Artificial Intelligence (AI) may dominate today’s headlines, but it does not stand on its own. Models and compute often capture the spotlight, yet they are only part of the story. AI operates within a much larger system. And in that system, connectivity serves as the heartbeat that keeps everything moving and the nervous system that allows it all to work together.

Here is the way to think about it: AI needs data for training. Data relies on compute for processing. Compute in turn requires connectivity for data exchange and data transfer. When all three work together, AI reaches its full potential. Connectivity is more than a utility. In the AI-era, it is the lifeblood that sustains intelligence and the wiring that allows it to function seamlessly.

Looking Back: Networks as the Circulatory System

The history of the Internet underscores this point. Born as a research experiment in the 1970s, and 80s, early ARPANET links carried simple packets that enabled collaboration across labs. Data was scarce, compute rudimentary, and networks were narrowband, yet those early flows proved a new idea: intelligence could be shared across distance.

The 1990s brought the World Wide Web (WWW), and suddenly data was everywhere” with webpages, e-commerce transactions, streaming media. Search engines and recommendation systems flourished, but only because connectivity moved bits from servers to compute clusters. Without Wide Area Networking (WAN), information would have remained trapped in silos.

The 2000s layered on two revolutions: cloud computing and the smartphones. Cloud services delivered elastic compute, while smartphones put connectivity in billions of pockets. Social media, ride-sharing and mobile payments were not just software innovations; they were network-driven, requiring real-time coordination between devices, users and clouds.

In the 2010s, deep learning brought GPUs and massive models. But GPUs alone did not make AI practical. What elevated AI from an experiment to a global utility were networks: high-speed interconnects moving training data across distributed clusters, and mobile broadband delivering AI-powered services to billions of devices. The design clusters of connectivity: throughput, reach, latency, cost per bit, and reliability, were what allowed the organism to grow.

From Circulation to Coordination

Connectivity’s role has expanded from circulation (moving bits) to coordination (enabling reflexes).

The Internet of Things (IoT) in the 2010s highlighted this shift. Billions of sensors became the “nerve endings” of the digital world, streaming telemetry from homes, factories, vehicles and cities. Yet most IoT devices were passive: they sensed and reported but did not act in real-time. This exposed a gap. Connectivity was not just circulation but also neural wiring, essential for interpretation and coordinated response.

Emerging concepts such as the Internet of Senses aim to close this loop. By fusing sensing and communications through ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communications), networks can become context-aware fabrics, transmitting what they detect in real-time. Multisensory technologies: haptics, digital olfaction, even brain-computer interfaces (BCI), extend communication beyond sight and sound, turning the Internet into a medium of experience rather than just information.

But perception without reasoning is incomplete. Here, AI agents emerge as the next step. Unlike IoT endpoints, agents are not passive. They perceive, reason and act. Digital agents such as copilots, workflow orchestrators, trading algorithms, live entirely in software. Physical AI agents like autonomous vehicles, drones, industrial robots, bring intelligence into the physical world. Both require connectivity not just as a circulatory system but also as a nervous system: wiring cognition across devices, edge nodes and clouds.

Why Connectivity Defines AI’s Future

Today’s AI ecosystem demonstrates this dependency vividly.

At one extreme, foundation models contain trillions of parameters and run across thousands of accelerators in globally distributed data centers. Training such models requires high-bandwidth, low-latency interconnects like InfiniBand, Ethernet with RDMA, or emerging optical fabrics. Without these, multi-week training runs would be impossible.

At the other extreme, edge devices like smartphones, industrial sensors, medical wearables, now carry powerful NPUs and GPUs for on-device inference. Apple’s Neural Engine, Qualcomm’s AI Engine and Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) in phones enable AI agents to run locally. But their usefulness depends on staying in sync with the cloud and peers through reliable connectivity.

What ties these extremes together is connectivity as fabric, spanning the system end-to-end:

• Within data center: Ultra-fast interconnects bind GPUs, TPUs, and accelerators for distributed model training
• Across regions and continents: High-capacity optical backbones move vast datasets and inference outputs globally.
• At the edge: Wired and wireless access networks bring intelligence to people, machines and environments
• Beyond terrestrial limits: Satellites and high-altitude platforms extend reach to underserved or remote regions.

This layered fabric ensures that data flows to compute when needed, compute delivers insights back in time, and intelligence emerges as a system rather than isolated silos. Without connectivity, compute is stranded. With connectivity, intelligence becomes collective: distributed across clouds, edge, and devices worldwide.

Technical Challenges Ahead

If connectivity is the heartbeat and nervous system of the AI-era, then making it work at scale presents six major technical challenges.

