy controls, let callers use a phone number to look up an e-mail address or other ways of contacting the same party through the Internet, he added.

This convergence could have a significant social effect in muting the anger that sometimes develops in an e-mail exchange, through misunderstanding of the mood of statements in text without voice cues, Cerf said. For example, we will learn to recognize that when discussions approach flashpoint, we are using the wrong medium. We will then switch smoothly to phone or videoconferencing.

Wiring Everything

The killer app for the laggardly videoconferencing medium could be something as apparently trivial as multiplayer video games, he suggested. Young players quickly saw the appeal of playing against long-distance opponents, but "you can't hear your [live] opponent scream or see him grimace when you shoot him down". A sound-and-video link would give players that dubious pleasure, and perhaps lead some to later explore videoconferencing in a more serious role, Cerf said.

Some unusual wired devices are already on the market, such as the Internet-enabled picture frame. "I have three," Cerf said. Artwork and family photos can be downloaded into the frame or sent.

Naturally, said Cerf, security will be necessary when the devices reach mass-market status, "or I can see the kids uploading pictures to shock Grandma."

Internet-enabled cars could communicate with bank databases and map-display software to answer the question "where is the nearest ATM?"

The Internet-enabled refrigerator, requesting missing ingredients to complete a meal, has a certain logic, Cerf believes. The fridge already functions as a communications and information storage device in many households, using the technologies of paper and magnetism.

Clothing could be Internet-enabled, monitoring the user's health signs and sending data to both the user and a doctor. "But you'd better make sure your shirt can't talk to your fridge, or you may find the fridge suddenly full of health food," Cerf warned.

Challenges Remain

On a more sober statistical front, Cerf produced figures from social surveys of the Internet, showing that e-mail is the most popular use of the medium, and is used by 50 percent of surfers. News acquisition was cited by 26 percent and "surfing for fun" by 22 percent, with game-playing coming in at 7 percent.

In response to the inevitable question about Internet pornography, Cerf said the problem is not nearly as extensive as is painted. Whatever its prevalence, like anything else on the Internet, "it's a reflection of us," he said. The answer, he suggests, is guidance for users, particularly children, and attitude change instead of Internet censorship.

With porn as with unreliable information "the antidote is more information, not less," he said. The answer to students plagiarizing material for essays could be an online database allowing tutors to analyze the phraseology of an essay and recognize cribbed content.

The Internet will spread to Mars in the first decade of the 21st century, Cerf predicted. But new protocols must be devised and automatic devices made into independent fat clients, to accommodate the irreducible delay of even a radio or light beam, and the huge variability of distance and orientation between planets over the course of a single session. TCP/IP won't work in that environment, he says.

At the beginning of the Internet, Cerf hadn't foreseen that so many of the general population would delight in sharing information and creating their own content through Weblogs and the like, he said.

"Scientists and academics [the original users of the Internet] do that all the time, but who would have thought ordinary people would have the same instinct?" he asked. He saw the potential for e-commerce early, but only in some areas. "An operation like Amazon is reasonably obvious. What I didn't foresee is the popularity of auction sites."

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