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From VOA Learning English, |
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this is the Technology Report. |
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Britain's Queen Elizabeth |
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presented her first ever Prize for Engineering, |
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doing a ceremony in late June at Buckingham Palace. |
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Some hope the new award |
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will become the engineering equivalent of |
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the Nobel Prize for scientific achievement. |
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The award includes a prize of one million British pounds, |
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or about $1.5 million. |
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It was presented to five men who invented the Internet |
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and developed the ways one third of the world's population uses it. |
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Americans Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, |
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and Frenchman Louis Pouzin invented the Internet's basic protocols. |
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They shared the award with Britain's Tim Berners-Lee, |
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who created the Worldwide Web and American Marc Andreesen, |
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who invented the first web browsing software. |
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The morning after they received the award, |
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three of the winners spoke to hundreds of students from London schools. |
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Robert Kahn said the Internet is so much a part of people's lives, |
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they don't really think about it. |
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"To me, it's all about the protocols for making things work together |
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- to link together networks, computers, application programs |
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- which a lot of people didn't think was a particularly good idea |
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when we first started out on it. |
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But it's turned out to be pretty impactful worldwide." |
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Many of the students carry devices much more powerful |
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than the computers the men used to develop the Internet. |
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They were joined by students in Swaziland |
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who took part in the event by way of the Internet. |
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Vinton Cerf, partner with Robert Kahn |
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in developing the TCP/IP protocol |
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that makes Internet traffic possible. |
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He is now a vice president of Google. |
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"The significance is not the winning. |
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The significance is the existence of the prize at all, |
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especially with Her Majesty's name attached to it. |
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It elevates engineering to the same level of visibility |
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and recognition as the Nobel Prizes." |
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Both men say their satisfaction comes from the wide use of the Internet |
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and the fact that their basic technical architecture |
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is still a main part of it. |
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But they noted the privacy and security issues the Internet has created, |
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these issues raised concern most recently with news |
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about U.S. government surveillance programs designed to fight terrorism. |
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(Cerf:) "We are still in the middle of |
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this rapid evolution of the Internet and its applications. |
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And we are going to have to learn, as a society, |
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which things are acceptable and which things are not, |
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what we should prohibit, |
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and what things we should punish people for doing." |
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(Kahn:) "Those are not tensions that are just easily resolved |
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- check the box and proceed this way or that way. |
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They require constant attention, especially in democratic societies." |
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Robert Kahn says technologies have always had "plusses and minuses," |
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he says the Internet is no different. |
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But he also says that even after 40 years, |
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there is no foreseeable end to the demand |
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for the technology that he and his co-winners developed. |
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And that's the Technology Report from VOA Learning English. |