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  • WALTER ISAACSON: You know, we're very, very lucky here.

  • I mean, when I wrote this block, I

  • thought, who are the great heroes of it,

  • and Dr. Khan and Vint Cerf are among them,

  • and I hope you appreciate how cool it is, especially

  • for somebody like me who loves history,

  • to be able to talk the internet with you all.

  • VINT CERF: Well, it's a real pleasure to have you here

  • and to have the rest of you here in our new offices.

  • For those of you who came in more on time,

  • we kind of started just informally.

  • This man sitting next to me has had

  • quite an interesting history, so I'll

  • repeat a little bit of that.

  • He's currently the chairman of the Aspen Institute

  • and was formerly the chairman of CNN.

  • He was also managing editor of Time Magazine

  • and has written a whole bunch of books, the most recent of which

  • you have before you, "The Innovators."

  • The most recent before that was Steve Jobs's biography

  • and many others before that, all of which

  • are well worth reading, so we welcome you to our presence

  • and to an opportunity to ask you some questions about this book.

  • Sitting over on my right is Bob Kahn.

  • I was going to say the late Bob Kahn, that would be bad taste,

  • so I won't do that.

  • BOB KAHN: Wasn't that late.

  • Your problem is your garage says it closes at 7 o'clock,

  • so we were about to go find some other garage to park in.

  • VINT CERF: Well, since we're all here,

  • I can make the door open for you.

  • How's that?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: All you have to do is say, OK, glass,

  • open the door.

  • VINT CERF: That's it.

  • I'm wearing one right there.

  • BOB KAHN: Is the audience all from Google?

  • VINT CERF: No, no, no.

  • These are people from all over the place.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Who's from Google?

  • VINT CERF: Fair number but not everybody.

  • So what I thought we would do, Bob,

  • is start out with a couple of questions about the book itself

  • and what Walter has discovered.

  • This thing covers quite a broad range

  • of topics about things that were highly innovative

  • and made huge changes in our history.

  • So what is it that you would distill

  • from what you've already discovered

  • in writing the book that you would like us to take away?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, and let

  • me say that when we get further along

  • and we're discussing the internet,

  • I'm going to turn the tables because to be

  • able to ask questions of the two of you

  • about both the ARPANET, the RFCs, and then

  • the internet protocols.

  • So watch out because that's going to be a two way street.

  • VINT CERF: Fair deal.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: The main thing I discovered.

  • I've written biographies a lot-- Steve Jobs,

  • Einstein, Franklin-- and those of us

  • who write biographies kind of know in the back of our minds

  • that we distort history with the great man theory of history.

  • We make it sound like there's a guy or a gal in a garage

  • or a garret who has a light bulb moment and innovation happens.

  • True innovation, and there's no better example of it

  • then the ARPANET RFC process and then the TCP/IP process,

  • really comes from pairs of people, teams of people,

  • and from collaboration, bouncing ideas off against each other,

  • finishing each other's sentences,

  • and the internet age in particular

  • allows such teamwork and collaboration.

  • The other thing was I started this book when I said,

  • way earlier before we started, we

  • were talking about when I ran digital media for Time Inc

  • in the early 1990s, and I first met Vint when he was at MCI,

  • and I was trying to convince Time Inc to do things

  • with the internet.

  • And so the president of Time Inc says to me, well,

  • who owns the internet?

  • So first of all, I think to myself

  • because I don't want to get fired,

  • that's a clueless question.

  • I say, nobody owns it.

  • He says, well, who built it?

  • Who created it?

  • And I realized after thinking how

  • clueless that question was that I did not really now.

  • And if you feel detached from the history of the things you

  • use, there's sort of a detachment that leads to you

  • not feeling comfortable with it.

  • So I wanted to know, how did computers happen?

  • How did the PC happen?

  • How did the transistor become the microchip,

  • and then how did the internet or digital packet switch networks

  • come into being?

  • So that's why I did this book, and in doing so, as I said,

  • you learn about the importance of collaboration,

  • but you also learn that there wasn't

  • one person who invented the computer.

  • And certainly, even after doing this book,

  • you and I have been discussing some of the,

  • no, I should get more credit type feelings,

  • but it was done creatively and collaboratively.

  • VINT CERF: This notion of collaboration

  • resonates very well with all of us

  • at Google because a lot of the tools that we make and use

  • are exactly collaborative elements,

  • things like Shared Documents, things like the Google

  • Hangouts, things like that where multiple parties can

  • communicate all at the same time.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: That was the original intention

  • of the internet or ARPANET was time

  • sharing research computers, and then collaborating.

  • I even did that with this book.

  • When I was writing that, I said, wait,

  • this is how we collaborate, and I put parts of this book

  • online, like on a medium with Google Docs, whatever,

  • and said, everybody share.

  • Help me collaborate.

  • Help put stuff in.

  • And people like Stewart Brand, who I knew,

  • started rewriting the demise of the Whole Earth Catalog,

  • and exactly what drugs were being served at the demise

  • partly because I got the drugs wrong.

  • But people like Dan Bricklin were explaining,

  • no, VisiCalc was done this way.

  • And so they're in the book from having been crowd sourced.

  • BOB KAHN: Walter, I'd like to ask you a question.

  • Vint and I were both on a panel at the National Academy

  • about a week ago, and one of the questions that came up was,

  • what is the internet?

  • One of the panelists took the position

  • that the internet is what people think it is.

  • So if you think the web is the internet,

  • then that's the internet.

  • If you think the web is this.

  • I just wondered, do you care much

  • in writing a book like that of clarifying that example.

  • Because a lot of places in the book, you say,

  • the ARPANET morphed into internet, and not

  • exactly clear what the internet is from reading your book.

  • Are you comfortable with that definition?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I see the internet,

  • and I'm going to turn it to you, because you should answer

  • it better, but I see it as the TCP/IP protocols.

  • Now, the question is when Tim Berners-Lee

  • puts a layer of that [INAUDIBLE] that have hypertext protocols

  • and markup languages, to me, that's still the internet.

  • Now, the question then becomes, if I'm using Twitter,

  • is that the internet?

  • And the answer technically is no.

  • I mean, that's not--

  • VINT CERF: Well, actually, we could argue that because--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Oh, we could argue it,

  • so let me turn it back to you all.

  • VINT CERF: Wait, wait, wait.

  • You're right in the middle of chapter six,

  • and I wanted to at least point out to you--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Start at chapter one?

  • VINT CERF: Well, we don't have to go through every chapter

  • but this starts out with Ada Lovelace, who

  • was Lord Byron's daughter.

  • And I wanted to start out by just asking, what

  • was it that drew you to that story first,

  • because it's in the 1850s in England,

  • and it's the earliest manifestations

  • of mechanical computing?

  • What made you decide to start there?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: To be honest, what

  • drew it to me first was my daughter had not written

  • her college entrance essay, and my wife, who we've talked

  • about, was going nuts the way Yuppie wives do, and saying,

  • get it done.

  • And one day, Betsy said, I did it.

  • I said, what was it on?

  • She said, Ada Lovelace because she's

  • a computer geek and stuff.

  • And I paused.

  • I kind of knew the name Ada Lovelace,

  • but I didn't know exactly what she did.

  • VINT CERF: You didn't mix it up with Linda Lovelace?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: No, I did not.

  • I'm surprised that people all remember who she is.

  • So I became much more interested in Ada Lovelace.

  • Now, Ada Lovelace is partly a symbol in this book,

  • because as a person, she's kind of controversial,

  • but what she does as Lord Byron's daughter is

  • her mother, Lady Byron, was optically fond of Lord Byron

  • by the time Ada was growing up, for reasons that Byron

  • fans will understand, and so had her tutored mainly

  • in mathematics as if that were an antidote for her becoming

  • a romantic poet, which Lady Byron did not want her to be.

  • So she embraces what she calls poetical science.

  • It's the ability to link the poetic and the beauty

  • of humanities with the technology of science.

  • She loves, for example, traveling the Midlands

  • and looking at the punch cards that

  • are being used in the mechanical looms of the Industrial

  • Revolution in the 1830s.

  • VINT CERF: The Jacquard looms, yes.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: The Jacquard loom,

  • and showing how they weave patterns.

  • Her father, Lord Byron, was a Luddite,

  • and I don't mean that figuratively.

  • His only speech in the House of Lords

  • was defending the followers of Ned Ludd, who

  • were smashing these looms because they

  • were putting people out of work.

  • And he also is there with Mary Shelley

  • when they do Frankenstein's monster.

  • This notion that technology can destroy us

  • was ingrained in Lord Byron.

  • Ada felt the opposite.

  • She had this friend, Charles Babbage,

  • who had made a pretty good calculator called

  • the difference engine, was trying

  • to conceive one which he never got

  • built called the analytical engine, which

  • uses punch cards to do the processing of the numbers.

  • Ada writes a set of notes that are totally fascinating.

  • You've got to read them.

  • And among the notes to this thing

  • is how if you use punch cards, the machine

  • will be able to weave patterns like Jacquard's loom,

  • as she puts it.

  • In other words, the machine will not only do numbers, she says.

  • You can make it do words, or even music.

  • I can feel her father rolling over in the grave.

  • Patterns, anything that can be notated in symbols, she said.

  • So to me, that is the core notion

  • of what a computer is, anything that can be notated in symbols.

  • She has many other things, but I'll

  • only mention one, which is her final note is

  • that they'll do anything but think.

  • Machines will never be creative.

  • Machines will never think.

  • And 100 years later, assuming you're

  • going to jump there, Alan Turing, who really comes up

  • with the concept of the universal computing machine,

  • and then works at Bletchley Park to break the German ENIGMA

  • code with some people.