1. Ultra-low latency and determinism: AI tasks such as autonomous driving, robotic surgery and industrial automation require sub-millisecond responsiveness with predictable guarantees. While 5G URLLC is a first step, AI-native networking must integrate sensing, scheduling and compute coordination far more tightly to ensure end-to-end determinism and real-time decision making.
2. Bandwidth, fabrics and data movement: Training trillion-parameter models produces exabytes of traffic, and today’s Ethernet based interconnects and memory hierarchies cannot keep pace. Accelerators scale faster than I/O, leaving compute cycles stalled waiting for data. Breaking this bottleneck will require co-packaged optics, silicon photonics, rack-scale integration, and memory disaggregation (e.g., CXL) to deliver multi-terabit-per-second throughput per node and move data as efficiently as it is processed.
3. Resilience and Security: As AI workloads become critical infrastructure, connectivity fabrics must ensure fault tolerance and adversarial robustness. Multipath routing and self-healing meshes provide continuity under failure, while zero-trust models and AI-driven anomaly detection secure operations across cloud, edge and devices. Supply-chain integrity and quantum-resistant cryptography will be essential to sustain trust at global scale.
4. Energy Efficiency: From hyperscale data centers to radio access networks, connectivity is energy intensive. AI-Native networks must be designed with energy proportionality and sustainability in mind, ensuring performance without compromising sustainability goals.
5. Orchestration and Interoperability: Just as TCP/IP created a common foundation for the internet, the AI era offers a chance to establish open protocols for agent identity, inter-agent communication, and workload orchestration. Today’s orchestration tools like Kubernetes for Cloud, MANO for NFV, O-RAN RIC for RAN, operate in silos. Moving forward, AI-Native systems can unity these into an end-to-end framework that spans cloud, edge, and devices, ensuring seamless interoperability and preventing fragmentation.
6. Trustworthy AI integration: As networks themselves become AI-Native, ensuring the reliability, fairness, and explainability of AI-driven decision is paramount. From spectrum allocation to closed-loop control, bias or opaque inference could undermine trust. Embedding verification, validation and continuous monitoring of AI models into network operations will be critical.

Lessons from History

History shows that breakthroughs in compute alone do not unlock progress: It is connectivity that turns isolated advanced into global transformations. The supercomputers of the 1990s were powerful but niche, and only when they were networked through the Internet, did the intelligence begin to scale across the world. The smartphone’s true success also came not from its hardware alone, but from the power of always-on connectivity that enabled entire ecosystems of applications and services.

AI stands at a similar moment today. Compute will continue to advance, but its full impact will only be realized when paired with robust, open and ubiquitous connectivity. With this foundation, AI can grow into a planetary-scale utility: resilient, inclusive and transformative for society.

Closing the Loop

When you step back, the patterns is striking:

• Data without compute is meaningless
• Compute without connectivity is stranded
• AI without both is nothing more than an idea

Connectivity has been there from the beginning: carrying packets, enabling mobility, linking machines. In the AI-era, it ensures that intelligence flows freely rather than remaining locked in silos. It synchronizes training across data centers, distributes inference to the edge, and coordinate agents acting in the physical world.

In summary, connectivity is not just the foundation of AI. It is the pulse that keeps the system alive and the nervous system that makes it intelligent.

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Nick McKeown is a Senior Fellow at Intel, an emeritus professor at Stanford University in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a visiting professor at Oxford University. He has founded technology companies in Silicon Valley and was recently appointed to the Council of Science and Technology (CST), which advises the Prime Minister and Cabinet on strategic science and technology policy issues.

McKeown received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Leeds in 1986. From 1986 to 1989, he worked for Hewlett-Packard Labs in the network and communications research group in Bristol, England. He relocated to the United States in 1989 and earned a master’s degree in 1992 and a PhD in 1995, both from the University of California at Berkeley. During the spring of 1995, he worked for Cisco Systems, contributing to the architecture of their GSR 12000 router. He joined Stanford University’s faculty in 1995 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science. In 1997, McKeown co-founded Abrizio Inc. with Anders Swahn, serving as CTO. Abrizio was acquired by PMC-Sierra in 1999. He became an associate professor in 2002. In 2003, he co-founded Nemo Systems with Sundar Iyer and served as CEO until its acquisition by Cisco Systems in 2005. He became the faculty director of the Clean Slate Program in 2006 and was promoted to full professor at Stanford in 2010. In 2007, Casado, McKeown, and Shenker co-founded Nicira Networks, a company based in Palo Alto, California, focused on network virtualization, acquired by VMWare in July 2012.

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Dr. Mayowa Awe, the newly appointed Executive Director of the National Science and Technology Medals Foundation, expressed her views on the impact of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation (NMTI).

“The National Medal of Technology and Innovation stands as a testament to the transformative power of innovation and its profound impact on society. It not only honors the brilliant minds behind groundbreaking advancements but also serves as a beacon of inspiration for future generations. By recognizing those who push the boundaries of technology, the medal reinforces the critical role of innovation in addressing the world’s most pressing challenges. As we celebrate these achievements, we are reminded that true progress is a collective endeavor fueled by an unwavering commitment to create a brighter future for humanity.”

The President recognized 2013 Marconi Fellow, Martin Cooper, and Marconi Society Board Member, Victor B. Lawrence with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation .

We had the opportunity to connect with Martin and Victor, as well as past laureates, about receiving the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. They shared their thoughts on expected breakthroughs and impactful emerging technologies for the coming years.

Martin Cooper

2013 Marconi Fellow

2024 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

“Technologies are only meaningful in the context of how they improve the human experience and address the important societal challenges.”

As one of the 2024 NMTI recipients, Marty Cooper reflects on the transformative potential of future advancements, particularly in education and healthcare, and on efforts to reduce global poverty.

“I believe the major impact of technology on people in the future will be in education and healthcare, as well as continuing to reduce the number of people in the world who live in severe poverty,” Cooper shared. “Smartphones now provide every person access to all the knowledge in the world. They already have had an important impact on poverty. The smartphone will become an even more powerful tool for humanity as it includes artificial intelligence with the potential of eliminating poverty, eliminating disease, and transforming our education system. The latter is necessary and crucial.

