Club hosts 'Father of the Net'

Vinton Cerf, senior vice president at MCI and widely recognized "Father of the Internet," spoke Friday at the Wharton Technology Club's first student-run technology conference and exposition. The conference, entitled "Wharton Technology 1.0: Business and the Internet" was co-sponsored by Computerworld magazine and included several prominent speakers and panel discussions. It focused on encouraging an understanding of technology businesses among the Wharton School of Business community. In addition to Cerf's speech, keynote addresses were given by Mecklermedia CEO Alan Meckler and First Virtual Holdings CEO Lee Stein. The topics of the panel discussions ranged from "Building the Information Infrastructure" to "Alternative Business Models of the Internet." The panels included representatives from some of the leading firms in the telecommunications, on-line commerce and software industries -- including Comcast, Lycos and America Online. Cerf, who developed MCI's Internet network, discussed both the development and the future of the Internet. According to Cerf, the Internet is the "gold rush" of the 20th century. "The people who were making money in the gold rush were not the people searching for gold but the people selling the picks, axes and booze to the people searching for gold," he said. In Cerf's equation for money-making, companies like MCI, which sell the tools to access the Internet, are the real winners in the gold rush. Cerf traced the development of the Internet in "Three Waves of Connectivity" -- computer connectivity, information connectivity and process connectivity. "We are going to see computer technology in virtually everything," said Cerf, painting a picture of the future of the Internet which included intelligent agents, Internet appliances and communication to household appliances. He noted, for example, that people will eventually be able to turn on appliances from their computer. Meckler, who received his doctorate in American history, emphasized the extent to which his experiences in academia and library publishing helped him in establishing Mecklermedia -- a leading content provider of Internet news and analysis through newspaper, magazine and trade shows. "The Internet is about one-to-one," said Meckler, who added that it is also about knowing who the audience is and what they want. According to Meckler, "One of the great entrepreneurial opportunities is the [World Wide] Web site. And the whole key to understanding to the web site is verticality and quality." He emphasized that verticality -- or focusing in -- allows for a target audience. His axiom for conducting business on the Internet is, "Quality traffic was better than quantity traffic." Meckler ended the conference by noting that "many changes are coming -- and one of the areas of great opportunity is constructing a business-to-business Web site."