  • They build the Bombe and then Colossus.

  • He writes a wonderful paper.

  • The movie's about to come out called "The Imitation Game."

  • He called it the imitation game.

  • We now call the Turing test to address

  • what he calls Lady Lovelace's objection,

  • because Turing was fascinated by Lovelace.

  • And he says, well, you say machines will never think.

  • How would we know that?

  • If you had a machine in a different room and a person,

  • you couldn't tell their answers apart,

  • you'd have no empirical reason to say machines don't think.

  • And so he believed in artificial intelligence,

  • that eventually, we would have machines that think without us.

  • I basically use that as one of the framing devices

  • in the book, the notion of those who

  • believe that the intimate partnership between humans

  • and machines will get us forward and those

  • who believe that the pursuit of artificial intelligence

  • will get us forward.

  • Sorry for the long answer.

  • BOB KAHN: One of the first programs

  • that I ever used-- Vint actually wrote one

  • about PARRY and the DOCTOR.

  • This is about the DOCTOR program.

  • It made some outrageous statement,

  • and it was supposed to be a conversation about you.

  • I remember when I saw that, I responded to it, "my oh my,"

  • and its response back was, "your oh your?"

  • And I knew we wouldn't get very far.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: With all due respect to my Google Android's

  • ability to talk to me, it is really hard

  • to do language processing.

  • VINT CERF: Yes.

  • We have a lot of people who have confirmed that.

  • BOB KAHN: And we know quite a bit about it from [INAUDIBLE].

  • WALTER ISAACSON: You know more than anybody.

  • VINT CERF: The earliest experience

  • I ever had with trying to do language translation

  • was at Stanford when I was an undergraduate in the 1960s,

  • and we were pretty naive.

  • We had this Russian/English dictionary,

  • and we poured it into the computer.

  • We typed in, "out of sight, out of mind."

  • We translated that into Russian, then

  • we translated it back into English,

  • and it came back, "invisible idiot."

  • [LAUGHTER]

  • Which told us that there was more

  • to this than the dictionary.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: By the way, the book

  • ends with a chapter called "Ada Forever," which

  • is what you just said, this notion of understanding

  • a bit of language, or being able to spot your mother's

  • face in Grand Central Station, which

  • if you go to the total domain awareness system

  • down in lower Manhattan, they have all these cameras.

  • They say, oh, we can do that.

  • Or a robot that can walk across the room and pick up a crayon.

  • A four-year-old can do it but a machine can't.

  • It's called Moravec's paradox.

  • VINT CERF: It's getting better, though.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: It's always getting better,

  • but it's always 20 years away.

  • It's always a mirage.

  • VINT CERF: Look, the latest Tesla announcement,

  • the D thing parks itself.

  • We're getting closer and closer to something useful,

  • even if it isn't as fully creative as--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I was onstage yesterday

  • with Elon Musk, who told me that the singularity is so close he

  • wants to go to Mars because machine learning will make

  • machines want to destroy us, and he's smarter than I am.

  • You all at Google are smarter, but I've

  • been reading that since 1955 right after Alan Turing

  • does his Turing test, and they always say, 10 years from now,

  • we'll have machines that can think better than we do.

  • Maybe so, but as the heroes of this book,

  • Lick Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Alan Kay, say, in the meantime,

  • let's make our machines connect to us better

  • than try to out-think us.

  • VINT CERF: Well, let's make partners out of them,

  • if nothing else.

  • I have to admit Google search is a pretty cool partner when

  • you think about it.

  • It does stuff that I couldn't do.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And Google search

  • is done not by an algorithm that thinks without us,

  • but an algorithm that harvests millions of links

  • put every day onto websites by humans.

  • VINT CERF: That's right.

  • BOB KAHN: I wanted to ask you one question about something

  • that struck me when I first really understood

  • what Turing and company were doing at Princeton.

  • I gave the keynote at the 100th anniversary of his birth.

  • VINT CERF: His birthday.

  • BOB KAHN: Last year [INAUDIBLE].

  • It was one of a multiplicity of them.

  • But one of the things that struck

  • me back then was when Turing wrote

  • that paper on computable numbers, that was actually

  • not easily accepted by people because they didn't think

  • computing was something that a machine could do at that time,

  • really.

  • If you looked at what Church did with the lambda calculus,

  • it was a conceptual thing.

  • If you looked at what his colleagues, like Kurt Godel,

  • and there were a number of really excellent logicians

  • there at the time, they were thinking

  • of conceptual frameworks for organizing things

  • so that the logic made sense.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: You have to remember that, as you do,

  • uncomputable numbers was not written

  • to invent a universal computing machine.

  • That was just a thought experiment

  • he uses to solve one of Hilbert's

  • mathematical questions about whether all problems are

  • decidable.

  • BOB KAHN: But it seems to me that the one thing that really

  • came out of that was the idea that you could actually

  • create a machine that would do these computations.

  • They eventually showed that recursive function

  • theory and the lambda calculus and the Turing machine all

  • could do all the computable functions,

  • but that wasn't known at the time, nor was it obvious.

  • The realization that pops out at that time

  • that you can actually build something

  • around these numbers that was so fascinating,

  • but I didn't get that out of the book,

  • and I wondered, was that something you just didn't think

  • the public would understand, or was--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I thought that was important, totally

  • fascinating.

  • I drilled down, read the entire Turing thing.

  • That is a sideline because it's not

  • about the actual what they were doing at Bletchley Park, which

  • I was trying to tell.

  • BOB KAHN: This was at Princeton.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Right.

  • What happens there, and I would love your feedback on it,

  • is they are trying to figure out whether all problems are

  • computable, whether it's decidable to know which ones

  • or not, and you end up with Godel

  • saying there's an incompleteness inherent, and with Turing

  • and Church both saying, and we can't even

  • decide what is completable and what's not completable.

  • I'm oversimplifying.

  • So there's still a mystery that's

  • wonderfully inherent in math, that not all things-- I mean,

  • there is an incompleteness in the mathematical system.

  • BOB KAHN: But there was also the fact,

  • I believe, that what Turing had done

  • was not appreciated that much by the other people around him

  • because they were the pure theoreticians,

  • and Turing was more of an engineer,

  • if I can use that term, even though he never built anything,

  • much like the conflicts that we've seen in computer science

  • in recent days between the people who

  • are the pure theorists and the people who are actually

  • building stuff.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: You're absolutely right,

  • and I do say in the book that there

  • are only four or five people who even comment or review

  • his paper.

  • It's not very well thought of.

  • And throughout history, you see that where Penn,

  • they're building these computers,

  • and yet it seems a little beneath their dignity

  • because it's not an academic, theoretical pursuit,

  • so then they get rid of the computer.

  • And even at Princeton, if I may say,

  • the IAS finally, after von Neumann leaves,

  • they don't feel computing is a grand endeavor in its own way.

  • BOB KAHN: Well, there was physics.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Yes, right.

  • VINT CERF: Well, everything is physics

  • when you get right down to it.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Everything is math.

  • VINT CERF: Well, OK.

  • So we start with math and we go to physics,

  • and the abstraction of physics is chemistry,

  • and the abstraction of chemistry is biology,

  • and the abstraction of biology is psychology,

  • and it keeps on going like that.

  • BOB KAHN: But you remember the symposium we had up at MIT

  • when Richard Feynman came and a bunch of others,

  • and it was called "The Simulation of Physics,"

  • and they didn't like that one bit because they said,

  • physics is not a simulation.

  • It's not some bigger, digital thing that's creating it.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: You're losing control of the bus.

  • VINT CERF: I'll come back to a couple of things.

  • Well, it's impossible.

  • Nobody could manage these guys.

  • But I do want to draw you back for just a couple seconds.

  • First of all, the point about Turing, for example,

  • reinforces the notion that theory is helpful

  • if you can underwrite or underscore or somehow support

  • applications.

  • If you don't have much theory underneath the application,

  • then you don't quite know what to expect

  • and what you're doing.

  • So it's clear that the Gedankenexperiment that Turing

  • did is not unlike the Gedankenexperiments

  • that Einstein did.

  • A lot of his work was not math.

  • It was Gedanken imagery.

  • He thought in those terms.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Visual thought experiment.

  • VINT CERF: Now let's go to something more concrete,

  • though.

  • You have a really interesting story

  • here about what happens when the transistor gets built in 1947.

  • The three guys who do this go off-- well, Shockley anyway,

  • goes off to start a company to build transistors.

  • And I think it's worth recounting

  • what happens because the focus that we got

  • to early in this game was collaboration

  • and what happens when you get groups of people all focused

  • on trying to do something.

  • So what happens in that case?

  • Shockley goes to the West Coast and starts his company,

  • brings some really smart people together,

  • which should have produced an important collaboration.

  • What happened?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: It goes to the theme of the book, which

  • is that vision without collaboration and execution

  • is just hallucination.

  • What you have at Bell Labs is this wonderful environment

  • where Shannon is riding a unicycle up and down doing

  • information theory, but you also have--

  • VINT CERF: Did he do that when you were there?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Yes.

  • BOB KAHN: Shannon had left.

  • I started my career at Bell Labs.

  • One of the things I got from your book

  • that I found very interesting was

  • he started at the same place that I did,

  • which was 463 West Street in New York.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Right on Greenwich Village's side

  • of the Hudson.

  • BOB KAHN: It was right on the Hudson River,

  • and you could watch the Queen Mary and Queen

  • Elizabeth coming in every Tuesday

  • and going out every Thursday.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: It's still a wonderful warehouse,

  • and then they moved it to New Jersey.

