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Vint Cerf, a "father of the internet", says he is worried that all the images and documents we have been saving on computers will eventually be lost. Currently a Google vice-president, he believes this could occur as hardware and software become obsolete. He fears that future generations will have little or no record of the 21st Century as we enter what he describes as a "digital Dark Age".

Who could have guessed that 4.3 billion Internet connections wouldn’t be enough? Certainly not Vint Cerf. In 1976, Mr. Cerf and his colleagues in the R.& D. office of the Defense Department had to make a judgment call: how much network address space should they allocate to an experiment connecting computers in an advanced data network? They debated the question for more than a year. Finally, with a deadline looming, Mr. Cerf decided on a number — 4.3 billion separate network addresses, each one representing a connected device — that seemed to provide more room to grow than his experiment...

Received via e-mail: ------------- The following is being sent at the request of Vint Cerf on behalf of Susan Crawford, National Economic Council We need your help in support of a broadband initiative that President Obama cares deeply about. Specifically, we are seeking subject matter experts who would review grant applications being filed with the federal government by applicants seeking financial support for broadband projects throughout the country. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act appropriated $7.2 billion to the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) and the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and to expand broadband...

Network neutrality means less technological innovation — and less freedom, too. By Phil Kerpen Following the nationalization of investment banks, Fannie and Freddie, consumer banks, and private insurance companies, taxpayers are likely asking: What’s left for the federal government to nationalize? How about the Internet? Network neutrality, or net neutrality, is the beneficent-sounding name for sweeping new government regulatory power that would prohibit Internet service providers from innovating in their own networks. This could lead to much less broadband investment by private companies, and could potentially force government subsidization, control, and outright nationalization of the Internet. The implications of this...

Washington, DC – Today, Google is under fire for issuing contradictory statements on privacy. In California, Google responded to California State Assemblyman Joel Anderson’s (R-San Diego) concerns about Google’s privacy policies yesterday by stating that “Google takes privacy very seriously.” However, in Pennsylvania court documents released the same day, Google stated, “privacy does not exist.” Google’s privacy statements yesterday came on the heels of comments by Google “Evangelist” Vint Cerf to the Washington Technology Alliance’s annual luncheon in May where he explained that “nothing you do ever goes away, and nothing you do ever escapes notice… There isn’t any privacy,...