Brief session description:
Monday, April 23, 2012: The inaugural class of the Internet Hall of Fame was announced at the Gala of the Internet Society’s 20th Anniversary Global INET conference. The 33 inductees were selected in three categories: the Pioneers, the Innovators and the Global Connectors. Seventeen of the 33 attended the event.
Access videos of the acceptance speeches of inductees who attended the ceremony by using the video player. Click on the first video to begin a player that will cycle through all visible on this page or click on those you wish to view. To see additional videos, click on the numbers at the end of the video column – there are many more than you see here.
Details of the session:
The Internet Society’s induction ceremony for its inaugural class in the Internet Hall of Fame took place in a small room of the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva just prior to the larger 20th anniversary Gala Dinner, with only a handful of people invited to attend – mostly the inductees.
The Internet is a technology with thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of architects. These select few have made monumental contributions and many of them continue to work to build new Internet innovation and to support the best future possible for the Internet. The inductees were chosen by a 12-person Hall of Fame Advisory Board that spans multiple Internet industry segments and backgrounds.
Each of the 33 people selected as the inaugural Internet Hall of Famers was honored in one of three categories. Some of the individuals chosen were not at the event, and there were two who had their awards accepted by stand-ins. Patrice Lyons accepted for Bob Kahn, who was busy with new research; Ben Ceverny accepted for his uncle, the late Jon Postel. The hit of the ceremony was Leonard Kleinrock’s right-on poetic acceptance speech; quite original and featuring nuances of Dr. Seuss influence. See the video clip at right.
The Pioneers Circle
The Pioneers Circle honors “individuals who were instrumental in the early development of the Internet and led the way in building and launching the global Internet.” Paul Baran, Donald Davies and Jon Postel were honored posthumously for their pioneering work toward the positive evolution of the Internet.
Paul Baran – Baran invented packet switching techniques while at RAND at about the same time such work was being conducted by Donald Davies in the UK. He was a founder of the Institute for the Future and he conducted research on wireless technologies.
Donald Davies – Davies was one of the inventors of packet switching computer networking and creator of the term. This UK scientist worked on a team led by Alan Turing whose efforts led to the Pilot ACE computer.
Jon Postel – Postel’s influence is interlaced in all early development of standards for the Internet. For many years he shepherded the Request for Comment document series; he co-invented and administered the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority; he co-founded and was the first member of the Internet Society.
Other pioneers include:
Steve Crocker – Crocker was the initiator of the Request for Comments series of notes through which protocol designs are documented and shared, authoring the very first RFC. He is the chair of the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, and an active Internet leader in technical, social and political respects.
Vint Cerf – Cerf is recognized as one of the “fathers of the Internet.” He co-authored the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. He worked as part of the UCLA team that developed the first Internet nodes. For many years since he has been a global ambassador for the Internet, continuing his leadership in IETF and ISOC.
Danny Cohen – Cohen developed the first real-time visual flight simulator on a general-purpose computer in 1967. He also developed the first real-time radar simulator. He was the first to implement packet video and packet voice when he adapted the flight simulator to run over the ARPANET.
Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler– Feinler managed the ARPANET and the Defense Data Network and was director of the Network Information Center in the early years of networked computing. Her group developed the first query-based network host name and address (WHOIS) server and created the TLD scheme of .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .org and .net.
Peter Kirstein – Kirstein was instrumental in the earliest work on the Internet; he started the first European ARPANET node with transatlantic connectivity and also pioneered developments in multimedia, network management and directory and security applications.
Leonard Kleinrock – Kleinrock pioneered the mathematical theory of packet networks and led the team that sent the first message on the Internet. He developed ARPANET and his UCLA lab was the first node in the network.
John Klensin – Kleinsin (pictured at right) began his involvement with Internet Protocols in 1969 when he worked on the File Transfer Protocol. An IETF leader, he’s been instrumental in writing more than 40 RFCs. He and Randy Bush created the Network Startup Resource Center that helped countries establish connections globally.
Robert Kahn – Kahn, along with Vint Cerf, invented the TCP/IP protocols, fundamental to the Internet, and he is known as one of the “fathers of the Internet.” He was responsible for originating DARPA’s Internet program and he conceived the ideas of open-architecture networking and the US National Information Infrastructure. He has led the Corporation for National Research Initiatives for many years.
Louis Pouzin – Pouzin invented the datagram and an early packet communications network, known as CYCLADES. His work was influential among Vint Cerf, Robert Kahn and others in the development of TCP/IP Protocols.