  • BOB KAHN: Murray Hill existed at the time that I was there.

  • I think it probably didn't when he was there.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: It becomes a cauldron

  • in which you have information theorists, quantum theorists,

  • like Shockley to some extent, and certainly Bardeen.

  • VINT CERF: Bardeen for sure.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Walter Brattain,

  • who is a great experimentalist, but also people with grease

  • under their fingernails who've climbed a pole to figure out,

  • how are we going to amplify a phone signal between New

  • York and San Francisco, and they collaborate.

  • They work together.

  • They have a little bit of a problem

  • once the collaboration was over, does Shockley get

  • to be in the pictures with Bardeen and Brattain,

  • and who gets credit and who gets a Nobel Prize,

  • but before you fight over Nobel Prizes, you collaborate well.

  • Shockley was really bad at collaboration,

  • and he got worse, and the Nobel Prize didn't help.

  • I'm glad we've not all won one yet

  • because it made him into a bit of a jerk.

  • He goes off and he forms Shockley Semiconductor,

  • and he gets more and more uncollaborative with his team,

  • and more and more top down dictatorial,

  • unlike, say, a [INAUDIBLE] environment.

  • VINT CERF: Hiding his research results from other people.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Hiding his research from his own people,

  • making them take lie detector tests,

  • worrying who's going to get the credit.

  • So obviously, the great thing about it

  • is it disintegrates because of this, and the people who

  • fly off from this big bang are so allergic to Shockley's

  • way of doing things that they move to the other extreme, two

  • of the best examples being Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce,

  • who form Fairchild Semiconductor,

  • and then eventually form Intel.

  • VINT CERF: Why was it called Fairchild Semiconductor?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Because they did not

  • have venture capitalists back then,

  • so they wanted to start their own semiconductor company,

  • but they couldn't just go to Sandhill Road

  • and tell Kleiner Perkins, give me an investment.

  • Arthur Rock was just starting, and so he

  • helped put it together.

  • Arthur Rock was not yet a venture capitalist.

  • He was still a banker from the east.

  • So he calls his east coast buddies-- IBM, Bell-- and says,

  • do you want a division we can start

  • that will make semiconductors?

  • And they'll say, no, we don't want that.

  • We don't want an autonomous division.

  • We don't want to give them the power.

  • He's just about to give up and then went

  • to Sherman Fairchild, who's a bit of a nutcase and a playboy

  • and always out in nightclubs and 21 Club.

  • They make a deal and Sherman Fairchild says,

  • yeah, I'll stake you.

  • I'll make you a Fairchild Semiconductor division.

  • They were also doing cameras and aircraft.

  • And of course, it becomes the biggest division

  • in the company, and eventually, Fairchild

  • exercises the right to buy them out, after which Noyce

  • and Moore start their own company, Intel.

  • VINT CERF: That's amazing.

  • So this is sort of like one of those black hole explosion

  • things that--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Well, they call them fairchildren,

  • because Fairchild then breaks up a bit,

  • and if you look at Silicon Valley, you can do a Google map

  • and just say Fairchild, and you'll

  • see all the companies that spun off.

  • BOB KAHN: You know, there are actually

  • two parallel stories with Intel and the work that

  • went on before that are interesting.

  • You focused on one of them in the book,

  • and I knew two of those people very well.

  • I've met Gordon Moore, but I knew Bob Noyce very well,

  • interacted with him a lot, especially when

  • I was doing the DLSI program at DARPA

  • and he was fighting the VISIC program in the DoD.

  • And the other was Andy Grove, who was in my class

  • in undergraduate school, so I knew him.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: That's in New York.

  • BOB KAHN: At City College, yes.

  • So I knew those two well.

  • But the other story that's quite interesting

  • is who gets the credit for the microcomputer.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: The microprocessor

  • or microcomputer?

  • BOB KAHN: The microprocessor in this case.

  • VINT CERF: This is after the integrated circuit, about which

  • there was another big argument.

  • BOB KAHN: That's right.

  • This was in the early '70s, when Intel was trying to figure out

  • internally how you connect one piece to another piece,

  • and instead of doing a one of, they

  • decided, let's build a programmable thing.

  • So you have a guy named Frederico Faggin, who actually

  • did the actual implementation of it.

  • You had a guy named Ted Hoff, who is credited by everybody,

  • and Bob Noyce told me, when he was pushing

  • some of the nominations for awards for him,

  • that he was sort of the architect of the whole thing.

  • But you had it all done in a lab that

  • was run by a fellow named Les Vadez,

  • and Les always claimed that he set

  • the environment and the tone, which enabled it all to happen.

  • Between three of them, they don't really

  • necessarily all see the development the same way.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: You know, it's a shame,

  • and that happens a lot.

  • And in this book, I'm already getting emails,

  • and you are, too.

  • I won't name names because we're online,

  • but people say, he didn't quite give me enough-- oh,

  • actually now I've read it, he give me enough credit.

  • The one I love is Kilby, as you know,

  • Jack Kilby does it at Texas Instruments, the microchip.

  • I'm moving back earlier, the integrated circuit.

  • And Noyce does it at approximately the same time

  • and separately.

  • And Kilby wins the Nobel Prize, and unlike Shockley, it

  • doesn't go to is head.

  • And he also says, if Bob Noyce was still alive,

  • he'd be sharing this prize with me.

  • They both deserve it.

  • They don't give Nobel Prizes when you're--

  • VINT CERF: Kilby didn't get that award until he was 82,

  • and he passed away a couple years later.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: But when they finally bring Kilby

  • and he's awarded it, the Norwegian scientist introducing

  • him says, everything we have in the digital revolution

  • comes from what you did.

  • And Kilby says, that reminds me of what the beaver said

  • to the rabbit at the foot of the Hoover Dam,

  • which is, no, I didn't build it, but it

  • is based on an idea of mine.

  • One of the things about collaboration

  • is it gets hard to allocate credit,

  • and I try very hard in this book to say,

  • OK, here's how I would parse the credit for the computer.

  • I mean, is it basically Mauchly and Eckert at Penn?

  • Is it Atanasoff at Iowa State?

  • Microchip, transistor?

  • We all want to parse out credit, whether we're

  • intellectual property lawyers fighting over the patents,

  • whether we're Nobel Prize jurists,

  • or whether we're biographers, and I tried to minimize,

  • and you and I were talking beforehand.

  • There's dispute amongst the people

  • who conceived of packet switching, which

  • are three or four or five people.

  • They all fight over it.

  • They're all quoted by name on the record, will tell you,

  • oh, this guy's an idiot.

  • I try to say, no, it was the collaboration.

  • Packet switching was an amazing idea.

  • It is the heart of, obviously, what you two did,

  • and I was slightly annoyed by the people who

  • wanted to disparage their colleagues'

  • contribution because there is enough credit to go around.

  • VINT CERF: Exactly, and this emphasizes several things.

  • The first one is a lot of stuff happens

  • because it's now possible to happen.

  • The economics are possible or the amount of memory available

  • makes it possible or the speed of something makes it possible,

  • and so concurrent invention is not

  • unusual under those circumstances.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Especially, there

  • was a miracle year of 1939, let me say,

  • where conceptual breakthroughs have happened, including

  • Turing's papers published on universal computing,

  • but Shannon and other people are starting

  • to apply Boolean algebra to how to do it in circuits.

  • But you also have mechanical inventions, including

  • the vacuum tube and telephone switchboards,

  • that have come together, but you also have the drums

  • of war, both in Germany with Herman Zuse,

  • and at Bletchley Park in England,

  • and at Aberdeen Proving Ground in the United States.

  • It's dawning on people that firepower is actually not

  • going to be as important as computing power in winning

  • the next war, and so that's why I'm

  • convinced that you have a fertile ground from 1940

  • to '45 for the creation of the computer.

  • And likewise, another fertile stew

  • happens, which Google is part of it

  • out in California, Mountain View and all,

  • that in the early '70s, there was just this yeasty brew

  • of counterculture types, electronic geeks, people who

  • had been in the defense industry,

  • people who had read the Whole Earth Catalog once too often,

  • all of whom are coming together and want computing

  • power to the people to take it back from the big corporations,

  • and they're creating the Altair and the Apple and all

  • those machines.

  • VINT CERF: I was waiting for you to leap into something.

  • BOB KAHN: I have so many thoughts going through my mind,

  • I'm not sure where to jump into this.

  • One of the questions I had about the book

  • was, what prompted you to choose the things

  • that you did to emphasize?

  • It's a wonderful read.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: That's the toughest of all questions.

  • BOB KAHN: About the only complaint I have is

  • that you couldn't touch everything

  • with uniform treatment.

  • So for example, there are things that don't show up here at all,

  • like, for example, the role that NSF

  • played in bringing the internet out.

  • There are people who I think played an important role that

  • never get mentioned, like Steve Wolf is a good example.

  • VINT CERF: Absolutely.

  • Gordon Bell.

  • BOB KAHN: I just wondered, this is a reflection

  • on what you felt you wanted to write about.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I had about a 1,000 page book.

  • BOB KAHN: How did you get to this rendition?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: When I did all my notes,

  • there were about 1,000 pages.

  • Wolf is in them, and the other things.

  • There's a certain limit in this day and age

  • to books, which is approximately 500 pages.

  • I mean, that's--

  • BOB KAHN: I've read books bigger than that.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I know, but I meant-- not many.

  • BOB KAHN: I read "Godel, Escher, and Bach" in one swoop.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: That's what, 600 pages?

  • Not much more.