“We’re approaching the ability to perform complete physical examinations, not just once a year, but every minute. This capability will enable us to detect and cure diseases even before they occur.

“The education community must adapt to the reality that students now have full-time access to all the world’s information. They no longer need to be taught facts, but rather how to access and assess all that information. New approaches to teaching promise to ultimately make students smarter than ever and equip them to solve our biggest problems.

“These advancements will result in a significant boost in productivity driven by new technologies, which will, in turn, help eliminate poverty.”

Cooper also reflected on his personal experience receiving the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, which provided a unique opportunity to connect with other trailblazers.

“The most valuable experience the Medal offered me was the opportunity to meet with the other awardees. It would take far too long to reflect on the few hours spent with the 30 or so recipients, but one moment that stood out was meeting Feng Zhang. He was awarded the National Medal of Science (NMS) for developing a groundbreaking drug that cures sickle cell disease using gene modification through CRISPR. The future is happening now.”

Victor B. Lawrence

Marconi Society Board Member

2024 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

“You have to stand on somebody’s shoulder to see far, but I also hope my shoulders are strong enough for the next generation to be able to stand on and see far.”

As a 2024 NMTI recipient, Victor B. Lawrence reflects on the significance of the award. He described the experience as both an honor and an inspiration.

He shared his thoughts on advancements he anticipates this year and the emerging technologies poised to have the most profound impact in the years ahead.

“I see significant breakthroughs on the horizon in AI agents, robotaxis and autonomous delivery, and the use of AR/VR headsets and immersive technologies,” Lawrence explained. “AI agents will soon act autonomously to solve complex tasks and optimize workflows without human prompts, collaborating with both humans and other AI systems. These advancements will address challenges in areas such as medicine, finance, and customer service.”

Lawrence also envisions a future where autonomous vehicles become integral to urban life. “Robotaxis and autonomous delivery systems will soon be a part of daily life in more cities as public trust grows and regulations adapt. This evolution will redefine urban mobility and logistics, improving the efficiency of last-mile delivery with self-driving vehicles and drones.”

Turning to immersive technologies, Lawrence highlighted their expanding role beyond entertainment: “As AR/VR devices become more comfortable and affordable, we’ll see them increasingly used in industrial settings, paired with digital twins to simulate and optimize physical environments. These tools will revolutionize manufacturing, construction, and healthcare, enabling predictive maintenance and better decision-making.”

Views from Marconi Fellows who have received the National Medals in past years

Vint Cerf

1998 Marconi Fellow

1997 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

“Artificial intelligence is the hyperbolic topic of the day, but there is substance as well. Experts are learning how to make smaller, specialized models that can be activated by other large language models (LLMs) for particular purposes. These interactions are also reflected in the emergence of agentic AI models that can carry out tasks by interacting with other online systems, including other LLMs. Standards for syntactic and semantic interaction are likely to emerge to allow agents to interact even if they have not interacted before. There are risks, of course, that there will be ‘misunderstandings’ that lead to errors and failure. The implementers of these systems will need to work on risk mitigation.” 

Cerf also emphasized the need for sustainable digital preservation. “Digital content is not eternal,” he warned. “Deliberate steps must be taken to ensure accessibility over decades, even centuries. I believe there will be some progress made along these lines during 2025. There are legal, technical, and financial hurdles to overcome to reach sustainability in digital preservation.”

Reflecting on his 1997 Medal, shared with Robert Kahn, Cerf acknowledged the collective effort behind the Internet’s success. “It was a very gratifying experience, but I was conscious then and now that the success of the Internet was the consequence of a countless number of engineers and entrepreneurs who saw the potential of the idea of such a global network and contributed to its viability and utility.” With that he also shared the implications of the Internet. “Now we see what happens when 2/3 of the world has access to the Internet and the World Wide Web,” he said. “There are powerful uses and, sadly, abuses of this amplifier of human endeavor. It is the abuse we now have to cope with, while trying to preserve the demonstrated utility of a global network linking people and computers in a collaborative setting.  

Robert Metcalfe

2003 Marconi Fellow

2003 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and recipient of the 2023 Turing Award, shared insights from his current work as a computational engineer at MIT. His focus on geothermal energy harvesting promises breakthroughs in cost reduction and fusion energy.

“The big breakthrough this year will be a tenfold reduction in drilling costs,” he shared. “Geothermal harvesting could rival traditional energy sources, offering clean, reliable, and abundant energy.”

Metcalfe also pointed to advancements in fusion energy and artificial intelligence, particularly efforts to improve AI’s accuracy by reducing hallucinations.

Federico Faggin

1988 Marconi Fellow

2009 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

Faggin emphasizes the transformative potential of understanding consciousness, which he describes as “the master technology of the future.”

“The most important technology emerging now is based on the growing scientific evidence that we are more than biological machines,” Faggin explained. “Accordingly, we are conscious quantum fields with free will. We are independent of our physical body, and we exist in a deeper reality than space-time. In other words, each of us is like a quantum field controlling a very sophisticated ‘drone,’ our physical body, for the deeper purpose of experiencing and knowing itself as a field.”

Faggin states this realization will fundamentally reshape our approach to technology and society: “Cooperation rather than competition is the way forward! And the technology of the future is the master technology that will teach us how to develop and use all the other technologies for the good of all. This is the technology of human transformation that recognizes our deeper spiritual nature, incomparable and yet integral with the physical nature of our bodies.”

