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Scott Bradner I got my first email account on the ARPANET
in 1972, and have had continuous email coming to me since then. In the mid 1980s, opened
up the ARPANET and then later on the TCP/IP networks to the Harvard campus. I work at
Harvard University. I put in the Harvard core campus network in that timeframe. I was the
head of the technical committee for Harvard’s network for regional network in the New England
area, and for the National Science Foundation-associated regional network around the county in the
mid 90s. And then I joined the Internet Engineering Task Force in 1990 and was appointed area
director of the operational requirements area in 1993. I stayed on that role for two years…for
four years. Then was appointed the area director for Transport Area, and stayed in that role
for six years. I was on the IESG, the standards and approval body for the IETF from 1993 to
2003.
Somebody asked me a few years ago, what was the biggest surprise. I was involved in the
Internet from the very beginning. The real Internet started January 1st 1983, when the
TCP/IP protocols were put out. The Web started in ’93. Back in the late ’80s, the middle
’80s, I was using the Net daily, all the time. It was magic. You did magic things and
magic things happened. Email was all text-based. The biggest surprise I’ve ever had about
the Internet was that my mom surfed. It never occurred to me in the early ’80s that my
mother would ever knowingly use the Internet. It was a toy. It was a geek thing. It was
for scientists. It was for researchers. It was for technical people. I expected her to
use it without knowing it, because I expected it to be an underlayment for a lot of telecommunications.
But I didn’t expect her to use it. The Web changed all of that. The Web made it so that
normal people could use this thing. And that was my biggest surprise. That was sort of
the “eureka” moment. When mom said, “I want to do this.”
Like the weather over any continent, it varies. There are thunderstorms in places and there
is cool weather in others and significant turbulence other places. The weather over
the United States in the last six months has been tremendously variable. The hottest…one
of the hottest summers on record in the Boston area, which is where I live, following a very
cold winter. A lot of snow. A lot of rain. Very heavy rain this spring. And that’s
pretty much the way I think of what’s going on in the Net. We have very turbulent weather
when it comes to governments being scared of the Net - the Arab Spring kind of thing
- and we have smooth sailing when it comes to technology. Technology is going very well.
We have things like Skype and the like which are incredibly powerful, very game-changing
technologies, Netflix, and all of those things that are running. Those are great. Those are
about as sunny as you can get, as sunny and clear as you can get. Of course, if your business
is being disrupted by the same technologies, you don’t think it’s sunny.
I think there are a number of possibilities. One of the possibilities is that this becomes
a Disney-controlled Tivo, that the content providers are right, that all we want to do
is watch: couch potatoes watching movies. I don’t think that’s likely, but that’s
certainly one scenario. The copyright industry wants the Internet designed in such a way
that it will facilitate that. Another scenario is all government control - like in China,
where you need to register to use it, you basically need a driver’s license to use
it and you can’t talk outside of the country without being filtered, you can’t even talk
inside the country without being filtered. That’s not just China, there are many countries
like that. The ultimate one, the IETF model, would be the end-end model, which is where
I get to decide which applications I’m going to run, and I talk to you about which applications
we are going to work together on - dramatic new developments in technology and services,
games or whatever. Those are the primary three. I guess a fourth is it is completely run by
carriers - where the telephone companies and the cable companies decide for you what you
need without bothering to ask you. All but one of those is very negative. The positive
one, the Pollyannaish one is the end-to-end model of the IETF.
It’s mostly education of governments. The Internet has brought phenomenal economic health
to the countries that have embraced it, but has also brought huge social change to others
who have embraced it. Telling countries they benefit more than they are hurt by it, educating
them why that’s the case. Educating them that the open Internet, the open standards
process, the open development is beneficial to them and their citizens, is the primary
vehicle to try and get a positive result.