  • BOB KAHN: I think it was more than that.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: That's a good book.

  • BOB KAHN: One sitting.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Yeah, but you know what?

  • Not everybody can read "Godel, Escher, and Bach"

  • in one sitting.

  • You're not the best focus group for the publishing industry.

  • But I did decide, hey, I want to keep it in the package,

  • and I'm going to get to why we don't

  • need to do that in the future.

  • So I ended up picking 12.

  • I just made a list finally at the end,

  • 12 major things I wanted to do.

  • I wanted to do the computer, and so I focused on those three,

  • and by that, I mean the people who really began it,

  • not Control Data Corporation and others that pick it up.

  • I wanted to do the transistor, the microchip, video games,

  • because I actually do think that they were

  • important in the interactive computing realm.

  • I wanted to do software and how original

  • operating system software, and the women

  • as well as men who did it.

  • And I go down the web and others.

  • I could have picked many other things

  • and I could have picked many other people

  • in each one of those categories, but I said, OK,

  • who made a conceptual leap that I really feel passionate about?

  • Now, I know that leaves out more than it includes,

  • but it makes for a narrative.

  • The problem with narrative history

  • is narrative is defined by you leave out a lot of things

  • so that you have a thread.

  • BOB KAHN: But that's really interesting,

  • because if you focus it all on the conceptual leap,

  • you minimize the contributions of the people who actually

  • then implemented those ideas.

  • As an engineer, and I think Vint would agree with this, too,

  • a lot of the details are in making things actually work.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Right, and I really

  • try to emphasize in the book that you

  • have to execute on vision, and that's

  • why I focus on the engineers and the software engineers of ENIAC

  • more than on this conceptual leap

  • that Atanasoff has at Iowa State because he

  • doesn't implement it.

  • And I hope-- I mean, you can be the judge--

  • that with Fairchild and Intel, we

  • get into a lot of the engineers who are making it.

  • Let me leap forward to what I hope

  • is the solution to this, which is I would love it,

  • and Google is the best place to invent it

  • with Google Docs, networks, everything else,

  • and I've tried.

  • I've worked with people.

  • I'm still not there yet, but I would

  • be quite happy to take this book and make it a curated wiki

  • Google Doc, and I have done that with some of the chapters.

  • It's why Dan Bricklin-- you say, why

  • is Bricklin in there for doing VisiCalc?

  • Well frankly, because he gave me all of his documents

  • when he read an early draft and it was on Medium, which

  • is like a Google Doc place where people put in.

  • I think the book of the future will

  • be a collaborative, crowd-sourced,

  • and yet author curated, meaning you just can't run off

  • anywhere, multimedia, where, let us

  • say you want to talk about-- let's pick one thing--

  • how the planar process worked and how the planar process led

  • to the microprocessor being easily invented at Intel.

  • I would love the videos, I'd love the original documents,

  • I'd love people to upload those things, because online,

  • on a Google Book, I'll call it, you couldn't make it

  • not 500 pages but 500,000 pages and video.

  • BOB KAHN: Is that still your book at that point?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And that's why I

  • would like to curate it, meaning that you're

  • going to have fights.

  • I won't name names again, but even

  • with your friends who were originally there

  • with packet switching, just like the revision wars in Wikipedia

  • fought with more intensity than we seem to be fighting wars

  • in the real world these days, you

  • would have to have some curator who would say, OK,

  • enough of this fighting about who

  • came up with packet switching.

  • Let's try to just put it all and synthesize it.

  • But I suspect, like Wikipedia, the crowd

  • would also curate pretty well.

  • I also think, and this is the next thing

  • I would love Google to do, for that to be really fair,

  • there has to be a payment system.

  • I would be happy to put this book online--

  • I shouldn't say this too publicly,

  • but after "Steve Jobs" I'm not looking for more book sales.

  • VINT CERF: This only just came out,

  • so don't say that to your publisher yet.

  • He'll cancel your book tour.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: But let us say that Vint Cerf and Bob

  • Kahn looked at this and said, there

  • are 22 things you really left out

  • of the RFC process and the ARPANET,

  • and then the TCP/IP process we went through in '73,

  • I think it was.

  • And here's all our documents, and here's

  • somebody who should have gotten more credit,

  • here's his picture, here is an interview

  • I've just done with him.

  • I want to put all that up.

  • You would be doing that, as you would be editing a Wikipedia

  • entry, just for the good of the commons,

  • but there would be other people who

  • might want to contribute and actually make

  • a living out of it.

  • BOB KAHN: So this would be like sticky notes on your book?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Well, it would be

  • like making my book into a Wikipedia page

  • where everybody could put documents up,

  • and I would love the royalties to then

  • be allocated in some crypto currency way

  • that Google could invent, so that if people are paying

  • $30 for this book and they read these parts,

  • the royalties get allocated to whoever contributed.

  • VINT CERF: So that's a challenge before us.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And I hope my next book,

  • I'd love to write about Louis Armstrong, but you need music.

  • I would need a Wynton Marsalis to say,

  • here's the 17-bar cadenza that opens "West End Blues,"

  • and here's how he changed it from King Oliver's version,

  • but that would need to be crowd-sourced and multimedia,

  • and I want Google to invent that.

  • BOB KAHN: I always thought that one of the really nice things

  • that historians rely on are crafted treatises

  • on various topics.

  • There's a lady that Vint and I both know

  • who wrote some monographs on infrastructure development.

  • She would not write a single sentence in there

  • that she couldn't curate from some well known historian who

  • quoted something and made a point.

  • So how do you treat something like this

  • when the only real authority behind it

  • is the party who put it all together

  • and everything else is all this other stuff that's

  • stuck in there?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: This is much more footnoted,

  • source noted than, say, the Steve Jobs book,

  • which mainly came from interviews with Steve

  • and 60 or 70 other people around him.

  • I am probably not the best reporter

  • in the history of the world.

  • I just saw Bob Woodward when I was walking here.

  • He's much better.

  • I'm probably not the best academic historian.

  • I mean, somebody like you just talked about who does that.

  • I do have, I hope--

  • BOB KAHN: Yeah, but you write so well.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you so much.

  • But I also have, I hope, the ability

  • to combine historical resource, like looking at the monographs

  • or whatever, with just being able to call Gordon Moore

  • and saying, I'm going to get in the car,

  • I'm going to drive to Woodside, you've

  • got to spend all day with me, and I'm

  • lucky because I've been at Time Magazine.

  • Gordon Moore, who would not take the phone

  • call of my second cousin from Louisiana if he said,

  • I want to drive up to Woodside, I get to see these people.

  • So I do a lot of interviews.

  • There are about 100 or so, including you and others,

  • in the book, but I also go back to the papers and the IEEE

  • and everybody, your collaborated document

  • on the invention of the internet, a little original Len

  • Kleinrock and Paul Baran papers.

  • There's no quote in this book, I think,

  • or no major quote in this book or assertion that's not source

  • cited by name on the record, but all history

  • is just the next draft of history.

  • There will be people who will build upon this.

  • I think I bring some journalistic skills.

  • Other people bring better historical-- Janet Abbate,

  • others who have done great academic histories

  • of the internet.

  • And someday, when it's all part of this curated, crowd-sourced

  • system, you'll be able to hop around and get

  • whatever you want.

  • VINT CERF: So I have a suggestion.

  • He was threatening to turn the tables us,

  • so maybe we should do that, and I'd

  • like to let everybody else have some time to ask questions.

  • BOB KAHN: Are you trying to filibuster against that?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: No, I'm trying to--

  • VINT CERF: I figured I managed to--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I have spent 30 years as a journalist.

  • I love asking the questions.

  • Here I am having the people who actually invented

  • the internet ask me questions.

  • I'm going, that's wacky.

  • I should be asking them questions.

  • BOB KAHN: Actually, when you read the book,

  • the impression that it gives, which

  • I thought is the one you were trying to give,

  • is that collaboration is really everything

  • and all these people really created the internet.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Right.

  • I really wanted to, and it is true.

  • I'm trying to show collaboration, enough

  • credit to go around, and it is true, I sort of think.

  • And then afterwards, people say, you didn't give me

  • quite enough credit, or worse yet, they're

  • suing [INAUDIBLE] over the patents.

  • But generally, collaboration is really cool.

  • And I'll start, there's two real segments of the internet.

  • BOB KAHN: So when you point out Vint and myself,

  • what makes you single us out?

  • I mean, we could give you our views,

  • but I'm wondering what your views are.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I will turn it around

  • and make you give the views.

  • I'll say that there's two great phases

  • in the creation of the internet.

  • Phase one was the creation of ARPANET.

  • I think you were at BBN probably--

  • BOB KAHN: I actually was a system designer.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Yeah, at BBN, right?

  • Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, which was a private company but still

  • very associated with MIT to some extent.

  • BOB KAHN: And Harvard.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And Harvard, and to some extent

  • with the government, because you had from Larry Roberts,

  • and I guess the original Licklider,

  • you had contracts to do what was unfortunately

  • named IMPs, Interface Message Processors, which--

  • BOB KAHN: Why is that unfortunate?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Well, because when BBN got the contract--

  • BOB KAHN: I actually have the little slide

  • that Ted Kennedy sent.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Yeah.

  • I'm going to do a Ted Kennedy joke here,

  • which I'll let Dr. Kahn do the punchline.

  • BOB KAHN: I gave it to Licklider's wife

  • at the ceremony.

  • VINT CERF: Wait, let him do his punchline.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: They don't know the joke

  • before you do the punch--

  • VINT CERF: It's his punchline.

  • Go ahead.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: No.

