The Father of the Internet on the Mother of all topics: jobs

“Steve Jobs knew how to do it. Identify needs that people did not know they had, create a great product around it, get the demand going and market the product. That’s the way jobs get created. Jobs created a real sense of excitement about work. ” Dr. Vinton G Cerf has picked his pantheon of tech deities carefully. The late Steve Jobs features in it prominently, as does Marc Andreessen, the creator of the first internet browser, ‘Mosaic’, Arogyaswami Paulraj, 2014 Marconi Prize winner for his contribution to internet technology, and Martin Cooper, the man who conceived of the first handheld mobile phone for Motorola (and made the first call on it as well!), to name a few. Dr. Cerf should know; he counts among the greats of internet technology after all. A recipient of the US National Medal of Technology, the Marconi Prize and the Presidential Medal for Freedom, to name a few of his decorations, #VintonCerf shot into prominence as a lead contributor to protocols that drove ARPAnet, the precursor to the internet. He and his collaborator Robert Kahn are regarded as the fathers of the internet.

New technology is job-creating: At an interactive session in New Delhi (all pictures in this post are from the session), Dr. Cerf is incisive. He is speaking on the other jobs, the work variety, that is equally dear to us. “Jobs come from discovering unfilled needs and building business to respond to those needs. The Digital India initiative of the Government of India is an attention-grabber. Turning this initiative into jobs and GDP growth is what will matter in the long run.”

The internet changes the nature and scope of jobs. From an era where a person’s only source of livelihood was the field which was tilled next to the household, to one in which the actual delivery of the result of a person’s productive activity could be thousands of miles from where she or he is located, the internet has taken the world of work to places never imagined a few years back. The larger economy is now ‘outside’ and the internet made it possible to access that economy.

Keep an eye on where technologies converge: “Rate of change in technology is leading to rate of change in nature of jobs. This will accelerate. Smartphones are only eight years old, but that industry already has a sizeable population of tech workers. Smartphones created new jobs.” The trick is to study and anticipate areas of job growth as the internet and technology do the dance. Marty Cooper made the first hand-held mobile phone call in 1973 and the Internet emerged in the 1980s, but it was only in the first decade of the 21st century that the two converged and the smartphone experience was born. Today there are some 6.5 billion mobiles in existence and 1.5 billion smartphones. Exciting new convergences are on the anvil, to create new products and services. The Internet of Things could be the next quantum leap in cyberspace, but it is still evolving. One doesn't know what the next convergence will be, but that it will be is a certainty.

Education, openness, collaboration will matter: What will be at a premium in the coming years is openness at work and open learning. The internet is itself a grand collaboration of networks. There is no central command and many in the world marvel at how such a gigantic enterprise can run without a command center. There are some 1.03 billion host servers positioned all across the globe, servicing 2.5 billion users. And, no Big Daddy in sight anywhere. The internet models the open, collaborative enterprises that will drive innovation and #jobs in the future.

Dr. Cerf cites the example of how the first Webmasters learnt on-the-job. Some of them with access to the source code taught the others and the learning snowballed. Much of learning in the tech era has to be self-driven and managed. This is where open-source is such a game changer. Dr. Cerf is also excited about Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), which already underpins new thinking in learning. With MOOCs, the learner views multi-media classes on a subject and then attends a live lecture to ask questions and clarify issues. Dr. Cerf loves the way MOOCs ‘flips’ the conventional classroom education, where one attended live lectures and went back to notes to clear up doubts. Rapidly escalating multi-media technology and the internet will push more courses online and a new generation of learners, learning in accordance with their interests, will drive innovation and business to unknown frontiers. The landscape of education has to be redesigned to keep pace with technology changes. And, the thrust on continuous learning will be sharper.

Tailoring jobs to an individual’s strengths: Back to the world of work, and jobs, Dr. Cerf says that organizations would typically, at appraisal time, call in an employee and reel out areas where the person has to improve, a negative list so to speak. “It is very tempting to pick faults while evaluating people. The time has come to tailor jobs to a person’s strengths. We have to recognize that in this era every person has the ability to contribute, when played to their strengths. The cookie-cutter approach, the one-size-fits-all, to jobs is over.” Also, the education-career-retirement paradigm is passé. Each of these three life phases is getting increasingly boundary less.

On the nature of work itself, he springs a surprise. Studies show that not all job-seekers are looking for remunerated work. What they are looking for is meaningful work. He wondered if this is true in India. The economy of voluntarism is huge and rising prosperity will make it even bigger. There is opportunity in underemployment as well as unemployment for organizations and social service providers. We have to look at ways to engage these people and technology, mediated by the internet, will make it possible.

Getting India connected: In India, internet penetration is woefully low, at 19% of the population. This will put a huge mass of Indians at a distinct disadvantage as the country modernizes. Which is a pity since Indians have proved, especially in the US, that given the right environment they can be as skilled and productive as the best anywhere. It should be a policy imperative to get internet to every Indian because the country, under its new government, has resolved to build smarter cities, a digital nation. “Smart devices”, Dr. Cerf says, “make cities smarter. We used to joke in the early days of the internet that someday someone will put a toaster on the internet. I have lived to see the day when refrigerators have been put on the net – telling the user what groceries to buy in case pasta is to be cooked for supper. The Japanese have gone further. They have put weighing scales on the internet. It sends your weight details to your doctor. The trouble is, it also communicates with your refrigerator and the latter refuses to open if you plan to cook pasta for supper”, he signs off with a chuckle!

Endnote: I love the fact that Dr. Cerf and I have one organization in common, IBM, where we have worked for almost the same duration. Illuminating as it was to listen to one of the world’s true living greats, it was a delight to see how lightly (not just literally!) Dr. Cerf carries himself. Now the Chief internet Evangelist for #Google, he kept everything so simple. The presentation slides were all black on white, rarely exceeding eight lines, the communication direct and accessible, the humor all grandfatherly. That’s probably because the greats know that the source code that drives their achievements doesn’t really belong to them!