Google vice president and Internet pioneer Vint Cerf will give a talk about the future of the Internet and the "Internet of Things" at Elon on Sept. 30. He will also be honored for nearly 50 years of Internet leadership as Elon's Imagining the Internet Center will award him its first Areté Medallion.
Google Vice President Vint Cerf, known as the “father of the Internet” for his pioneering work in creating the basic networking protocols, will be honored by Elon University at a Family Weekend lecture. Imagining the Internet, an initiative of Elon’s School of Communications, will honor Cerf with its first Areté Medallion. The public is invited to the event, which will begin at 3:30 p.m. in McCrary Theatre in Elon’s Center for the Arts. Tickets for the event featuring are available by calling the Elon box office anytime after Sept. 8 between 10:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday-Friday at 336-278-5610.
Cerf is a co-designer of the revolutionary TCP/IP protocol suite and the architecture of the Internet, developed between 1973 and 1983 by he and co-author Bob Kahn and others in the Cerf-chaired International Network Working Group. In the decades that followed the operational launch of the Internet Jan. 1, 1983, an explosion of further innovation led to a better system for email, file-sharing via FTP, the World Wide Web, the commercialization of the Internet, WiFI/3G/4G/5G, millions of new online applications, billions of people living much of their lives online, trillions of communications – global and interstellar – and invention upon invention.
Since 2005 Cerf has served as vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Engineering Consortium, the Computer History Museum, the British Computer Society and the National Academy of Engineering.
Cerf is the recipient of dozens of honors and 25 honorary degrees. Highlights include the U.S. Medal of Technology, presented to him in 1997 by President Bill Clinton; the 1998 Marconi Prize; the 2004 Association of Computing Machinery Alan Turing Award – known as the Nobel Prize of computer science; the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented in 2005 by President George Bush; the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering; the Japan Prize; and his induction into the inaugural class of the Internet Hall of Fame in 2012. He is past president of ACM, chair of the American Registry for Internet Numbers, has completed a term as chair of the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology for the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, and was appointed to the National Science Board by President Barack Obama in 2012.
Areté is a word used to describe people who live up to their fullest potential in a life embodying goodness and excellence. The Imagining the Internet Areté Medallion was established to recognize innovators, change agents and thought leaders who have dedicated their lives to initiating and sustaining significant contributions that have positively impacted the global future.
Tickets for the public cost $13 and are available by calling the Elon University Box Office anytime after Sept. 8 between 10:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday-Friday at (336) 278-5610. Tickets are required to attend the event. They are free to Elon students/faculty/staff, but you must show your Phoenix Card at the box office in order to get one.
About Imagining the Internet
The mission of Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center is to explore and provide insights into emerging network innovations, global development, dynamics, diffusion and governance. Its research holds a mirror to humanity’s use of communications technologies, informs policy development, exposes potential futures and provides a historic record. It works to illuminate issues in order to serve the greater good, making its work public, free and open. [More…]