  • It's the Interface Message Processor,

  • and it's awarded to BBN, which is in Ted Kennedy's district,

  • and he sends a telegram congratulating you

  • on getting the--

  • BOB KAHN: Inter-faith message processor.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Which, by the way,

  • is a wonderfully telling slip, because it was inter-faith,

  • in many ways.

  • VINT CERF: Well actually, he thought

  • he was congratulating them on what

  • he thought was an ecumenical effort.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: It was.

  • It was the ultimate ecumenical effort.

  • VINT CERF: An inter-faith message processor,

  • the Jews and the Muslims and the--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: We basically call them routers now,

  • but these were the machines that were going to--

  • BOB KAHN: Actually, I would say we call them packet switches

  • now.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Yeah, but these were the machines

  • that would be sent to the original nodes on ARPANET that

  • would be an inter-faith or interface between the host

  • machine and the rest of the network.

  • BOB KAHN: So Vint, you mean if it wasn't ecumenical,

  • we wouldn't have gotten that thank you note?

  • VINT CERF: I don't know.

  • It was supposed to be something that was nondenominational.

  • The whole idea was it's non-proprietary,

  • and it was, from Kennedy's choice of words,

  • nondenominational, and that's very true.

  • The IMPs were there, packet switches,

  • to form this uniform, homogeneous network

  • to deal with an extremely heterogeneous collection

  • of computers that were on the edges.

  • And that demonstration, to take your point

  • about these two phases of the whole process.

  • The first phase demonstrated that heterogeneous computers

  • and operating systems could be made

  • to communicate across a homogeneous network,

  • and that was the beginning of understanding

  • what was possible.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And it was the ultimate collaborative process,

  • which is what I'm going to ask you about,

  • because if somebody had to say, if you could show me

  • the true nature of a collaborative process-- this is

  • early on, before we're getting to the internet TCP/IP

  • process-- is, how are these IMPs going to communicate

  • with host computers and each other?

  • And everybody vaguely expected that, either

  • from the bosses of BBN or the bosses in the Pentagon,

  • the word would be sent down, but instead, it's

  • done collaboratively mainly by graduate student,

  • including you were a graduate student.

  • BOB KAHN: There are actually two parts of that process.

  • The one that had the computers talking to the other computers

  • was what led to the host to host protocols.

  • That's one Vint was very involved in,

  • along with a number of other people.

  • And the second part that had to do with how the machines talked

  • to these interface message processors was in a BBN report

  • that I authored called "BBN Report

  • 1822," so that interface was all called the 1822 interface,

  • and that was a combination of how the hardware would work,

  • because you had different word size machines, how

  • the software would work, and that

  • was a precursor to having the machines talk to each other.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Right.

  • And the one I focus on, because you

  • asked, why do you focus on things,

  • is the request for comment process,

  • because it was so collaborative and collegial, even the phrase

  • that Steve Crocker, who you turned me onto and I went

  • and interviewed for the book.

  • He's just a graduate student with you,

  • and instead of having the graduate student say,

  • here's the way we should do it, he said,

  • I had to think of a name that would

  • make people feel like they were collaborators in this.

  • And so when we sent them out, I didn't want to say,

  • here's our plan or our proposal.

  • He was standing in the shower at his girlfriend's house,

  • he said, and it came to him that he

  • should call it a request for comment

  • because it was so open and inviting, as opposed to, here's

  • what you're supposed to do.

  • Let me let Vint tell the story from there, and then Bob,

  • but you were in the RFC process, weren't you?

  • VINT CERF: Yes, but to draw a little bit further

  • on what Bob was talking about, in order to have communication

  • at all, you need to have commonality, and so the 1822

  • hardware and software interface between the host that

  • were heterogeneous and the IMPs that were homogeneous

  • was the first important piece of commonality.

  • The next piece of commonality is that the computers

  • at the edges of the net needed to share something

  • in common so they could communicate

  • with each other, packet formats and protocols,

  • handshaking, and so on.

  • That's what Steve and I and others

  • worked on, the host to host protocols.

  • Steve and I and the others, Jon Postel,

  • were graduate students in Len Kleinrock's laboratory at UCLA,

  • and we kept thinking that somebody, like Larry Roberts,

  • who was in charge of the project at ARPA,

  • would come out and tell us what we were supposed to do,

  • and he didn't.

  • So we thought, well, we have to do something.

  • BOB KAHN: He didn't know.

  • He was expecting you to tell him.

  • VINT CERF: Len didn't tell us either.

  • So basically, it's graduate students who

  • are scratching their heads saying, well,

  • we have to do something.

  • So Steve did a beautiful job, exactly

  • as you say, organizing this group, which

  • spanned across a dozen different universities,

  • looking at not only how to get the computers to exchange

  • postcards, so to speak, but also to build on top of that.

  • So this notion of layering came out very early

  • on in the ARPANET history.

  • We learned an enormous amount from that experiment.

  • Email came along in 1971, two years after we turned the IMPs

  • on at UCLA, Santa Barbara, SRI International, and Utah.

  • BBN, where Bob was still, was pumping out IMPs,

  • and they were popping up on the network, one

  • a month for quite awhile.

  • So we were experiencing utility from this homogeneous network,

  • and got pretty excited about that.

  • So that's the first phase, as you said.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And to me-- and tell me if I'm wrong--

  • but the notion that you all did this to an RFC process

  • I found fascinating because it almost

  • seems like it's ingrained in the genetic code of the internet,

  • which is a collaborative system, built collaboratively.

  • VINT CERF: This, I think, is fairly important.

  • Bob, I think you've been very articulate about this.

  • Not only did we have a bunch of people

  • who shared this common excitement

  • and view that we could make this stuff work,

  • but the institutions that have been created,

  • arising from the ARPANET project and the internet project,

  • were equally bottom up and collaborative,

  • and this notion of multi-stakeholder models,

  • where all the parties who have a stake in something

  • participate in the development, whether it's

  • the technical development or development of policy,

  • infuses all of this internet environment.

  • I have to say that Steve's trailblazing--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Steve Crocker.

  • VINT CERF: Steve Crocker's trail blazing-- that's right.

  • You would think Jobs, wouldn't you?

  • So Steve Crocker's trail blazing I think

  • helped set that tone, and all the institutions who came out

  • after that had a very similar character.

  • BOB KAHN: The counterpart to that,

  • though, is that these computers were all linked together

  • through a single network called ARPANET,

  • and the process by which the ARPANET was built

  • involved DARPA, generally in the form of Larry

  • with a group that be coordinated with,

  • essentially writing the requirement specs.

  • Half a second delay across the net, 1,000 bit packets or less,

  • and so forth.

  • But the actual building of that net

  • was much more insular than any of the other things that

  • went on.

  • In fact, there was almost a desire by BBN

  • to keep it that way.

  • In addition to playing a technical role there

  • that was pretty important, I was the only one

  • that was assigned to deal with the external community.

  • That was my job.

  • If anybody had a question, I was the only one

  • they knew of because nobody else,

  • they were not interested in having

  • them be deviated from a very short time frame

  • to get something done with questions from the community.

  • And this BBN Report 1822 was one of the hardest things

  • I ever wrote my life because I had to make a document that all

  • of the sites that would connect had

  • to be able to read and understand,

  • and I have to solve their problems,

  • at the same time abstracting out everything

  • about the net that they didn't need to know about.

  • So it was an intellectual exercise of the first order

  • to actually write that report in a way that

  • didn't get into so much detail.

  • I get so many questions about, exactly how does the routing

  • work, and exactly how does the buffering work,

  • and how does the [INAUDIBLE] control work?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: You just answered the question

  • of why I have to leave some stuff out, too.

  • Whenever you're writing something like that.

  • I want to ask you all a question, before we

  • get to the internet TCP/IP, which is the next step,

  • is there's a great controversy, which I show

  • both sides of in this book, as to whether or not the ARPANET,

  • I'll call it, was designed with partly surviving

  • a nuclear attack in mind.

  • BOB KAHN: Yeah.

  • Vint wasn't internal to DARPA at the time,

  • and I wasn't there when it first started,

  • but I read a lot of the internal documentation on that

  • and talked to a number of people.

  • There are two or three points of view on this.

  • One is, and you call it out in your book, Charlie Herzfeld,

  • who Taylor likes to talk about the 10 minute story,

  • and you clarify that it was really

  • multiple years that [INAUDIBLE].

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I hate clarifying stories

  • that are so good you want them to just

  • be told the way people like that.

  • BOB KAHN: That one, and that the Kleinrock story about sending

  • the L and the O. That was years before we had the protocols,

  • years before we had email systems and the like,

  • but they're nice stories.

  • When it comes to the actual implementation, what

  • was motivating the folks in the office

  • was the economics of sharing computer resources that

  • were very expensive.

  • I can recall Harvard got a big disk.

  • At the time, it was probably $1 million,

  • and so some other university like Carnegie Mellon said,

  • we need one, too.

  • Well, why spend another $1 million on Carnegie

  • when they could share the one at Harvard, save DARPA some money?

  • Part of it was the economics, but if you actually

  • look at the documentation, it talks

  • about needing to build this net to facilitate computer resource

  • sharing, so there were some interesting technical problems.

  • It points out that the network itself

  • could have a big effect on communications.

  • But this was at the office level,

  • so there was nothing that pervaded the office activities

  • that had anything to do with nuclear survivability or any

  • of the military aspects.

  • What Steve Lukasik wrote about, and he's written very clearly

  • about this over the years, was that at his level and above,

  • the reason they thought this was a good investment for DARPA

  • to do is because it could have all of this impact.

