Question: In 1998 you have been awarded by the Marconi prize for lasting contribution to human progress in the field of communication, science and the Internet and so I was wondering how do you feel about this weighty recognition and especially since I'm representing Italy here about Marconi's role in modern communication.Dr. Cerf - Well Marconi is as all you know I hope know is credited with the invention of radio if you dig deep into the history you'll discover a number of other names that were contemporary with him. But I want you to think for a moment about what it must've been like in the 19th century let's go further back than Marconi, let's go to the 1840s and Morse code over wires.
Up until that time the fastest you could move a signal from point A to point B was as fast as the train could go or as fast as a horse could ride, now suddenly you could send a signal at the speed of light this had to be a stunning revelation for the people in the middle of the 19th-century.
Then Marconi comes along and he does it without wires, still at the speed of light that had to be even more amazing, you're sitting in Europe and communicating in real time with someone in the United States without any wires at all.
There's a book I would recommend to you called “The Victorian Internet” it's by a man named Tom Standich and it's all about the telegraph and if you were to read the press announcements about the telegraph and Marconi's wireless capabilities in that 1990/1991 period. If you replace telegraph with Internet you would recognize the headlines.
People had expectations that it would be no war anymore because people could instantaneously communicate with and then resolve all the problems and of course shortly thereafter we had World War I followed by World War II…So much for technology…
As far as far as the Marconi award goes there's a small cadre of people who'd been recognized with this award about 30 or so I would guess by this time it is a huge honour and a terrible responsibility.
Because it is not an honour which is conferred solely for that which you have done in some sense it is conferred with the expectations that you will keep doing so I personally feel very, very challenged to earn each year that recognition as to my colleagues and so I hope that participating in activities like this, looking for new ways to apply Internet technologies in the social realm will earn, once again that recognition. I can tell you that it's a great challenge to really be worthy of the recognition because it requires a hard work each year.