Faggin explores these ideas further in his book, IRREDUCIBLE: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature (2024, Essentia).

John Cioffi

2006 Marconi Fellow

2022 National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate

Known as the “father of DSL,” John Cioffi shared a lighthearted moment from his award ceremony with President Biden. “He jokingly blamed me for his granddaughter’s excessive use of social media,” Cioffi recalled. “I responded, ‘I just make the links run faster, Mr. President; it’s you who provides the messages.’”

Cioffi discussed advancements in the communication field, emphasizing security and sustainability. “Security is not just encryption but protection against theft, disruption, etc.  AI methods will be stressed to support such security.” He also noted the increasing interdependence of AI and communication systems, stating, “There is also an increasingly important support of AI by communication, as the interchange of information between distributed processors supporting AI computation will become AI’s main limitation to advance. The two areas necessarily are codependent for progress.”

Andrew Viterbi (1990 Marconi Fellow / 2007 NMTI), Irwin Jacobs (2011 Marconi Fellow / 1994 NMTI), Robert Kahn (1994 Marconi Fellow / 1997 NMTI), and Arun Netravali (2017 Marconi Fellow / 2001 NMTI) were among other Marconi Fellows who also received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. Their impactful contributions continue to inspire future engineers and shape the Marconi Society’s mission.

The 2025 National Medal of Technology and Innovation laureates show that technological progress aims to create a sustainable, connected, and innovative world. The Marconi Society recognizes the achievements and dedication of individuals using technology to benefit society.

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What do you think the most important information and communications technologies will be in five years and why?

William Webb, Board Member

My view is that we are unlikely to see any significant new ICT technologies in the next five years. It generally takes much longer – 10 years or more for new concepts to emerge and prove their value. And it is hard to single out one technology. We have a complex ICT system that builds on the Internet and uses fiber, mobile, Wi-Fi and many other technologies to keep us connected via phones, laptops, and other devices. Cloud storage and search allow us to find what we want. If I had to pick one of these I’d say the Internet. Without it, modern life would be unthinkable and most of our devices would barely work. Of course, the Internet is not new, and hardly changes now, other than adding more capacity. That, in a way, is a testament to how well it does its task.

Vicente San Miguel, Board Member

Intelligent machines, either physical or virtual, will be broadly available in the same way that Ford T did in the past with our cities. They will create intensive ethical, economic, and future job debates. Virtual reality interaction will also change the way we work and entertain in this period. These technologies will pose significant challenges to Networks and Data Centers, which will require more Fiber and 5G deployments to cope with the connectivity demand. Getting these capabilities closer to the customers, either silicon or carbon, will also require new communications capacities to be deployed.

Legacy of Guglielmo Marconi

Arogyaswami Paulraj, 2014 Marconi Fellow and Board Member

Guglielmo Marconi was not only a visionary inventor and engineer but, more importantly, went on to commercialize his wireless technology. His entrepreneurial spirit and the establishment of the Marconi Company played a pivotal role in the widespread adoption of wireless technology. I tend to see the latter as his greatest contribution because it was the key to making the benefits of wireless technology widely available.

Marconi’s work did not stop at long-distance point-to-point wireless telegraphy. He also played a crucial role in the development of radio broadcasting, ushering in a new era of radio broadcasting and paving the way for mass market music, news, and entertainment through the airwaves.

The significance of Marconi’s contributions to wireless communication cannot be overstated. His work brought people closer together, transcending geographical boundaries and revolutionizing global telecommunications.

Andrew Viterbi, 1990 Marconi Fellow

During the last half of the nineteenth century a British mathematician, James Clerk Maxwell, and a German physicist, Heinrich Hertz, theoretically predicted and experimentally proved the phenomenon of electromagnetic wave propagation, which is known today as wireless. But it was the Italian visionary amateur scientist, Guglielmo Marconi, who foresaw and demonstrated the practical use of this phenomenon which by the beginning of the twenty-first century has connected together virtually all the residents of Earth as well as a few travelers of Space.

The history of this remarkable technological evolution, and at times revolution, fills countless scholarly journals, books, and patents. Over the century and a quarter, since Marconi demonstrated the practical employment of electromagnetic waves to transmit telegraph messages over great distances, millions of engineers and scientists have toiled to build the conglomeration of devices, systems, and networks that constitute modern wireless communication. One of our Marconi Society Fellows, the late Paul Baran, suggested a comic caricature of the process: “Each of many workers brought a single brick to add to the framework of the structure as a small contribution to building the edifice.”

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Chicago, IL, [March 21, 2024] – The Marconi Society is pleased to announce Dr. Teresa H. Meng as the recipient of the prestigious 2024 Marconi Prize in recognition of her fundamental technical contributions to and commercial leadership in all-CMOS Wi-Fi technology, leading to its widespread use in practice. Meng’s groundbreaking research, engineering, and entrepreneurial vision have made Wi-Fi technology faster, more energy-efficient, and cost-effective so that it can be a critical part of everyday life.

