VeriSign’s McLaughlin: The best of the Internet is ‘yet to come’

More companies were utilizing their services for commercial purposes. It was an odd thing to notice. I started looking at the infrastructure of the internet and those were growing too, even when things were the darkest and the gloomiest. It’s proven itself to be very reslient…

What’s next for the Internet?

Look at what people have done with the Internet that we couldn’t have guessed five years ago. Take the social networking phenomenon. Digitizing health records. Computers are dead, long live the smartphone. All those are real– the internet is a great resource that allows you to bring applications to market in a way more cost-effective manner than ever before in history. It’s a public network. You don’t have to build it from scratch. Smart people will continue to figure out what to do with it.

It’s helpful to look backward to look forward. A lot of people don’t remember life before the internet and dot-com. It’s become a ubiquitous part of life over the last 15 years.

Why did you choose BIll Clinton to keynote the anniversary?

The ’90s is really when the internet came of age, with the introduction of the browser. President Clinton at that time, was the first internet president. He was the first one who had to deal with the internet and all the changes it could bring. His administration was deep into the forward-looking policy. Fortunately under his guidance there was a light touch that still exists today. You can imagine that it might have gone a different way.

In 1992, Rep. Boucher was the one who passed a law to make the NSF net available for commercial traffic. So we give Boucher a lot of credit.

Check here for a full line-up of speakers at today’s event.