  • VINT CERF: Distributed.

  • There's no central hub to the internet.

  • BOB KAHN: It could be reliable communications.

  • VINT CERF: And it will route around any Soviet attack.

  • BOB KAHN: It could be a better solution for command

  • and control and so forth.

  • So to say that that wasn't there because the office didn't

  • see it would be denying what was going on elsewhere.

  • VINT CERF: If I may read, there's

  • a very funny exchange in here about that.

  • Go ahead.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: This is the one I think you're talking about,

  • which is when Lukasik, who said, hey,

  • we were doing it to survive a nuclear attack.

  • You down at the office level didn't know that,

  • but that's why we were funding it, and Crocker says, no,

  • you weren't.

  • So anyway, I interviewed them both, and--

  • BOB KAHN: Yeah, I know.

  • Crocker changed his mind.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And Lukasik says, "I was on top

  • and you were on the bottom," this

  • is what he says to Steve Crocker,

  • "so you really had no idea of what was going on

  • and why we were doing it."

  • To which, when I told Crocker this,

  • Crocker responded, "I was on the bottom and you were on the top,

  • so you had no idea what was really going on."

  • That's the way life is sometimes in a collaborative process.

  • VINT CERF: I get to add one little codicil to this

  • because the original work that Paul Baran did

  • on survivable networks, the 11 volume series

  • called "On Distributed Communication,"

  • was all about building a survivable command and control

  • network.

  • It was digital in nature but it was caring digital voice.

  • Think about this.

  • He's doing this around 1960 before we

  • have integrated circuits or anything else.

  • So he's looking at survivable command and control,

  • then along comes this ARPANET thing and for many of us,

  • it was a resource sharing project.

  • Then internet comes along, we come to that,

  • and I remember thinking, when it was my responsibility

  • to manage the program, that we should actually demonstrate

  • that the TCP/IP protocols would in fact allow

  • you to survive a nuclear attack.

  • So although I may be jumping ahead a little bit,

  • towards the end of my tenure at DARPA,

  • we actually put packet radios in the strategic aircraft

  • and flew them around and artificially disabled

  • the ARPANET, broke it up into pieces

  • and reassembled it using packet radios in the air

  • and on the ground using TCP/IP, to demonstrate

  • that you could actually make a survival network.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And since women programmers

  • don't often get their due in history,

  • you had a great woman, Perlman right?

  • VINT CERF: Radia Perlman did a fabulous job

  • of designing the routing system that would recover,

  • by figuring out what the broken segments were

  • and how to glue them back together.

  • She did a beautiful job.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Let me, Bob, if I may, leap to I

  • think what would be spring of 1973, if I remember correctly.

  • What you have is ARPANET, and as you say,

  • I don't do enough with the NSF net,

  • and there are other nets, and ALOHAnet, and all--

  • VINT CERF: Of course, they don't exist yet.

  • BOB KAHN: I want to stipulate for the record,

  • I didn't think you could cover everything.

  • I was just asking why you picked what you did.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: But anyway, all of a sudden,

  • there are a whole lot of packet switch networks,

  • but they don't talk to each other.

  • VINT CERF: There were only four.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Only four.

  • ALOHAnet--

  • VINT CERF: At that point, you had ALOHA,

  • you had packet radio, you had packet satellite,

  • and you had ehternet.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And then you had ARPANET.

  • VINT CERF: And you had ARPANET, so there's five.

  • BOB KAHN: You're going at the story from the back end.

  • I would like to tell it from the front end.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Tell it from the front end.

  • BOB KAHN: The front end was we had

  • the ARPANET was DARPA had commissioned that.

  • We built it.

  • I then go to DARPA and I show up there

  • in roughly the end of October of 1972,

  • and I go there to start a program

  • that automated manufacturing, which the Congress later kills.

  • VINT CERF: They're back at it again, though.

  • I mean, automated manufacturing.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Or killing programs.

  • VINT CERF: Have you seen how the Tesla-- anyway, go ahead.

  • BOB KAHN: So when they kill the program,

  • I'm thinking, all right, what I signed up for here,

  • I'm going to go back to MIT, where I had a standing

  • offer to go join the faculty again

  • because I had started my career out there after getting

  • a doctorate from Princeton and before going

  • to BBN on a leave of absence.

  • So I was thinking.

  • Larry Roberts, who's running the office, persuades me, stay on.

  • You've been so involved in networking, don't do that.

  • So I agree to give it a shot, but only if I can have nothing

  • to do with the ARPANET because I did that before.

  • I wanted to do something new.

  • VINT CERF: Well, you would have been constrained,

  • in some sense, because you were at BBN

  • and they were still a contractor,

  • and you can't manage them as a program manager

  • after having been at BBN--

  • BOB KAHN: This was before we had conflict of interest rules.

  • I mean, I got my own ability to manage conflict, so not

  • a problem for me.

  • VINT CERF: No conflict, no interest.

  • BOB KAHN: Not a problem for me.

  • But I finally said, all right, I'll give it a shot.

  • I started the packet radio program after I got to DARPA,

  • and I started the packet satellite program as a program.

  • Now, let me just say, Larry had started

  • to fund BBN to turn a satellite IMP into one that

  • could use a satellite as a modem relay.

  • And one of the issues that I had to deal with was, was

  • that a good idea or not?

  • I thought, no, it wasn't.

  • Let's make the satellite net a separate net

  • by splitting it out, and this was

  • an interesting technical discussion we had with BBN,

  • because they were of the opinion that this would be much more

  • reliable if everything was in an IMP,

  • but that meant you could never do the equivalent of putting

  • a router in between it.

  • You'd just lose complete control because everything

  • was memory to memory transfers.

  • So we ended up building a separate net

  • on a satellite net.

  • When Larry funded them, there were no domestic satellites

  • at all.

  • There was no plan to use a satellite anywhere.

  • And so I ended up negotiating with COMSAT,

  • and then an Intel sat to actually set up

  • tariffs that would enable this to happen,

  • and then we set up the program.

  • The one who ran that program technically was a fellow

  • named Irwin Jacobs, who later became the founder of Qualcom.

  • I was sort of chief architect of the packet radio program, which

  • became essentially the forerunner of today's CVMA

  • technology.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: The point is that you have these

  • all of these networks and they don't interconnect.

  • BOB KAHN: These three networks show up,

  • and that was what motivated me to work on the problem

  • of inter-networking them, and I had some architectural--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Let me pause right there because when I

  • heard the word "inter-networking," I said,

  • I get it.

  • That's where internet comes from.

  • Is that right?

  • BOB KAHN: That's where it came from.

  • And so I had that as a goal.

  • I had some architectural principles.

  • We knew about putting-- we didn't call them routers then,

  • we called them gateways.

  • But I came from a communications background,

  • and so I was very comfortable with building things that

  • could move the bits around, but I was less comfortable

  • what the computers would do with them when they got that.

  • And Vint and I had collaborated a lot

  • on the ARPANET side of things, me on the communications part,

  • him on the computing part.

  • He knew more about how you embed these protocols

  • into the end computers.

  • I approached them at one point and said,

  • look, here's what I'm trying to do

  • and here's a whole architectural approach.

  • Here's what I really don't know.

  • I don't know about what it will take

  • in these different machines.

  • We agreed to collaborate, and based on that collaboration,

  • I think both parts of it came out better.

  • We were able to improve the communications part,

  • we were able to improve the end part.

  • I've had many collaborations, but the one with Vint

  • was probably one of the best, and we've

  • stayed pretty good friends over the whole time.

  • VINT CERF: In spite of that.

  • BOB KAHN: In spite of everything, right.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: That really does

  • show that this was a partnership,

  • this was collaboration.

  • BOB KAHN: Bit that's where it came from.

  • It came from the need to connect all these different nets.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: So explain how you turned that into TCP/IP.

  • BOB KAHN: Well, we did it together.

  • VINT CERF: He and I spent six months trying

  • to sort all this out, and eventually, this notion

  • of gateway-- the system sort of emerged out of requirements.

  • You have a bunch of networks and we

  • weren't allowed to change any of them,

  • and the question is, well, if they

  • can't know that they're part of a distributed system,

  • how do we link them together?

  • The conclusion was you needed something

  • in between that knew how to talk to both networks

  • and would glue them together even though they

  • didn't know they were connected.

  • Then the other problem is that the hosts at the edges

  • needed to be able to say something like, send this

  • to another network, but there was no language for that

  • because--

  • WALTER ISAACSON: It was like putting a postcard

  • in another envelope?

  • VINT CERF: Well, the first problem

  • is language because the network that you were connected

  • to locally had no vocabulary for even understanding,

  • take this thing and send it to some other net.

  • Every net thought it was the only net in the world.

  • BOB KAHN: I have to tell you what addressing

  • was like in the ARPANET, 16-bit addresses.

  • When you sent something, you said, essentially,

  • send it to this wire.

  • Imagine that every wire are on the network was numbered.

  • So you say, send this to wire 17,

  • and what was supposed to be attached to wire 17

  • was a big computer, so that worked fine on the ARPANET.

  • But if wire 17 then went to some other net, which

  • had a whole bunch of computers, which of those computers

  • was it for?

  • There was no way that language could describe it.

  • VINT CERF: You couldn't say that,

  • so we had to invent the internet protocol addressing.

  • BOB KAHN: That's where IP addresses came from.

  • VINT CERF: And then we realized that, in addition to that,

  • of course, we had to make sure that all the data that we sent

  • in these little postcard size pieces

  • would be received and reassembled at the other end,

  • and we knew that some of the networks,

  • like the packet radio net and the ethernet, would be lossy.