“We are so proud to honor Teresa’s transformational technology and commercial leadership in helping to create the Wi-Fi systems ubiquitous today” said Dr. Andrea Goldsmith, 2020 Marconi Fellow and Chair of the Marconi Prize Committee.  “Her bold vision to create all-CMOS Wi-Fi systems when it was thought impossible, her groundbreaking approach to architectural optimization across analog and digital system boundaries, her creation of the first open driver to program Wi-Fi chips, and her development of wirelessly-powered neural prosthetic systems demonstrate that Teresa is a fearless trailblazer and major contributor to the wireless revolution.”

Meng is perhaps best known for her vision and technical innovation as a founder at Atheros Communications, which was acquired by Qualcomm in 2011.  Wireless local area networking needed to become more robust, power efficient, and affordable in order to realize its full potential.  Meng recognized that by using complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integration, which places many functions on the same chip, and integrating both analog circuits and intensive digital signal processing, she could solve these problems by improving quality and reducing costs.  At a time when CMOS  talent was scarce and many believed that the timing was too early for the technology, Meng assembled and led a world-class team that together accomplished in under two years what experts predicted would take twice to three times as long.

“I focus on using my expertise to make the world a more equitable place by making complex communications devices more affordable and accessible to the public,” remarked  Meng.  “By working with other like-minded engineers  to create a  ubiquitous and robust communication environment in which people can affordably  interact with one another from anywhere at any time,  we are able to provide a richer communications experience for everyone.” 

Meng’s later work focused on designing and implementing brain to computer interfaces.  She and her team at Stanford demonstrated the first implant device that uses a wireless power transfer mechanism that could eliminate the need for a battery in the future.  Her team’s research to convert analog neural signals to digital ones at power dissipation levels compatible with medical implantation and wirelessly transmit these signals out of the brain for computation of position estimates needed to control prosthetic devices have launched a new field of study in low-power implantable systems and enabled overall neuroscience research.  She continues to provide guidance and vision on leading edge technologies that contribute to quality of life as an advisor at Atmosic.

Her passion for using education and technology to advance social justice has led Meng to focus on improving education, arts and culture, and social welfare across Asia as a director for the Alliance Cultural Foundation International (ACFI).  Meng’s advocacy for women in technology has made her an inspiring voice in the industry. 

Teresa H. Meng will be honored at the Marconi Society’s annual awards Gala in October 2024, in Bologna, Italy.  For more information on this celebration, please sign up to receive event updates from the Marconi Society.  Nominations for the 2025 Marconi Prize are being accepted through June 28, 2024.  More information is here.

About Teresa H. Meng

Teresa Meng is the Reid Weaver Dennis Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emerita, at Stanford University, joining the faculty in 1988.  Meng dedicated the initial decade of her work to research in low-power circuit and system design, video signal processing, and wireless communications. In 1998, she briefly left Stanford to establish Atheros Communications, Inc., focusing on semiconductor system solutions for wireless networks.

Returning in 2000, Meng continued teaching and research, shifting her focus to biomedical engineering. Collaborating with Professor Krishna Shenoy, she explored neural signal processing and prosthetic systems, alongside leading research into wireless power transfer and implantable biomedical devices.

Retiring from Stanford in 2013, Meng has served on the board of Ambarella and is currently on the Alliance Cultural Foundation International’s board, while advising Atmosic Technologies.

Meng is the first female recipient of the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal.  She holds a B. Sc. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University and MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

About the Marconi Prize

The Marconi Prize is the flagship award of the Marconi Society, given annually to innovators who have made significant contributions to increasing digital inclusivity through the advancement of information and communications technology. Marconi Prize recipients are recommended by an independent selection committee and approved by the Marconi Society Board.

About the Marconi SocietyThe Marconi Society envisions a connected world where information and communications technologies empower everyone to reach their full potential. The organization encourages and celebrates innovators who push the technical, creative and entrepreneurial boundaries of Information and Communications Technology for the benefit of humanity. For more information about the Marconi Society and the 2024 Marconi Prize, please visit www.marconisociety.org.

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A replay of this webinar is available here.

Vehicles are safer than ever. Yet in 2021, over 42,000 people were killed on American roads, the highest number in 16 years. Pedestrian fatalities surged to 40-year highs. Cyclist deaths reached levels not seen since 1990.

What’s behind this deadly trend and how can we stop it? Abhi teed up the issue by observing that while drunk driving is illegal, distracted driving is not and has surged in recent years. The solution to making roads safer lies at the intersection of technology, policy and economics. She then turned to each of the panelists for their perspective. 

Hari further illustrated the current state of road safety by noting that over the one-hour duration of the panel session, 150 people will die and about six thousand will be injured on roads worldwide. This is indicative of a worsening trend tied to the increasing use of smartphones, which Hari termed “weapons of mass distraction.” And while cars have become safer, they are also filled with more distracting and confusing features.

Public infrastructure has not kept pace with these changes. Bright spots exist, however, in the areas of incentivization and public policy, supported by telematics technology and large-scale analyses of driving data

Amanda offered an insurer’s perspective, emphasizing how Travelers and other insurers continuously measure data to manage risk. The increase in the post-pandemic fatality rate for crashes in the US is a key concern, reaching a sixteen-year high in 2021. While it’s not possible to pinpoint a single root cause, the deadly combination of greater levels of distraction with increasing driving speeds certainly contributes to this trend. This is occurring despite more built-in safety features in vehicles than ever.

