He briefly mentioned Google Apps for Education<\/a> – they have 2500 institutions using these applications today.<\/p>\n He is interested in computer science faculty taking up a challenge that has been largely unmet.\u00c2\u00a0 Mobile users vastly outnumber computer users around the world.\u00c2\u00a0 The largest fraction of internet users are in Asia today, with over 380 million users.<\/p>\n Cerf challenges the idea that computer science is a science.\u00c2\u00a0 Normally in science you develop a theory, you predict results, you make measurements, compare with predictions, publish and iterate until predictions and measurements coincide.\u00c2\u00a0 But computer science doesn’t work in this way.<\/p>\n Programming efficiency has not kept up with hardware efficiency.\u00c2\u00a0 What can we predict?\u00c2\u00a0 We cantalk about memory, computing requirements and time, network modeling, language grammar analysis, decidability and optimization. <\/p>\n But we can’t predict how long it will take to complete a program, how long it will take to find the bugs in a program, or how many we will find.\u00c2\u00a0 We can’t predict if the program will do what it is supposed to do.\u00c2\u00a0 We can’t even tell if a program is a worm or a virus, or even tell if a message is spam.\u00c2\u00a0 Spam filtering is fairly effective, but the algorithms we use to detect spam aren’t very sophisticated.<\/p>\n Security is another challenge.\u00c2\u00a0 Are there holes in the operating system?\u00c2\u00a0 Does this router have vulnerabilities?\u00c2\u00a0 Can the network be used to attack itself (auto-immune distributed, reflective denial of service)?\u00c2\u00a0 Is the internet a bad configuration?<\/p>\n Cerf says we didn’t put enough authentication into the internet, and we should fix that.\u00c2\u00a0 Public-key-cryptography was only published when the internet was getting started, so it wasn’t really available.\u00c2\u00a0 We need to know that the information we are receiving is valid, not faked.<\/p>\n Digital signatures have the possibility, along with public-key-cryptography to fix the authentication issue on the internet.\u00c2\u00a0 Cerf says we should see something soon along these lines.<\/p>\n But problems often come because of erroneous configurations on any of the pieces that make up the network.\u00c2\u00a0 We need to find better ways to find configuration problems.\u00c2\u00a0 Until we do we will have an unstable environment.<\/p>\n Information Management is another area ready for improvement.\u00c2\u00a0 We need more tagging and we need automated tools for doing this.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t have good tools for searching video and audio (“find me a picture that looks like this one…”).\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve made heavy use of location, and can index content according to where it is.\u00c2\u00a0 Geolocation is coming along, but time (time of day, etc.) should also be included, along with location.<\/p>\n We need to preserve operating systems and software.\u00c2\u00a0 This helps us discover old material.\u00c2\u00a0 Without this, more and more information will become undiscoverable.<\/p>\n There are new user-oriented paradigms to consider.\u00c2\u00a0 Amazon, Tivo, IM, GPS navigators, image and video sharing are all part of the self-service paradigm that makes collaboration more important.\u00c2\u00a0 Real estate searches aren’t done in cars anymore; they’re online. <\/p>\n Cerf is very concerned about declining computer science enrollments.\u00c2\u00a0 Children are natural scientists, though, so what is causing the failure?\u00c2\u00a0 What can we do?\u00c2\u00a0 Sputnik was a real surprise back in October 1957.\u00c2\u00a0 In January of 1958 the US had created the NSF Science\/Technology enrichment program.\u00c2\u00a0 ARPA, NASA and a national focus on science, technology and engineering all helped the US – including Cerf himself – to dedicate themselves to science and technology.<\/p>\n Cerf suggests global warming is the new Sputnik.\u00c2\u00a0 If we treat this as a national challenge, improved science and technology programs in K-12, designed fossil fuel efficient cards and power generation.\u00c2\u00a0 France uses nuclear power to reduce their oil consumption.<\/p>\n This would require massive computing and new algorithms to model.\u00c2\u00a0 Tele-working, tele-cooperation, tele-operation, tele-medicine are all possible ways to reduce our dependency on oil.\u00c2\u00a0 What else?<\/p>\n Cerf then gave us an update on the Mars rovers and how they’re doing.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a good thing the dust devils blow the dust off the solar panels on the rovers.\u00c2\u00a0 He also mentioned how redundant radios have kept the rovers communicating with earth (the first radios died out, but the new ones can communicate with the orbiters).\u00c2\u00a0 Cerf sees the internet extending into space, with an interplanetary backbone being created over decades.<\/p>\n Questions were asked. <\/p>\n What about net neutrality?\u00c2\u00a0 Google couldn’t have gotten started if the net weren’t freely available.\u00c2\u00a0 Cerf hopes this gets addressed better next year.<\/p>\n Someone expressed their concerns about software losing backward compatibility and the loss of information created using that software.\u00c2\u00a0 Cerf suggested that software makers be approached about putting their software into escrow when they create it.<\/p>\n What about privacy?\u00c2\u00a0 Cerf says there isn’t much.\u00c2\u00a0 Americans in particular are willing to give up privacy in exchange for convenience.\u00c2\u00a0 The Myspace or iPod generation in particular seems to think it’s cool to share information about themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 People need to be trained to think twice about what they are putting up on the internet.\u00c2\u00a0 Identity theft is a 200-billion dollar a year problem.\u00c2\u00a0 Our definition about what’s personal is going to have to change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Technorati Tags: computing<\/a>, EDUCAUSE2006<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Brian Hawkins started the conference by telling us that more than 7000 people are attending this year. Vinton G. Cerf was our keynote speaker.\u00c2\u00a0 Cerf is currently the Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, but he’s had a … Continue reading ![\"Cerf](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/10\/Cerf_EDUCAUSE-tm.jpg?resize=125%2C100&ssl=1\")
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