  • There would be radio shadow, there

  • would be jamming and all kinds of things,

  • so we had to, on an end to end basis,

  • make sure that the communication was reliable.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: So how did you do that with the transmission

  • control protocol?

  • VINT CERF: Transmission control protocol.

  • Actually, the first papers that we wrote had only one protocol.

  • It was called TCP, and it did everything.

  • BOB KAHN: It had IP integrated inside.

  • VINT CERF: It solved the addressing problem.

  • It solved the end to end retransmission and filtering

  • out of duplicates, flow control, and reordering,

  • and everything was all part of the one protocol.

  • But after a few iterations, finding some bugs

  • in the design, several people beat us over the head and said,

  • we really need a way of delivering things really,

  • really quickly even if not everything gets there.

  • So we split the internet protocol out

  • from the TCP part, the end to end reliable part,

  • and then created something called User Datagram Protocol

  • so we could handle real time traffic.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Let me ask you a question I didn't

  • ask for the book, which is, if you had to do it all over

  • again knowing what you know now, what would you

  • have designed differently?

  • BOB KAHN: I would have started with the digital logic

  • architecture that I've been working on for the last 20

  • years, but that's not fair because it's like saying,

  • how would radio communications in this country

  • have evolved if the semiconductor

  • chip was available in 1915?

  • You can't run that Gedankenexperiment anymore.

  • VINT CERF: But there are things that I

  • wish that we could have done that we didn't,

  • like I wish that we had picked 128-bit address space instead

  • of a 32-bit address space.

  • We wouldn't have to go through this pain

  • of the IPv6 transition.

  • BOB KAHN: What makes you think 128 bits is enough?

  • VINT CERF: Well, it might not be,

  • but it'll be enough until after we're dead.

  • Then it doesn't matter.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Let me talk about more consumer

  • friendly things, rather than addressable space, which

  • is things like, is there too much anonymity built

  • into the internet?

  • Would we be better off if people were a little bit more

  • responsible for what they put up?

  • BOB KAHN: I think that identity in the internet

  • is really important.

  • I would like to see us come to the point

  • where everybody has unique and persistent identifiers that

  • resolve to reasonable state information about them,

  • and they can have multiple identities,

  • depending on the role they want to play.

  • And one of those roles we must absolutely support, I think,

  • is the role of anonymous.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: So you'd have an anonymous, pseudonymous

  • thing.

  • BOB KAHN: You can decide how you want to participate.

  • If I want to participate as a government employee,

  • I'm probably going to give a government employee identifier.

  • If I'm going to participate as a representative of my company,

  • that's a different one.

  • And then maybe the services and the opportunities you get

  • are determined by how definitive your identity is.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: But in other words,

  • you could create an internet in which there's secure ID,

  • and when I'm dealing with my bank,

  • I would have to use that identity when

  • I'm dealing with them.

  • BOB KAHN: Well, if this were back in 1972 and Vint

  • and I were doing it, I would say, yes, we could do that.

  • Today, I don't think anybody can do that anymore

  • because there's so many places and parties around the globe.

  • We can work toward it.

  • VINT CERF: I actually think it's possible to do some things,

  • to create strongly authenticated identities,

  • and also to achieve some anonymity,

  • but we're running out of time, it turns out.

  • BOB KAHN: But Vint, I agree with that.

  • I was harping on his question about you.

  • You could do it.

  • VINT CERF: We've got to let these other folks ask

  • questions, too.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Having three moderators

  • is always hard, right?

  • VINT CERF: So I've got one question.

  • Patrice?

  • And then anybody else, get your hands up.

  • BOB KAHN: This is also my wife.

  • I saw her come in.

  • AUDIENCE: I'm going to throw a softball.

  • I've been sitting here looking at your title, "Innovators."

  • I started life out years ago as a copyright attorney.

  • I'm very much interested in the creative process,

  • and I've heard a lot tonight about collaboration

  • as if the spark of innovation doesn't quite matter anymore,

  • that it's some kind of muddled group, they get together,

  • and they come up with the idea.

  • Now, I've worked with Bob and Vint over the years,

  • and I was listening tonight to their discussion

  • of the early days, which that's an interesting story,

  • but they each brought their own innovation to it

  • so you could have a finer level of granularity.

  • So you can have a collaboration, but if you

  • have a bunch of dullards and one really bright card, then

  • the collaboration really is a useless concept.

  • You have to look at the innovation, what

  • is the creative force?

  • I'm trying to nuance a bit because I

  • heard the drumbeat of collaboration a bit much.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: That's why it's a long book in a way

  • because a lot of collaborative teams

  • don't work particularly well.

  • I loved both the RFC process, and then

  • what you all talk about, about the TCP/IP process, which

  • is two people each bringing, you're

  • slightly more of a communications mindset,

  • whatever, but it ends up being a collaboration where

  • innovation really happens.

  • Now, by the way, that happens with Steve Jobs

  • and Steve Wozniak.

  • They are bringing different things to the party.

  • It certainly happened with Andy Grove and Bob Noyce.

  • One's a congregationalist who loves singing madrigal songs

  • in a congregational church, and the other

  • had to swim to escape the Nazis and the Communists.

  • I even tried to do that with Benjamin Franklin,

  • because he was not the smartest of the founders--

  • I mean, Jefferson, Madison, and all--

  • but he was the one who was the glue who could bring together

  • a Washington who's indispensable,

  • passionate people like John and Sam Adams,

  • smart people like Madison and Jefferson.

  • It's almost like a baseball team.

  • You need a pitcher, a catcher, you need the manager,

  • you also need utility infielders.

  • What makes for a collaboration that has both a visionary

  • but also executors?

  • BOB KAHN: Walter, who was the smartest of the founders?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: The smartest of the founders

  • may have in-- I don't know.

  • It's a good question, and "smart" means

  • many different things.

  • I think Franklin was really smart

  • because he knew how to bring smart people together,

  • which is a skill.

  • VINT CERF: Yeah, but he was a twit.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I think Madison was intellectually-- what?

  • VINT CERF: He was a twit.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: A twit?

  • Franklin?

  • VINT CERF: Yeah, Franklin.

  • Well, I read your book.

  • You spelled it out.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: John Adams was a twit, not Franklin.

  • I think Madison was the most creative mind there.

  • Obviously, Jefferson is very fertile mind,

  • but we don't have to get into a debate on the founders,

  • as much as I have my problems with Jefferson that

  • go to the limits of intelligence.

  • VINT CERF: Let's let the audience ask questions.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Susan?

  • AUDIENCE: No, no.

  • Who else has a question here?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: You're the moderator.

  • I shouldn't be able to pick out people.

  • AUDIENCE: I'm Alex Howard.

  • I've enjoyed reading your books, following along, and using

  • the internet for some time.

  • I couldn't help noticing as I opened this up that you have

  • Ken Kesey in there, and Stewart Brand, who you mention.

  • If you look at the people in this book,

  • it's an American and British story in a lot of ways.

  • Since we're in DC and people think about public policy

  • here a lot, how you create the conditions for innovation,

  • if you look at that story, how do you do that now,

  • as people are thinking about national competitiveness,

  • about education, about being inclusive,

  • because STEM is a big issue?

  • The impact of you writing about this

  • has caused quite a stir, too, to recall the limit of ENIAC.

  • It's important that the original computers were women.

  • When you think about the conditions for innovation,

  • what have you learned from that, and what have you

  • all seen, too, in terms of the things being focused on?

  • BOB KAHN: This is not a question about genetics, right?

  • AUDIENCE: Absolutely not.

  • No, it's a condition about how we create the next big thing.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: But it is a question

  • about the primordial stew from which the DNA emerges.

  • VINT CERF: So at Google, I think the most important ingredient

  • for innovation is permission to fail

  • and the willingness to let you try crazy ideas.

  • The founders are willfully determined

  • that we will push the envelope.

  • That's why we have a Google X and we've

  • got a moonshot experiments and things

  • that, like self driving cars.

  • I think this attitude also shows up in the Silicon Valley,

  • where venture capital is willing to accept risk.

  • They know that maybe only 10% of the things they invest in

  • will actually work out.

  • I don't think it's a peculiarly American attitude,

  • but it is an American attitude, and I

  • don't think we've lost that.

  • I think we still have it and we should use it.

  • BOB KAHN: And that's also true in DARPA to a large extent.

  • VINT CERF: Oh, absolutely.

  • BOB KAHN: They shoot high and are willing to fail,

  • even though they don't fail too often because they often

  • don't shoot as high as they start out shooting for.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I'd like to ask you

  • a question on that, which is--

  • VINT CERF: They're supposed to be asking questions.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Oh, sorry.

  • BOB KAHN: A lot of success stories.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Well, I'll just make a quick statement

  • that I think we have blown it a bit in government

  • because it used to be you were allowed to fail, and now

  • any little gaffe you make in this day and age,

  • you'll never get confirmed, you'll get run out of town.

  • In Silicon Valley, at least, or in other innovative places,

  • you're allowed to fail.

  • I have Ken Kesey in the book because it

  • was a rebellious attitude that happens

  • in the late '60s and early '70s in the Bay Area that involves

  • "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test"

  • and Stewart Brand, and also Doug Engelbart, as you know,

  • with the mother of all demos.

  • It's almost like one of the electric Kool-Aid acid tests.

  • It has Brand as the impresario.

  • So part of that cultural stew was

  • the rebellious counterculture, anti-war, anti-authoritarian,

  • hippie, acid test mentality that has been written about

  • by Fred Turner very well, by Steve Levy, John Markoff.