Precious provided a view beyond the US, speaking from her experience with Discovery Insure in South Africa. At 22 deaths per 100,000, the fatality rate there is one of the worst in the world. She pointed to driver behavior as a major factor, accounting for 60% of crashes. To counter this, they have introduced an incentive program in 40 markets, effectively gamifying good behavior with a point system. Recognizing the importance of loss aversion in behavioral economics, drivers start each day with points they can retain or lose depending on their driving behavior. As they bank their daily points over time, they can raise their status and earn rewards. This has proven more effective than offering insurance premium discounts to good drivers.

As a trauma center physician, Kit sees a lot of crash victims in his work. He continued the theme of driver behavior, observing that the impulse to pick up a pinging phone is one people find hard to resist. He went on to describe research supported by the Federal Highway Administration and performed in partnership with an insurer that confirms the power of loss aversion in encouraging drivers to limit their phone use. They further discovered that adding a competitive element to the program helped ingrain the desired change in behavior to persist beyond the end of the program.

Shifting the focus to policy, Steve described the work of the Kiefer Foundation, founded after his son was killed by a distracted driver seven years ago. While US highway safety statistics indicate 30 people per day are killed by distracted drivers, most experts say the actual number is closer to 50. Hands-free laws that make it illegal to hold a phone while driving exist in 29 states and have led to reductions of 10-20% in crashes and fatalities. Their goal is to see hands-free laws established in all 50 states. Drawing an analogy to drunk-driving laws, he looks forward to distracted driving being seen as socially unacceptable as driving intoxicated is today.

Todd brought his experience as an educator into the conversation, describing his work with computer science students. He has witnessed students’ drive to develop relevant, socially impactful apps. Once they become aware of a problem, students are highly engaged when their work is part of the solution. As an example, his students created an app to address distracted driving, providing feedback on elements of safe driving to young drivers in the DC area. They are now looking forward to making the app widely available. 

The panel continued to discuss measures to improve driver behavior, supported by telematics technology. In addition to considering the efficacy of various approaches, they also addressed the opportunities for growth, including public awareness.

For the rest of this conversation and the panel’s responses to questions from the audience, follow this link to the webinar recording.

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The upcoming Marconi Society webinar on Thursday, February 22, will feature 2023 Marconi Prize recipient Hari Balakrishnan, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Cambridge Mobile Telematics (CMT). We recently spoke with Hari about how his interests in networking, mobile sensing, and distributed systems led him to creating technology to make roads safer. Hari also gave us a preview of what we can look forward to hearing from him and the other panelists during the webinar.

The story behind CMT and Hari’s work in telematics begins with the CarTel project at MIT. An early application of the technology developed there measured road surface conditions—including pothole detection—in partnership with Boston-area taxi companies. With a shift in emphasis from saving tires to saving lives, CMT’s technology today measures driver behavior to reduce automobile crashes, injuries, and fatalities. Recognizing that driving is the “most controllable factor,” Hari asserts that “telematics is the single biggest solution that we know today to solve this problem.”

The importance of this issue and the potential impact of technology to address it is evident in recent traffic crash data. Despite safety improvements in the vehicles themselves, the rates of serious injuries and fatalities from traffic accidents have risen steadily since 2010. Hari identified distracted driving as a significant factor, noting a parallel rise in the number of smartphones in use. Citing research on distracted driving, Hari observed that “over 80% of drivers have distraction episodes at least once a week.”

Driver analysis technology can be effective in reducing distracted driving and creating safer roads when coupled with financial incentives such as lower insurance rates. Infrastructure improvements—for example, posting digital signage in places where measurement shows risky driving is common—can contribute as well. When asked what he expects to learn from this webinar, Hari said he looks forward to hearing “ideas that bring together technology-based products, public policy, and changes in infrastructure” to enhance road safety.

We are fortunate to have a webinar panel capable of meeting Hari’s expectations. Panelists with backgrounds in the automobile industry, emergency medicine, insurance, and smart technology will join Hari to discuss how technological advancements, economic incentives, and policy-driven solutions can combine to create safer roads. On February 22, join our distinguished panel to learn more and drive change for a safer future.

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The Early Days

Federico opened the conversation by taking us back to the early days when groundbreaking inventions like the 4004 microprocessor he developed and Vint Cerf’s TCP/IP protocol were conceived. The rapid advancement of microprocessor technology impacts various applications, from calculators to control systems. The work to shrink transistors and double processing power over decades has led to the current era of trillion-transistor chips.

Vint recounted how the original purpose of creating a communication system for the Defense Department eventually evolved into a commercial and global phenomenon. He stated, “In 1983… there might have been 400 computers on the system.  Today, there are billions of machines on the network…” The rapid proliferation of search engines and the monumental impact of smartphones has brought unprecedented levels of connectivity and access to the internet.

Marty took the conversation even further back to 130 years ago to describe the work of Heinrich Hertz, and how the early field of electromagnetism research led to his innovations. Technological progress drove people to want to be more connected. He shared, “My colleagues and I at Motorola could see that the world was ready for personal communications.  People didn’t want to call a car. They didn’t want to call a house as they had been doing for 100 years. They wanted to call a person, and we created the very first personal portable telephone”.

Technology Meets Humanity

The Internet has democratized access to information. People now can access vast amounts of knowledge instantly, enabling self-directed education, research, and informed decision-making. This empowers individuals to become more knowledgeable and informed citizens.

The Internet of Things will improve the human experience by allowing us to be more productive. Artificial intelligence will analyze your behavior and find the right apps to make your life better. IoT can improve the efficiency of energy production and transmission and can help reduce emissions.

