The Washington, D.C. Chapter held an engaging event on July 16, 2018 with Vint Cert, Father of the Internet.

Vint Cerf is the Father of the Internet. He and Robert Kahn developed the framework for the Internet, i.e., the hardware networking on networks such as the ARPANET, and a packet switch protocol, TCP for Transmission Control Protocol, to enable packets of data to be transmitted between nodes of the networks. With this paradigm in place, the Internet grew and exploded in the early 1990s. Dr. Cerf went on to win the prestigious Turning Prize, the Nobel Price for Computer Science, and is now the Chief Internet Evangelist for Google.

At the meeting, Dr. Cerf spoke about the various challenges he faced in the design and implementation of the Internet. The audience was rapt listening to his tech tales. He later answered many questions, including one about Google’s AI work, which he said was going to be job disruptive but not Terminator time. Chapter Chair, Ray Van Dyke, a former computer scientist who was on the ARPANET, brought this opportunity to the Chapter.