Lawrence Roberts – Lawrence Roberts was program manager and office director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency. His team created packet switching and the ARPANET. He founded five start-ups after that, including Telenet, NetExpress, ATM Systems, Caspian Networks and Anagran.
Charles Herzfeld – Herzfeld served as director of ARPA in the 1960s, during which time he authorized the creation of ARPANET, the precursor to the Internet. He later was vice president for research at ITT Corporation and director of defense research and engineering at the US Department of Defense.
Innovators
The Innovators category includes those “building on the work of the earliest pioneers,” those who “made outstanding technological, commercial or policy advances that have transformed the Internet.
Mitchell Baker – Baker began in the 1990s as one of the first few employees at Netscape, she is a founding leader of the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation and a leading developer and supporter of the open source movement.
Tim Berners-Lee – Berners-Lee (pictured at right) is inventor of the World Wide Web and leader of the World Wide Web Consortium – W3C. His Web standards organization continues to make the Web more functional, to connect more people in more ways. His World Wide Web Foundation is helping the Web’s outreach across the globe.
Lawrence Landweber – Landweber’s TheoryNet was a 1970s email system. In 1979 he founded the CSNET to connect all US university and industrial computer research groups; the network had more than 180 members by 1984. He established the first network gateways between the US and other countries and educated people internationally through his global networking workshops.
Raymond Tomlinson- Tomlinson implemented an email system in 1971 on the ARPANET, the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts. He invented the use of the @ sign and he worked to refine various aspects of email, helping to define the ways in which it works.
Robert Cailliau – Cailliau was instrumental in the start of the World Wide Web when it was invented at CERN. He co-developed the proposal for the hypertext system, he produced the first Web browser for the Apple Macintosh in 1992 and he started WISE, the first Web-based project, and he co-founded the WWW conferences.
Philip Zimmermann – Zimmermann (pictured at right) created Pretty Good Privacy, the most popular software for encrypting emails. He is also known for his work with VoIP encryption protocols. His work was part of a battle over email privacy and encryption in the 1990s, when there was a movement to allow governments to read people’s mail
Van Jacobson – Jacobsen is a primary contributor to the TCP/IP protocol stack. Notably, he redesigned TCP/IP’s flow control algorithms to better handle congestion. He wrote many network diagnostics tools, authored dozens of seminal Internet-defining documents, led development of the Internet Multicast Backbone and audio and video conferencing tools, setting standards for VoIP and multimedia.
Paul Mockapetris – Mockapetris is the inventor of the domain name system (DNS) in 1983, after recognizing a weakness in the early Internet. After the formal creation of the IETF in 1986, DNS became an original Internet Standard. He served as a program manager for networking at ARPA – supervising gigabit and optical networking – and has led several start-ups.
Craig Newmark – Newmark is best known for founding the international website Craigslist. It revolutionzed the way people share buy/sell information and other exchanges, shifting that entire aspect of communications from print newspapers to online form.
Linus Torvalds – Torvalds is best known for the development of the Linux kernal and the advancement of the Linux operating system. This open-source OS now serves as the primary foundation for Open Source approached used by Internet developers and companies.
Global Connectors
The Global Connectors are defined by the Internet Society as those “who made significant contributions to the global growth of the Internet for the benefit of society.”
Randy Bush – Bush (pictured at left) is a founder of the Network Startup Resource Center, a pro bono effort to develop and employ technology in projects throughout the world. He says while his name was selected to be honored, the honor of induction truly goes to many hard-working people from around the world who have been inspired to take upon themselves the responsibility to bring the Internet to regions where communications possibilities were once quite limited.
Kilnam Chon– Chon contributed to the growth of the Internet in Asia by advancing initiatives, research and development. He developed the first Internet in Asia, called SDN, in 1982. He has been involved in networking since the 1980s. He founded the Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG) and other key organizations.
Nancy Hafkin – Hafkin is a pioneer of networking and development information and electronic communications in Africa. She worked with the Pan African Development Information Systems of the UN Economic Commission. She coordinated African networking and helped build the continent’s ICT framework through partnerships. She credits a number of women from around Africa with moving forward the projects necessary to build the technical and human capacity to connect the continent.
Brewster Kahle – Kahle is an Internet entrepreneur and digital librarian with the mission of providing “universal access to all knowledge.” He is founder and director of the Internet Archive and its “Wayback Machine” and has created a history of the Internet. He is also a leader of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Daniel Karrenberg – Karrenberg is a pioneer of the Internet in Europe. In the 1980s, he helped build EUNet, the first pan-European Internet Service Provider. In the late ’80s and through the 1990s he was a founder of RIPE, the coordinating force for the Internet in Europe and helped form RIPE NCC, the first Regional Internet Registry. He is a longtime ISOC leader.