We’re truly on a precipice of exciting impacts of cellular technology beyond the ubiquity of the cell phone. This technology will improve the quality of life worldwide. For example, the sensors we use in phones can also measure a person’s pulse and blood pressure. We have the potential to sense a disease before it harms an individual with the goal of truly eradicating disease.

To tackle this complex issue, we need a multidisciplinary approach. It’s not just about the code or algorithms; it’s about understanding human behavior, societal norms, and the delicate balance between individual freedoms and collective responsibilities. Sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, and legal experts play a crucial role in this process. They help us explore how we accept certain behavioral norms in exchange for the benefits provided by our systems, essentially defining the modern social contract.

Challenges in Academia 

Advancement in academia typically relies on metrics like the number of publications and citations, grants obtained, and teaching evaluations. While these metrics reward productivity and quality, they may not adequately recognize or reward true innovation, which might not manifest in immediate publications or measurable outcomes.

To foster innovation in academia, there is a growing recognition of the need to reform these incentive structures. Some initiatives include promoting open science, recognizing alternative forms of research impact, beyond publications and citations, providing dedicated support for interdisciplinary research, and encouraging collaboration with industry,

Vision for the Future

“There is no doubt in my mind that we could increase the capacity of the radio spectrum over the next 50 years by another million times. And that’s a good thing because we are thinking of new ways of using the collaboration of people to solve all of the big problems in the world.” – Marty Cooper

“We need to become smarter in the way we use technology. We need to be more creative. In the past, we had to brute force the entire system […] that strategy no longer works, so we have to become clever.” – Federico

“What we need as a society is to learn how to adapt to a more positive environment. Pay attention to our problems like global warming. Pay attention to smarter use of spectrum. […] You learn sharing when you’re in kindergarten. We should remember those lessons” – Vint Cerf

The post 50 Years Ago and In the Future Highlights appeared first on The Marconi Society.

Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer, Marty Cooper, Inventor of the cellphone and Federico Faggin, developer of the microprocessor, will share their stories, insights and predictions for the future in an open discussion with questions and answers.

Vint, Marty and Federico are kicking this event off by sharing a few of their ideas.  Please join us to hear more.

What changes did you envision when you created your transformational innovation?  What did you predict correctly and what have you been surprised about?

Vint Cerf:  Bob Kahn and I expected that interconnecting computers in a network would lead to significant sharing of research results, including software and computational resources. That was the original motivation for the Arpanet experiment, including the demonstration that packet switching technology would prove to be useful for computer interconnection. We extended that concept through the Internet experiment that interconnected computers and packet networks with very different characteristics. The TCP/IP protocol suite overcame these differences to offer a more uniform interface for host computers on a network of networks. 

I was not surprised by the flexibility of the TCP/IP protocol suite to accommodate very different kinds of packet networks. I was surprised, however, by the arrival of the World Wide Web (WWW), thanks to Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s HTTP protocol, and  HTML encoding standard. This triggered an avalanche of new applications, which was amplified by the arrival of the smartphone (Apple iPhone) in 2007. 

The avalanche of content that followed the introduction of the WWW gave rise to demand for indexing of its content. Alta Vista, Yahoo! and Google and others all became important search tools for finding relevant content in a sea of web pages. 

As bandwidths increased, I was not surprised to see video conferencing become a major application – we had been experimenting with that as far back as the Arpanet period. The arrival of neural network machine learning leading to speech recognition, text to speech generation, language translation, and now Large Language Models proved to be another surprise. Early work with the single layer Perceptron neural network was disappointing, but multi-layer systems proved to be dramatically more powerful. These tools are becoming an integral part of the WWW applications we see today. 

Marty Cooper: It wasn’t merely a prediction – I knew that eventually everyone would have a cell phone. I joked, “Someday, when a person is born, she will be assigned a phone number. If she didn’t answer the phone, she has died.” There are now more cell phones in the world than there are people. The cell phone has become an essential tool of productivity, an extension of its owner’s personality. And yet, a third of the world’s population still don’t have cell phones. 

When the handheld cell phone was invented, the Internet did not exist.  We did not have personal computers nor digital cameras, and the large-scale integrated circuit did not exist. In 1973, it would have been hard to imagine a “phone” that incorporated billions of transistors, the equivalent of a supercomputer, a powerful digital cameras and access to all the knowledge in the world. 

Federico Faggin:  The idea of eventually integrating a CPU into a single chip – what defines a microprocessor – had already been advanced in 1967 by Lee Boysel at Fairchild Semiconductor. However microprocessors were not expected to occur before the mid-Seventies because the current MOS metal-gate technology was not dense and fast enough to allow them. It was the unexpected invention and development of the MOS silicon gate technology, the project I successfully led at Fairchild in 1968, that speeded up the timetable to implement all the missing ingredients to make computers on a chip: microprocessors, dynamic RAMs (random access memory), non-volatile memories, and CCD image sensors.

When I joined Intel in April 1970, I led the chip design of all the microprocessors starting with the 4004 microprocessor. To achieve the appropriate speed and circuit density, the 4004 required two inventions of mine: the buried contact and the bootstrap load. Furthermore I had to develop the entire methodology for random logic designs with silicon gates that were also used for all the early Intel and Zilog microprocessors.

