The Father Of The Internet Sees His Invention Reflected Back Through A 'Black Mirror'

In 1984, two men were thinking a lot about the Internet. One of them invented it. The other is an artist who would see its impact on society with uncanny prescience.First is the man often called "the father of the Internet," Vint Cerf. Between the early 1970s and early '80s, he led a team of scientists supported by research from the Defense Department. While Cerf and his colleagues were busy inventing, the young aspiring science fiction writer William Gibson was looking for a place to set his first novel. Somehow Gibson was able to imagine the potential scale of it — all those computers connected together. Gibson says he didn't need to try a computer or see the Internet to imagine this future. "The first people to embrace a technology are the first to lose the ability to see it objectively," he says.