Toru Takahashi – Takahashi (at right) has been recognized as one of the premier players in the computer networking field in Japan and his work helped establish the Internet in the Asia-Pacific region. This Internet evangelist helped establish a number of key industry groups that continue to influence the Internet. He is chair of APNIC and an organizer of INTEROP Tokyo.
Tan Tin Wee – An Internet pioneer in Singapore, this biochemist is a long-time leader of the Asia-Pacific Networking Group (APNIC), and he has been involved in multiple Internet projects, including the multilingual Internet domain name system. He started the first Gopher server in Japan and initiated many other firsts in Asia. He continues to guide development of the Tamil Internet.
Al Gore – Gore was the 45th vice president of the United States and then and as a member of Congress he was instrumental in supporting the Internet during its early development, seeing great potential in the fledgling network. His commitment to building the National Information Infrastructure, as it was called then, led to funding for NII, for high-performance computing and for NREN, the National Research and Educational Network.
Geoff Huston – Huston was crucial in bringing the Internet to Australia in the early 1990s through the construction of a national academic and research network, even as the Net was still in its infancy in the United States. He is the author of three books focused on ISPs, and he maintains the ISP Column.
– Reporters: Janna Anderson and Caitlin O’Donnell
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A selection of Twitter Reports from this ISOC 20th event:
@Wired – Outrage: Internet Hall of Fame inducts Cerf, Kahle, Torvalds, even Gore…BUT NO DANCING BABY OR “HAMPSTER.”
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Kilnam Chon, pioneer in the development and advancement of the Internet in Asia. #GlobalINET (pictured below)
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer, co-inventor of TCP/IP and longtime ISOC leader. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Robert Kahn, CEO of CNRI, Internet pioneer, co-inventor of TCP/IP and longtime leader. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Steve Crocker, Internet pioneer, originator of RFCs, ICANN board chair and longtime leader. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Tim Berners-Lee, WWW innovator, Internet pioneer and advocate. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, Internet pioneer as director of the Network Information Center at SRI. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Peter Kirstein, Internet pioneer who co-authored early technical papers on internetworking. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Leonard Kleinrock, Internet pioneer who led development of ARPANET. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: John Klensin, Internet pioneer, longtime IETF leader who authored or edited more than 40 RFCs. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Louis Pouzin, Internet pioneer whose work influenced the development of TCP/IP protocols. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Lawrence Roberts, Internet pioneer, co-inventor of packet switching, director for ARPANET. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Lawrence Landweber, Internet pioneer, founded CSNET/NSFNET, moved TCP/IP forward. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Danny Cohen, pioneer in real-time Internet applications and Network Voice Protocol. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Ray Tomlinson, Internet pioneer who implemented email in 1971 on ARPANET. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Philip Zimmermann, creator of PGP (pretty good privacy) email encryption and VoIP encryption. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Randy Bush, IETF leader who helped start AfriNIC, AfNOG, NANOG, ARIN. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Nancy Hafkin, pioneer in networking in Africa, playing a role in enabling email in the 1990s. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Daniel Karrenberg, founder/chief strategist, RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry for Europe. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Toru Takahashi, Internet pioneer who helped establish the industrial infrastructure in Japan. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Mitchell Baker, general manager at Mozilla and open source leader. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Tan Tin Wee, long-time leader of the Asia-Pacific Networking Group (APNIC). #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Donald Davies, pioneer in development of packet-switching. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Paul Baran, invented packet-switching techniques. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Charles Herzfeld, erved as director of DARPA, during which time he authorized the creation of ARPANET. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Jon Postel, developed RFC document series and administered the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Robert Cailliau, developed the Web at CERN, along with Tim Berners-Lee. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Van Jacobson, a primary contributor to the TCP/IP protocol stack. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the Domain Name System. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Craig Newmark, founder of the international exchange site Craig’s List. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Linus Torvalds, innovator of the Linux kernel and open-source OS. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Al Gore, as a member of Congress and VP he threw political support behind developing the Internet. #GlobalINET
#ISOC 20 Hall of Famer: Geoff Huston, longtime IETF leader, was crucial in bringing the Internet to Australia. #GlobalINET
The multimedia reporting team for Imagining the Internet at the Internet Society’s 20th Anniversary Global INET Conference included the following Elon University students, faculty, staff and friends: Jacquie Adams, Dan Anderson, Janna Anderson, Kacie Anderson, Nicole Chadwick, Jeff Flitter, Addie Haney, Brandon Marshall, Brian Meyer, Caitlin O’Donnell, Rachel Southmayd and Rebecca Smith.