  • Many people have written about that hacker mentality,

  • and it ties into the rebellious as it allows you to fail.

  • VINT CERF: Let's get two or three questions

  • asked, and then we'll try to respond

  • to them as a way of getting more.

  • Let's start over here.

  • AUDIENCE: Hi, Jim.

  • On the theme of collaboration, with the internet

  • hopefully going to be accessible by the next four billion people

  • on the earth's surface and more than half the population,

  • in terms of the global innovator community

  • and people's ability to solve their own problems,

  • what would you like the internet to help do in the future

  • to solve global problems, to connect people to collaborate

  • on problems that seemingly are insurmountable?

  • VINT CERF: So global collaboration,

  • what can the internet do?

  • Let's get a couple more.

  • AUDIENCE: I really love "Steve Jobs," the book, rather,

  • and I'd like to ask Mr. Isaacson, what

  • are your impressions of innovation

  • at Apple after the passing of Mr. Jobs,

  • because it seems to highlight that tension

  • between a strong singular visionary and then

  • a collaborative team?

  • I think there is a storyline that there's

  • been some drift since you lost that visionary.

  • VINT CERF: OK.

  • So we've got collaboration at Apple

  • and we have global collaboration over the internet.

  • One more if there are?

  • If not, we'll try to tackle those two.

  • There's one more here.

  • AUDIENCE: So Mr. Isaacson, how did you

  • pick who the four people were going to be on your book cover?

  • VINT CERF: All right.

  • AUDIENCE: I appreciate that there's a woman up there.

  • VINT CERF: I'm pretty sure we're not

  • going to be able to integrate one answer to all that.

  • Let's start with the last one, book cover.

  • How did you do that?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Boy, it was very

  • hard to do this book cover.

  • I'm used to writing biographies.

  • The Steve Jobs cover was probably the most iconic cover,

  • Steve Jobs and a picture, so that's the easiest one.

  • When you're doing something that involves, say, 12 grand steps

  • and 30, 40 innovators, how do you pick them?

  • In the end, it's Alan Turing, if you're wondering,

  • who's on the bottom right.

  • You know the others, Ada Lovelace.

  • VINT CERF: They're there the bookends,

  • in some sense, and then the rich guys.

  • AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] that's what I saw.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I think that Steve Jobs and Bill

  • Gates are very emblematic characters

  • of how you both have vision.

  • Also, you execute, and business execution is part of it,

  • and collaboration.

  • If I'd had 10 people, I could have put 10.

  • It was not a particularly easy cover to do.

  • If you go back and you can find, Google things

  • that are cached from earlier times

  • on Amazon, there's probably eight

  • covers that they went through before they got to this one.

  • VINT CERF: Actually, maybe you should

  • consider publishing a book with multiple covers.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Yeah.

  • At Time Magazine, I used to do that.

  • It was a real gimmicky, but especially every now and then,

  • you'd have four covers for four different--

  • VINT CERF: If collaboration was the intent,

  • I don't see collaborators on the cover at all.

  • Anyway, just a gripe.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Turing.

  • Turing was a collaborator.

  • VINT CERF: Well, mumble.

  • OK, so let's go back to this collaboration question.

  • You've got this question, how do you use the internet

  • to help solve global problems?

  • BOB KAHN: You want me to take that one on?

  • VINT CERF: Go ahead.

  • BOB KAHN: I would let's say you're

  • thinking of the internet writ large now.

  • When I think of the internet, I think about it

  • in terms of the protocols and the procedures

  • that let you connect things.

  • That gets back to the definition of what it is,

  • and then you can use it for different things.

  • So it really gets into how people

  • are going to get together to solve some

  • of these global problems and what role

  • the internet can play in it.

  • You asked the question the other way around,

  • what can the internet do for that,

  • and I would say that's the wrong way to get at it.

  • The question is, what global problem

  • are you trying to solve?

  • Is it clean water in parts of the world that

  • don't have access to clean water?

  • Is it how to get rid of Ebola viruses?

  • Is it how to do checkout of people

  • in airports when they're coming in?

  • Is it how to deal with better targeting

  • in the field for the military?

  • You can figure out what problem you're concerned about

  • and then you can figure out what a solution is,

  • and then you can ask, is these an internet role

  • in all of that?

  • And most likely, there will be because everything is disparate

  • and disconnected and you've got to bring them all together.

  • I wouldn't phrase it exactly the way

  • you did, starting by asking about what

  • the internet can do for you.

  • It's the Kennedy thing flipped around.

  • VINT CERF: Ask not what the internet can do for you.

  • Ask what you can do for the internet.

  • I actually want to draw out of this another notion,

  • and that's the notion of an enabling technology,

  • because if you look at these stories,

  • all of them, what you see is this scheme of things

  • linking the stories together.

  • Somebody creates something, which

  • enables someone else to do another thing.

  • This whole story is all about enabling,

  • which I think is part of the origin of your question.

  • What could the internet enable?

  • The thing it does better anything

  • is it connects stuff together that

  • was never connected before.

  • This casual idea that I can take this can of Coke, for example,

  • or this book, put a chip in it, and connect it to the internet

  • somehow is the beginning of ideas

  • that people never thought of before

  • because it wasn't possible.

  • Now it's possible.

  • BOB KAHN: Maybe you don't connect it to it.

  • Maybe it's automatically part of it when you put the chip in.

  • VINT CERF: Well, if we ever get to the point

  • where we can have self assembling devices

  • through biotechnology, then when people say, what do you think,

  • computers grow on trees?

  • And you say, yeah, let me show you.

  • Let's go back to the collaboration at Apple,

  • though, because I think that was a specific question for you

  • to try to tackle.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: Yeah.

  • I mean, when I first started writing about Steve Jobs,

  • I thought he was an exception to the rule about collaboration,

  • that he was a singular visionary and his visionary did things.

  • And I asked him at one point, what

  • was your most visionary thing that you created,

  • and I thought he might say the iPhone or iPad or the Mac.

  • And he said, no, creating a particular product

  • or having a vision for it is hard,

  • but the really hard thing is creating a company that

  • lasts in which people all know how

  • to execute with vision on various things.

  • So the most important thing I ever created

  • was Apple because I realized it wasn't about me.

  • This is him talking.

  • I realized it was about a team of people where I could walk in

  • and say, this sucks, or this is great, or whatever,

  • but eventually, out of that sturm und drang

  • would become a particular product.

  • And I think the most important thing,

  • and it's probably a [INAUDIBLE] as here,

  • whether it's Google or Apple or whatever

  • else, is to look at the companies in which ingrained

  • in the genetic code was a willingness to take risk

  • and to fail, and importance about connecting beauty and art

  • and humanity, making our machines more personal

  • so we felt intimate with them.

  • There were a lot of companies that came up with great ideas--

  • Xerox at Xerox PARC, Bell at Bell Labs, IBM, whatever.

  • They didn't innovate as a team and take risks.

  • I see Google doing that.

  • I'm not just saying it because I'm here with you all.

  • Google is one of the few really big companies in which it's

  • still like, let's shoot for the moon,

  • let's try some weird things, and let's understand

  • the importance of teamwork.

  • I think Apple does that.

  • Apple still has a team.

  • What Steve did was not just create a company.

  • People read my book and they say,

  • Steve was pretty much of a jerk at times, wasn't he?

  • I say, yeah, but don't forget how it turns out.

  • He has the most loyal people around him

  • who will march through walls with him, who will collaborate,

  • who will stand up to him.

  • That team at Apple is a lot tighter

  • than the teams at much friendlier companies like HP.

  • BOB KAHN: Walter, one of the things

  • that doesn't show up in your book,

  • and yet one is often drawn to a comparison between Apple

  • and Oracle, is Larry Ellison.

  • Is he out of the picture here because you just

  • didn't have time to get to him, or do you

  • think he doesn't play a role here?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I don't know.

  • You tell me.

  • BOB KAHN: No, you're the one who wrote the book.

  • Why did you leave him out?

  • VINT CERF: Why don't you [INAUDIBLE]?

  • WALTER ISAACSON: I don't know that Oracle

  • was one of the 12 great leaps of the digital age.

  • I think Larry Ellison's a brilliant person,

  • but I don't find that the creation of the Oracle systems

  • was up there with the transistor, microchip,

  • the personal computer.

  • If I may, I would love to get back--

  • BOB KAHN: I was just curious as to your view.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: So what Steve is able to do

  • is really show how you get every player on a team,

  • somebody like a Tim Cook, who knows

  • how to make things happen, somebody like a Johnny

  • Ives, who understands the design,

  • and he creates this tight team.

  • I think at Google, too, there is this ability,

  • when you watch Larry and Sergey, but then

  • all the people around them and all the people here.

  • We can take risks, we can take time off, we can collaborate,

  • and I think that the most important thing for innovation

  • is not creating the next new product

  • but creating the Apples, the Googles, the Amazons, whatever

  • it may be, who are always trying to do different things.

  • VINT CERF: I'm sorry.

  • It turns out that this thing says 0S,

  • and I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean osmium.

  • WALTER ISAACSON: It's either zero seconds

  • or operating system.

  • VINT CERF: Right.

  • Or something.

  • So I have a suggestion.

  • Why don't we finish up here?

  • We have all kinds of refreshments

  • out the doors here.

  • Why don't we thank our author over here, Walter.

  • [APPLAUSE]

  • WALTER ISAACSON: And let me make sure we

  • thank the two great heroes of the theme of this book,

  • but also of the digital age, Bob and Vint.

  • Thank you all.

  • [APPLAUSE]

WALTER ISAACSON: You know, we're very, very lucky here.

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