Time Traveling with Vinton Cerf
HAFFENREFFER: In ancient Hindu mythology, the God Indira cast a net that connected all parts of the Universe. In modern times, we've got Vint Cerf. Cerf and his partner invented not Indira's net but the Internet, originally a project for the Pentagon. As Mary Kathleen Flynn found out, the creator of the Internet has got big plans for his fast-growing creation, plans that reach all the way to the stars.</s>MARY KATHLEEN FLYNN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Whether information comes through your phone line or satellite, Vinton Cerf is interested. He and Bob Kohn are the founders of the Internet. In 1973, they developed an idea to help military commanders communicate by land, air or sea. Later, with the invention of the PC and computer networks, the rest of the world got on their technology bandwagon. And Serf says, the net will soon encompass the whole universe.</s>VINTON CERF, SENIOR V.P., MCI WORLDCOM: But the most exciting thing for me right now is an interplanetary-Internet design. I'm working with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on extending the Internet, so it will work across the Solar System. The whole motivation behind this is to make sure that when we're doing research on the, you know, what's happening to the -- where did the Solar System come from, doing planetary research. We'll have a backbone communication network that will serve all those little robots that are out there flying past the planets or landing on them or flying past the asteroids.</s>FLYNN (on camera): So something like the Pathfinder mission?</s>CERF: A little bit like the Pathfinder mission, except for every one of the planets and satellites, we would expect to have satellites going around the various planets and moons, all communicating with each other across this interplanetary backbone, which, by the way, has to work very differently from our Earth-bound Internet, because the delays in the system are enormous, 20 minutes would be round trip time from Earth to Mars or more. And that's very different from the environment in which the original Internet protocols were designed.</s>FLYNN (voice-over): Cerf's brainchild would allow orbiting robots, balloons, satellites, unmanned spacecraft and perhaps humans themselves to talk to each other and to Earth. Cerf hopes it will be better and cheaper than the communications systems used in space exploration today. And he believes we are a lot closer than you may think to the interplanetary Internet.</s>CERF: Less than 10 years, we expect to have the first two-planet system up and running between Earth and Mars before the decade is out.</s>FLYNN (on camera): What else are you working on like that? Nothing that exciting.</s>CERF: Actually, there are a bunch of things going on now. With Internet-enabled appliances, practically every appliance in the house, when you think about it, anything with any electronics in it, could be made more useful if it was on-line.</s>FLYNN: But I'm also wondering about it from the point of view of disabilities. I know that you wear two hearing aids. You've won some awards for you're work, from organizations that care about the deaf. And I'm wondering, what do you think the Internet has done for people with hearing impairments or visual impairments, and how much more can it do?</s>CERF: I have e-mails from many, many people who have felt freed by having access to the Internet. People who are otherwise bedridden, suddenly having friends that they can interact with anywhere in the world. They get to go places and see things that they couldn't otherwise see. For people who are visually impaired, there has been a lot of work done by various companies that make browser software, to make the network more accessible, to make sure that there is audio description of the content that's on the page. For people who are deaf, it's very important to have captioning for any sound that might be produced on that Web page. There's still a lot of work to be done.</s>FLYNN: I'm wondering, as the Internet gets more and more multimedia, with full-motion video and all kinds of capabilities because of the broadband access, will it be even harder for people with disabilities to get all that there is out of the Web?</s>CERF: I can foresee the day when you can essentially have a profile of what your needs are and the system adapts to that, so that it knows what it is that you need to eat or see or hear or touch.</s>FLYNN: Well, what do you think are the most important contributions that the Internet makes to the world?</s>CERF: Well, it's not so much that the net makes the contributions, as much as it is the people who use it that do. I know you know that, but I think it's important to understand that the net is simply a vehicle for people to communicate.</s>HAFFENREFFER: Coming up, low-tech meets high-tech in the world's finest museums.