張愛良

One of the founding fathers of the internet has predicted the end of traditional television.

Vint Cerf, who helped to build the internet while working as a researcher in America, said that television was approaching its “iPod moment”

In the same way that people now download their favourite music onto their iPod, he said that viewers would soon be downloading most of favourite programmes onto their computers.

“85 per cent of all video we watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time,” said Mr Cerf, who is now the vice-president of the Google, the worlds largest search engine.

“Youre still going to need live television for certain things—like news, sporting events and emergencies—but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later.”

Although television on demand has not yet become a mainstream activity in the UK, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have all invested vast sums of money in technology which enables viewers to watch their favourite shows on their computers.

But some critics, including some internet service providers, have warned that the internet will collapse under the strain of millions of people downloading programmes at the same time.

Over the next four years, it is thought that the number of videos watched over the internet will quadruple, with people moving from short clips to hour-long programmes.

Broadband companies claim that the service will cause “traffic jams”, which will cost millions of pounds to sort out.

But Mr Cerf dismissed the warnings as “scare tactics”, saying that critics had predicted 20 years ago that the net would collapse when people all around the world started to use it in masses.

“In the intervening 30 years its increased a million times ... Were far from exhausting the capacity,” he said. “Its an understandable worry when they see huge amounts of information being moved around online.”

Setting out his vision for the future of the internet, he said he wanted it to reach as many people as possible.

“I want more internet,” he said. “I want every one of the six billion people on the planet to be able to connect to the internet.”

一位“互聯(lián)網(wǎng)之父”日前預(yù)言：傳統(tǒng)的電視時代將結(jié)束。

溫特·瑟夫曾是美國一名研究人員，曾參與過互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的創(chuàng)建。他說，電視正走向iPod時代。

他說，與現(xiàn)在人們將喜歡的音樂下載到iPod里一樣，電視觀眾們很快就能將他們喜歡的大多數(shù)電視節(jié)目下載到電腦中去了。

現(xiàn)任全球最大的搜索引擎公司Google副總裁的瑟夫先生說：“我們觀看的85%的視頻都是預(yù)先錄制的，所以可以隨時下載?！?/p>

“盡管人們?nèi)孕枰侣?、體育比賽和緊急事件等的現(xiàn)場直播，但‘iPod模式將日益興起，人們可以把節(jié)目下載到里面供以后觀看?！?/p>

盡管電視在線點播在英國仍未成為一種主流模式，但BBC、ITV和Channel 4已投入大量資金研發(fā)能讓觀眾在電腦上看他們喜愛的電視節(jié)目的技術(shù)。

但包括一些互聯(lián)網(wǎng)服務(wù)提供商在內(nèi)的一些批評人士警告說，如果幾百萬人在同一時間下載節(jié)目，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)會因無法承受壓力而崩潰。

據(jù)預(yù)測，在未來四年中，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上的視頻數(shù)量將翻兩番，人們所能觀看的視頻也將從現(xiàn)在的短片“升級”為長達一小時的節(jié)目。

寬帶公司稱，這一服務(wù)會導(dǎo)致“網(wǎng)絡(luò)交通堵塞”，而“疏通”成本則會達到幾百萬英鎊。

瑟夫?qū)@一“恐嚇戰(zhàn)術(shù)”的說法進行了反駁，他說，批評人士20年前預(yù)測，如果全世界的人同時上網(wǎng)，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)會崩潰。

他說：“在過去三十年中，互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的容量增加了一百萬倍，我們遠沒用盡這些容量?？吹酱罅康男畔⒂问幱诨ヂ?lián)網(wǎng)而產(chǎn)生這樣的擔憂是可以理解的。”

瑟夫先生對互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的未來進行了展望，他說他希望更多的人能用上互聯(lián)網(wǎng)。

他說：“我希望互聯(lián)網(wǎng)越來越發(fā)達，希望地球上60億人都能用上互聯(lián)網(wǎng)?！?/p>