CNRI in the News

Corporation for National Research Initiatives

How the Web Was Won: An Oral History of the Internet, Vanity Fair Magazine.

"Fifty years ago, in response to the surprise Soviet launch of Sputnik, the U.S. military set up the Advanced Research Projects Agency ... Each breakthrough -- network protocols, hypertext, the World Wide Web, the browser -- inspired another as narrow-tied engineers, long-haired hackers, and other visionaries built the foundations for a world-changing technology. Keenan Mayo and Peter Newcomb let the people who made it happen tell the story." Bob Kahn interview, July 2008.

CNRI CEO Bob Kahn Receives the 2008 Japan Prize.

The Science and Technology Foundation of Japan announced that Dr. Robert E. Kahn is a recipient of the Japan Prize for 2008 in the "Information Communication Theory and Technology" category.

Computer History Museum. "An Evening with Robert Kahn in conversation with Ed Feigenbaum".

From the Computer History Museum Presents Speaker Series, January 9, 2007. The full video is available from the museum.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "E-mail from the grave? Microsoft seeks patent on 'immortal computing'", by Todd Bishop, seattlepi.com, January 22, 2007.

Comments from Bob Kahn on the subject of ensuring long term access to digital informational resources.

Laurea Honoris Causa a Vinton G. Cerf e a R. E. Kahn, l'Università di Pisa, May 2006.

The University of Pisa conferred the Bachelor Specialistica Honoris Causa in Computer Science Engineering to Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn during a ceremony held 26 May 2006. (View a video of the ceremony and abstract of Dr. Kahn's lecture.)

Second Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), 16 November 2005, Tunis.

Statement by Dr. Robert E. Kahn, for Corporation for National Research Initiatives.

CNRI CEO Bob Kahn Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In a White House ceremony on November 9, 2005, Bob Kahn received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civil award, for his pioneering work on the development of the Internet."

ACM SIGCOMM 2005. Webcast of the ACM Turing Lecture, 22 August 2005, Robert E. Kahn and Vinton G. Cerf. [Page provides link to the archived webcast.]

"Lecture: Assessing the Internet: Lessons Learned, Strategies for Evolution, and Future Possibilities, Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn, co-recipients of the ACM 2004 Turing Award. Moderated by Lyman Chapin."

National Public Radio. Computer Pioneers Discuss the State of the Net, NPR Morning Edition, 22 August 2005.

"Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn, pioneers in the development of the Internet, recently won the Turing Award, considered the Nobel Prize of computing ... present their assessment of the Internet and its future."

Q & A. Interview with Robert Kahn, 14 August 2005, C-SPAN series airing Sunday nights at 8PM and 11 pm ET.

"Robert Kahn discusses his involvement in the creation of the internet, its future and usage worldwide today."

ACM 2004 Alan M. Turing Award Winners Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn. ACM Announcement, 16 February 2005.

Citation: "For pioneering work on internetworking, including the design and implementation of the Internet's basic communications protocols, TCP/IP, and for inspired leadership in networking."

Related articles:

"Internet Pioneers Cerf and Kahn to Receive ACM Turing Award: Team Developed Architecture for Computers to Communicate". ACM Press Release, New York, February 16, 2005

"Laurels for Giving the Internet Its Language" by Katie Hafner, The New York Times, 16 February 2005.

Financial Times | FT.com. "Getting a handle on data", by Julian Perkin Financial Times, 17 November 2004. (The Financial Times at FT.com is available by subscription only.)

See also the second article of this two-part feature: "Avoiding identity crises", also by Julian Perkin, Financial Times, 1 December 2004.

"Handle-based identifiers, including DOIs, are unique on a global basis, and persistent -- that is, they will stand the course of time, unlike many web addresses. As a result, they are guaranteed to resolve to a real document and can be used, through a system of access via trusted intermediaries, to ensure that everyone gets the same, definitive version of a document such as a government report."

Government Computer News | GCN.com. "Permanent data tags would keep data visible", by Joab Jackson in GCN.com, , Vol. 23 No. 27, 13 September 2004.

"The Categorization of Government Information Working Group of the Interagency Committee on Government Information is drawing up guidelines to apply permanent identification tags to all public government documents, regardless of where they reside."

Release 1.0. "Online Registries: The DNS and Beyond...", by Esther Dyson in Release 1.0, Esther Dyson's Monthly Report, September 2003. [ doi:10.1340/309registries ]

"Meanwhile, the Handle System and its "digital object architecture," developed by Bob Kahn (who also has much of the Internet's architecture to his credit), offers both better technology and "lessons-learned" governance ... but unfortunately it lacks the visibility of the DNS, which is an order of magnitude larger in the number of things registered (approaching 200 million vs. less than one tenth of that). In this issue we start with a look at ICANN and the Domain Name System, and use it as a lens through which to assess the promise and challenges of other registries."

Ubiquity. "Putting it all together with Robert Kahn", in Ubiquity, an ACM IT Magazine and Forum, Vol. 4, Issue 3, March 11-17, 2003.

"'The co-founder of the Internet recalls the non-commercial early days and looks at today's issues of fair use, privacy and the need for security."

Wired News. "Happy Birthday, Dear Internet", by Justin Jaffe, Wired News, 31 December 2002.

The Washington Post. "Visions Of a Wild and Wireless Future", by Shannon Henry, The Download, 23 May 2002, E01. Available for purchase from the Washington Post archive.

"'There are a lot of people who think the Internet happened in the '90s,' says Kahn. Actually, its history is far more extensive. By the same token, present-day AOL does not begin to define the almost boundless future of the medium. All great inventions take years to be explored and appreciated, he says. The age of this technology has only just begun."

Washingtonian. "Geeks Rule; Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn, Internet Fathers", by John Adam, December 2001, pgs. 42-43.

"Nearly 30 years ago, Bob Kahn left his MIT faculty post, took a job at the Defense Department, and moved to Georgetown. Soon after, Kahn convinced Stanford University professor and software expert Vint Cerf to join him at the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The intriguing goal: to enable computer networks to talk to each other."

Computerworld. "Reinventing the Internet", interview with Bob Kahn by Gary H. Anthes, August 27, 2001.

"Who is he? Internet pioneer Robert E. Kahn is chairman, CEO and President of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives, a nonprofit organization established to 'provide leadership and funding for research and development of the National Information Infrastructure.'"

Business Week. "A Library to End All Libraries", Stephen H. Wildstrom, July 23, 2001.

...The project is also part of a much broader effort to make Web content easier to locate and retrieve. ... The underlying technology, called the Handle System, was designed by the government-funded Corporation for National Research Initiatives. CNRI President Robert E. Kahn, one of the original designers of the Internet, describes the mission as 'reconceptualizing the Net from the movement of data packets to the management of information."

Updated: 31 July 2008