A recent edition of The Economist magazine profiles Vinton Cerf, ICANN Chairman of the Board.
A couple months ago I had the good fortune of having breakfast with Cerf at Domain Roundtable, where he gave a keynote address. He’s a fascinating guy who has played a major role in the internet and is known as “the father of the internet”. He has a witty comment in the article about this moniker:
There were many of us [involved with the Internet’s creation]. As a father, I’ve learned you don’t want to take too much credit for what your kids do, because when they screw up you don’t want to take too much blame.
Cerf says the growth of the internet was made possible because rather than trying to decide what kind of uses there might be for the internet, the early founders tried to make it as flexible as possible:
We deliberately did not try to tailor the network to particular applications, because we believed there would be applications we could not predict. We hoped that having a very general packet-switched capability would support almost anything. So far, it has been true.
During his Domain Roundtable keynote, Cerf said we was surprised at the commercialization of the internet, and in particular domain names. But I think we need to take his quote about not planning for how the internet is used and apply it to current conditions in the domain name world. I hear a lot of idealists say, “The internet was not meant for commercial exploitation. Domain names weren’t meant for speculation. Any domain name that is registered should be put to use.” I bet the same people who say this have made purchases on Amazon or eBay. The founding fathers didn’t see this sort of Amazonian commercial use for the web, but the internet community and world at large has embraced it. Sure, domain names weren’t orginally created for use as “real estate” investments. But that’s where it has gone. You can either be a socialist idealist or accept that the domain market is a valid commercial enterprise.
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