Vint Cerf talks up the next-generation internet

Vint Cerf: software is an endless frontier

Google's chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf has set out his view of the internet's future to coincide with the search giant's 10th birthday.

Cerf said on his blog that in the next 10 years "around 70 per cent of the human population will have fixed or mobile access to the internet at increasingly high speeds, up to gigabits per second".

The man often referred to as 'the father of the internet' also presaged a move to the next-generation IP addressing scheme, IPv6, and GPS enablement of household consumer devices.

"Many of the things on the internet, whether mobile or fixed, will know where they are, both geographically and logically," he wrote.

Cerf does not, however, mention bandwidth worries over the internet's capacity and the rapid depletion of IP addresses, currently concerning many countries, including most recently China.

The crystal ball gazing evangelist identified IP as the "glue" connecting devices and services. "The internet will also become more closely integrated with other parts of our daily lives, and it will change them accordingly," said Cerf.

However, appearing to be wearing rose-tinted glasses, Cerf sees IP as a universal control protocol with the power only to do good, but neglects to mention the power this gives to hackers exploiting such inter-connectedness.

Cerf also gets a green angle into his blog, predicting greater energy effic iency. "By sharing information through the internet about energy-consuming and energy-producing devices and systems we will be able to make them more efficient," he declared.

As a company built on the back of advertising Google will also see a big increase in opportunities, Cerf predicts.

"Product placement will become an opportunity for viewers to click on items of interest in the field of view to learn more about them," he wrote.

Cerf pointed the way forward at the end of the blog post, perhaps agreeing with Intel's view that artificial intelligence will become a reality within the next 40 years.

"As we have learned in the past several decades, software is an endless frontier. There is no limit to what can be programmed. If we can imagine it, there is a good chance it can be programmed," he concluded.