have a highly automated house that
doesn’t work when it’s not connected
to the Internet. So, you need to have
local capability independent of or in
addition to interactions through the
public Internet.
There are still more people in the
world offline than on. How will connecting these individuals help neglected
and underserved communities around
the world?
MARTIN CASADO: I agree with the
United Nations in the view that connectivity to the Internet is a basic human right. Beyond the intrinsic benefits of better communication within
the community, it provides access to
the grand marketplace that’s erupted
within the Internet. In many ways,
that can become a great equalizer. If
it costs me less to produce a good or
a service, and the distribution cost
(in this case the Internet) is the same,
then I have an advantage in an open
market. Of course, it isn’t as simple as
that, but it certainly does inject underserved communities directly into the
economic nervous system in which
they can participate.
GEORGE ROUSSOS: The two main factors limiting the ability of people to
access the Internet are affordability
and lack of literacy and language skills.
While getting online can provide benefits, connectivity is not a panacea for
all ills. Lifting these communities out
of poverty and getting the basics right
such as access to clean water, vaccinations, or in some cases a less corrupt
government, would be a priority. Moreover, joining the connected world as a
latecomer involves significant hazards
as well as opportunities, so developing
the appropriate skills and safeguards is
a precondition.
There are already interesting cases
highlighting how innovations can be
created from the bottom up: for example, through microlending and using
the mobile Internet to broaden access
to financial services.
JENNIFER REXFORD: I think there is a
lot of opportunity to collect data that
can help people make better deci-
SINCE ITS INAUGURATION in 1966, the ACM A.M. Turing Award has recognized major contributions of lasting importance to computing.
Through the years, it has become the
most prestigious award in computing.
To help celebrate 50 years of the ACM
Turing Award and the visionaries who
have received it, ACM has launched
a campaign called “Panels in Print,”
which takes the form of a collection of
responses from Turing laureates, ACM
award recipients and other ACM experts on a given topic or trend.
For our third Panel in Print, we invited 2009 ACM Prize recipient ERIC
BREWER, 2004 ACM A.M. Turing Award
co-recipient VINT CERF, 2016–2017 Athena Lecturer JENNIFER REXFORD, ACM
Grace Murray Hopper Award recipient
MARTIN CASADO, ACM Fellows NICK
FEAMSTER and JIM KUROSE, and ACM member
GEORGE ROUSSOS to discuss the Internet
of Things (Io T).
What do you see as some of the biggest transformations that have been
brought through the Internet and where
do we go next?
ERIC BREWER: The most important
transformation brought about by the
Internet is the kind of self-empowerment it has caused. If you don’t know
something, you can find it out. If you
want to educate yourself on something,
you can learn it fairly directly. People
feel like they can learn anything, in any
country now.
NICK FEAMSTER: The early Internet
was a network of trusted research universities with very few stakeholders.
There was no business aspect to it,
there were no profits to be taken, and
there was little to no concern over security. The chief goal was connectivity,
and the primary challenges were technical in nature.
Today, the situation is much differ-
ent, with each of the previous points
having been turned completely on
their head. We see increasing tensions
between stakeholders, especially be-
tween Internet service providers and
content providers on to issues like
pricing of Internet access, network
neutrality, performance guarantees
and quality of experience. We also see
tremendous tension in cybersecurity
between attackers, businesses and
end users.
JENNIFER REXFORD: Recently, the Internet has become an amazing way to
collect and analyze data about people
and their behavior and the kinds of
things they do online. This, in turn,
has allowed the information we see
on the Internet to be much more customized, like Google search and so on.
Which brings us to the current evolution, the connecting of the Internet
to the physical world, or Internet of
Things. This is where we are actually
effecting change in the physical world
based on the information that gets collected over networks. .
VINT CERF: Projecting into the future,
we can see much higher-speed access
to the Net, more wireless access and
increasing amounts of artificial intelligence and machine learning adding
to our ability to accomplish our objectives. It’s a rich environment we are
heading into.
There are reasons to be concerned—
for example, about safety, security, privacy, resilience, and robustness. I am
particularly concerned about what I’ll
call “autonomy,” which stems from
my concern that you don’t want to
“The most important
transformation
brought about by
the Internet
is the kind of
self-empowerment
it has caused.”
The Internet of Things
DOI: 10.1145/3061359