Robert Kahn | A different kind of Internet

by Wyatt Kash,  Government Computer News

Internet pioneer still envisions an Internet that manages information, instead of just moving data.

It’s been just over 40 years since Robert E. Kahn took a leave of absence from the MIT faculty and helped create a computer networking project whose effects are still being felt today. His design ideas enabled the creation of ARPAnet, the world’s first packet-switched network, and ultimately to the Internet. His subsequent work at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where he headed the Information Processing Techniques Office, would later lead to the largest computer research and development program ever undertaken by the federal government.

As chairman and chief executive of the non-profit Corporation for National Research Initiatives, Dr. Kahn continues to be a global advocate for long-range infrastructure research and open-architecture networking. He still harbors a vision for how the Internet could be used to manage, not just move information, using Digital Object Architecture and Knowbots. He shares that vision in a recent interview with GCN chief editor Wyatt Kash, and explains how it could help make electronic health records and other data more secure and permanently accessible. Interview