[webcast-l] Vint Cerf, aka the godfather of the net, predicts the end of TV as we know it

[Bill Best]

Vint Cerf, aka the godfather of the net, predicts the end of TV as we know it

Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
The Guardian
Monday August 27 2007

http://ln-s.net/rod

Thirty years ago he helped create a technology that has revolutionised
millions of lives around the world. But yesterday the man known as the
"godfather of the net" laid out his vision of where our online future
might be, including a time when we download entire TV series in
seconds - and even surf the web from Mars.

Talking at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television
Festival, Vint Cerf - one of the handful of researchers who helped
build the internet in the 1970s - said that the television industry
would change rapidly as it approached its "iPod moment".

The 64-year-old, who is now a vice-president of the web giant Google
and chairman of the organisation that administrates the internet, told
an audience of media moguls that TV was rapidly approaching the same
kind of crunch moment that the music industry faced with the arrival
of the MP3 player.

"85% of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system
to download it all the time," he said. "You're still going to need
live television for certain things - like news, sporting events and
emergencies - but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod,
where you download content to look at later."

Dr Cerf, who helped build the internet while working as a researcher
at Stanford University in California, used the festival's Alternative
McTaggart Lecture to explain to television executives how the
internet's influence was radically altering their businesses and how
it was imperative for them to view this as a golden opportunity to be
exploited instead of a threat to their survival. The arrival of
internet television has long been predicted, although it has succeeded
in limited ways so far. But the popularity of websites such as YouTube
- the video sharing service bought by Google in 2005 for $1.65bn
(£800m) - has encouraged many in the TV industry to try and use the
internet more profitably. Last month the BBC launched its free iPlayer
download service, and digital video recorders such as Sky Plus and
Freeview Playback allow viewers to instantly pause and record live
television.

Dr Cerf predicted that these developments would continue, and that we
would soon be watching the majority of our television through the
internet - a revolution that could herald the death of the traditional
broadcast TV channel in favour of new interactive services.

"In Japan you can already download an hour's worth of video in 16
seconds," he said. "And we're starting to see ways of mixing
information together ... imagine if you could pause a TV programme and
use your mouse to click on different items on the screen and find out
more about them."

Some critics, including a number of leading internet service
providers, have warned that the increase in video on the web could
eventually bring down the internet. They are concerned that millions
of people downloading at the same time using services such as iPlayer
could overwhelm the network.

Dr Cerf rejected these claims as "scare tactics". "It's an
understandable worry when they see huge amounts of information being
moved around online," he said. But some pundits had predicted 20 years
ago that the net would collapse when people started using it en masse,
he added. "In the intervening 30 years it's increased a million times
over ... We're far from exhausting the capacity."

Dr Cerf also revealed that he has been working on future developments
for the internet, taking it beyond the confines of planet Earth. With
other researchers he has been developing systems for using the net to
communicate and control space vehicles, including interplanetary
landers sent to explore the surface of Mars.

"Up until now we've been using the so-called Deep Space Network to
communicate across space with radio signals. What my colleagues and I
would like to do is use a version of internet," he said. He said the
problems encountered by the project - such as having to wait 40
minutes for a response from a space vehicle 235m miles away - were
proving awkward, but predicted the system could eventually be used to
enhance internet communications. "I want more internet," he said. "I
want every one of the 6 billion people on the planet to be able to
connect to the internet - I think they will add things to it that will
really benefit us all."