…worth talking about that don't influence major amounts of purchasing decisions or are read by people who have no purchasing power at all and, therefore, are of no interest to advertisers.
So how do you get that content? You pay for it, like music. Like iTunes, where you are able to get a song by actually paying someone for it. iTunes is not advertising-supported, right? Advertising tends to drive toward the common-denominator content. And we complain about that all the time.
You mentioned that security is another major problem with the internet. Can you explain?
The network is fragile. We have spam; we have viruses. We have phishing and all sorts of screwy things on the internet. And that's due to the internet being insecure at its core. Security and privacy will never be solved. There is always a trade-off. But the best-efforts nature of the internet goes too far. No one is inspecting source addresses on packets at the very bottom. And therefore packets can pretend to come from places that they didn't come. Or they can pretend that they are from nowhere. So we can't allow that. We have to fix that.
I plan to live forever so the thing I hope to be remembered for hasn't occurred yet
Bob Metcalfe
What would you say is your proudest achievement?
That's a very sensitive topic. I think I haven't done it yet. I'm not dead. It's not over. I'm a mere 61 years old. I plan to live forever so the thing I hope to be remembered for hasn't occurred yet. I'm hoping that my mid-life crisis is still ahead. But, if you push me, I'd say that Ethernet is good enough. If I were to rest on my laurels, that wouldn't be a bad laurel to rest on. Of course, there is my family, my children. They might want to get mentioned. Of course, they haven't quite succeeded yet. So it's hard for me to be that proud of them. No pressure or anything.
I'm pretty proud of 3Com. I did work on the internet in ways other than Ethernet, so I take some pride in the entire internet.
What about your work as a venture capitalist?
I'm new there. I've only been at it a little over six years. None of my personal investments here at the firm have exited yet, which is what VCs are supposed to do. So I am a couple of accomplishments short of being a complete venture capitalist. I haven't gotten liquid, and I haven't raised money for the firm. And those things are related. So it's way early. Of course, I've got these great companies in my portfolio. I am already proud of them, but I am hoping that they will go on to bigger and better things. And that will be great.
