Vint Cerf, Tim Berner-Lee and Jon Postel. Note that Jon Postel died on 16 October 1998, at the age of 55, but he has left a lasting legacy with the standards he helped draft, and which has created the greatest machine in the history of humankind.

Jon Postel: The Editor of the Internet

So while there is much debate around people like Tim Berners-Lee and Vint Cerf, we should also include “The Editor of the Internet”: Jon Postel.

Jon was born on 6 August 1943 and died in October 1998. Even up to his death, he was the editor of the Request for Comment (RFC) documents and administered the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). In 2012, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society, and the foundation he has left is as strong as any foundation ever created, in fact, it’s the foundation for our Cyber Age.

Building and standardizing the Internet

Before the Internet, companies such as IBM held a stranglehold on the industry, and typically defined the standards for others to follow. Along with this, we had standards agencies, such as ISO and the IEEE, which were comborsome entities which took years, if not decades, to standardize anything. With these standardization agencies, a standard could take years to develop, and often involved the tinkering from countries, in order to protect their industries…