Vint Cerf appointed to National Science Board by President Obama | Hacker News Reader

Vint Cerf appointed to National Science Board by President Obama

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169 pointsohjeez19 comments

I had the pleasure of meeting Vint Cerf last august when he visited University of Nebraska to talk about the history of the Internet and his involvement (him and Bob Kahn wrote the whitepaper on TCP), internet policy / issues, problems with network security, and challenges with modern network engineering. He discussed in length how he would re-design TCP in the context of inter-planetary networking -- it was an incredibly fascinating talk.

I have met very few people who are as informed, passionate, and enjoyable to listen to as Dr. Cerf. His depth of knowledge of software policy issues is astounding, from international networking standards / last August's ITU meetings to the future issues of bit rot and data standardization. Overall, nice move by the Obama administration.

For those who are interested, here is a TED talk that vint gave about inter-planetary internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTmYm3gMYOQ

Watched the video but I honestly can't tell if he's trolling or not ;)

I don't think he is trolling. The idea may be related to how Licklider wanted an intergalactic network: https://www.google.com/search?q=1969+the+intergalactic+netwo...

Licklider knew engineers do what they are told and nothing else. So: give them a really big project or else they won't implement beyond the specifications. It seemed to worked since the Internet has been scalable. Alan Kay, every year, talks about Licklider's intergalactic network in his history of computing talk: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alan+kay

Definitely not a troll: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet

Delay-tolerant network stacks have been deployed on NASA spacecraft.

Some context: this is the Science Board right now: http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/members/

Anyone know how the Science Board actually works? Adding Vint Cerf to a technology panel could be great, but what is the expected result for this?

Their main practical function is to serve as the steering board of the National Science Foundation. They meet a few times a year to vote on major decisions, e.g. which grant initiatives will go forward or be axed, appointments of program managers, budget allocations between research areas, changes in strategic direction, that kind of thing.

http://mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy.asp

What does this specifically have to do with Vint Cerf or the effect of appointing him?

Do you have any specific insight into the relevant organizations, or are you just beating anti-government drums regardless of context?

I would expect no less from the Austrian School.

A better argument would be:

* Applying Bastiat's arguments against govt-funded arts to science: http://mises.org/daily/3806

* Terence Kealey's talks on govt vs private science: http://archive.mises.org/13017/terence-kealey-science-is-a-p...

* Rothbard's paper on Sci/Tech/Govt: http://mises.org/rothbard/science.asp

* Govt tech outdone by high school students: http://www.wlwt.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/Students...

* NASA inventions actually came from private institutions: http://mises.org/daily/2434

However, no matter your argument the chance of influencing people on HN is quite low. There is a reason why terrorist groups seek out engineers (via Rory Sutherland): http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/200... Very few of them would put their trust on the free market. What if the market chooses to develop food/shelter technologies instead of space exploration? We can't have that! (sarcasm)

The Mises organization is structured as a bureaucracy; internally they don't make any utilization of markets.

http://googleblog.blogspot.nl/2005/11/vint-cerf-speaks-out-o...

More recently, he spoke at CES about the lack of ISP competition (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/vint-cerf-interne...). Hopefully this appointment will give him a chance to put internet infrastructure issues back on the table.

Now if only we could have someone who actually understands science and technology on the House or the Senate science and technology committees...

This would be a lot more likely if the House and Senate science and technology committees were seen as desirable appointments. This is not presently the case for a host of reasons.

There's a difference between Cerf's appointment and these positions:

Cerf wasn't elected.

Will he still be getting a Google paycheck?

These positions aren't salaried, so I would guess he'd retain his current job. They do get paid a modest amount on days where they're engaged in NSF business, but at a $524 per-day rate [1] and only about six meetings a year, I doubt he's going to be living on that.

[1] Found here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-PLUMBOOK-2004/pdf/GPO-PLUMB...

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