Vint Cerf has written letter to the BBC which addresses the material of many recent controversies. Network security, file format decay, the importance of search engines and the purpose of the internet are all dealt with in a refreshing and optimistic way.
The internet ... has only existed for three decades, and the World Wide Web is younger still ... stands poised to become the greatest communications platform humanity has ever known.
Introducing DNSSEC (security for the Domain Name System) and the digital signing of address space by the Regional Internet Registries will assume much higher priority. ... Internet-based software and digital goods have historically been vulnerable to various kinds of failures and subject to a variety of attacks. The computer science community is challenged to devise solutions to these problems. ... we will need to move to a new internet address space, called IPv6.
Information on the web varies in quality from completely useless or even damaging to stunningly valuable. ... the importance of search engines will only increase. In the future, people around the world will likely look for new ways to identify the authenticity of online information sources.
We will also be confronted with a kind of "information decay" in which digital objects become less and less accessible owing to the age of the software that created it. As an example: it is already a challenge to watch videos posted on the BBC website in 1997.
The internet is a medium for communicating information, and by democratising access to information the internet is changing people's lives for the better. ... already the openness of the web is fostering free expression in parts of the world that need it most. ... the trend is clear and inexorable. ... access to information is expanding rapidly.
