Vint Cerf on the next Internet

Vint Cerf published an Official Google Blog post about the next Internet in which he predicts that “that mobile devices will become a major component of the Internet,” that “video will become an interactive medium in which the choice of content and advertising will be under consumer control,” and “a box of washing machine soap will become part of a service as Internet-enabled washing machines are managed by Web-based services that can configure and activate your washing machine.” And, he concludes, “Google will be there, helping to make sense of it all, helping to organize and make everything accessible and useful.”

I hesitate to accuse someone as accomplished as Vint Cerf of lacking imagination, but I found his post uninspiring. As he should know better than most, mobile devices are already a major component of the Internet. Greater control of video would be nice, but how about greater control of the the world’s information that Google aspires to organize?

Perhaps posting on the Official Google Blog has a dampening effect. I’d like to believe that readers here at The Noisy Channel have wild imaginations and are uninhibited about exercising their creativity. Please use this space to do so!

After all, I do agree with Cerf about Alan Kay’s observation that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. Or, to quote him in full:

“Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn’t violate too many of Newton’s Laws!”