Vinton Cerf’s Concept of “Digital Vellum”
August 20, 2013 | Terry Sharrer
Remember Sony’s “Betamax,” or for that matter, remember the JVC’s “VHS” cassetts? Today, many families have boxes of old video cassettes, but not a working player to show them. Vinton Cerf, co-developer (with Robert Kahn) of the civilian internet protocol in 1983 suspects that the spreadsheets, presentations, and mega-data files now being created may be impossible to retrieve at some point in the future because of changes display technology. His solution is “digital vellum”—information uploaded to the cloud so it can be read regardless of the means that created it. After all, Gutenberg’s first Bibles in 1455 were printed on vellum and still can be read. MORE
Image Credit: SmartPlanet.com and cnet