The Intel 4004 became the world’s first commercial microprocessor when it was first sold in March 1971. In early 1971, I took over the project that became the world’s first 8-bit commercial microprocessor in April 1972. By the same time I had architected the Intel 8080, and I later led its chip design. The 8080 was commercialized in March 1974. It became an instant success, showing that microprocessors could be broadly applied to many more applications than first-generation microprocessors.

In November 1974 I started Zilog, Inc., the very first company dedicated to microprocessors. At Zilog I architected and led the design of the Z80-CPU, a third-generation 8-bit/16-bit microprocessor with twice the speed of the 8080. Using microprocessors, personal computers began to replace minicomputers. However, the importance of these new chips was also to create novel applications and markets in which a microprocessor-based computer with appropriate software could replace special-purpose hardware solutions that were too costly, inflexible and took too long to develop. Most of these new applications were incongruous and impossible to imagine when the smallest conventional computers were power-hungry, cost thousands of dollars, and were larger than a shoebox. How could a computer fit inside the body, a toy, or a pocket?

I therefore expected to be surprised by most new applications since there is no limit to what can be done with tiny, powerful, and cheap computers. Nonetheless, there were many that I would not have imagined, for example, having a microchip inside an electric toothbrush! Why not when one can buy for less than $1 a general-purpose computer the size of a pea that dissipates less than 100 mW?

Looking ahead, what emerging technologies do you believe will have the most profound impact on society in the next 50 years? 

Vint Cerf:  For sure, large language models and other neural network applications are bound to have power impacts on daily life and work. The “Interplanetary Internet” is set to support manned and robotic space exploration and commercialization in the 2020’s and beyond. The Internet of Things (devices with computing and Internet communication capacity) will become increasingly common. 

Less certain – but no less intriguing – will be vehicle-to-vehicle communication assisting self-driving vehicles in their work. Machine learning of all kinds may inform diagnostic work (e.g. medical, maintenance) and discovery (e.g. drugs, asteroid threats). New forms of detection and measurement will create a deeper understanding of how the universe works (think: dark matter, dark energy, strong nuclear forces ). Medical diagnosis and treatment will advance with AI/ML, small molecule therapies, new diagnostic tools, and personalized treatment. 

Marty Cooper:  When artificial intelligence (AI) is added to a cell phone, the phone will become a true extension of its owner. The AI will analyze the behavior, habits and preferences of the owner, and will either create or locate appropriate apps to relieve the owner of the routine aspects of his or her life.  The ludicrous idea of sorting through 4 million apps to find the right one will disappear.

Further, the cell phone will evolve into a group of sensors located on or in its owner’s body, selected based upon the owner’s history and DNA.  These sensors will monitor key metrics that will anticipate diseases and provide for their cure while they are still nascent. A few generations from now, the concept of disease will be obsolete

Federico Faggin: Artificial intelligence (AI) is the technology with the most potential applications. In the last 10 years AI has reached a level of performance and readiness to turn it into a technology with arguably even more widespread applications than the original microprocessors. Natural-language programming, self-driving vehicles, and robots of all types are just a few examples of embedded AI. Here again, I expect that human creativity will surprise all of us.

Quantum computers will also come of age, allowing us to go way beyond the speed of classical computers, especially when applied to the simulation of living organisms. Such systems, being both quantum and classical, are way too complex to be simulated classically, Semiconductor technology will reach maturity in 10-20 years and Moore’s Law will end. Only biological organisms have the promise to give us a quantum and classical technology that may top semiconductors in terms of integration, speed, and energy consumption.  

Genetic manipulation will allow us to create new microorganisms and new forms of multicellular life with incredible potential for good and evil. The challenging ethical problems currently posed by the widespread adoption of AI are trifles compared with what is in store for us 20 years from now in conjunction with genetic manipulation. Only a planetary-scale regulation may avoid potential existential risks for mankind and for the ecosystem.

Collaboration and interdisciplinary efforts have been instrumental in many  technological advancements.  In fact, this is why the Marconi Society focuses at the intersection of technology, policy and digital inclusion to support digital equity. What disciplines do you think need to come together to solve the issue of income inequality?

Vint Cerf:  We need better evaluation of strengths (think Gallup StrengthFinder on steroids), as well as tools that augment human capacity to analyze large data collections and hypothesize new theories. We will need a deeper understanding of Machine Learning to use these tools more reliably. Advances in spectrum sharing and efficient utilization will be key to ensuring that everyone has access to the connectivity and speeds that they need..  

Marty Cooper:  Advancements and universality of education is the key to solving many of the problems humanity faces today!

Full-time connectivity is transforming our antiquated educational process from a classroom/lecture process to full time learning based upon a student’s continuous access to all the knowledge in the world. The roles of teachers and students are already changing dramatically and will be revolutionized in coming generations. The idea of a teacher lecturing to students who have full-time access to all the world’s knowledge is ludicrous.  Teachers need to focus on how their students can discriminate between real and fake information, and how to apply the vast amount of information to real world problems.

In order to achieve the potential of a connected society, radio-frequency spectrum must be available.  Our politicians and regulators have treated radio spectrum as a scarce resource. Yet, there has never been a scarcity of spectrum. Technology has always provided the capacity to accommodate the burgeoning applications in areas like communications, national defense, and global positioning. Further, technology already exists that will provide additional capacity for at least another 50 years.

Federico Faggin: Science, philosophy, and spirituality need to converge into a new worldview that replaces the materialistic and reductionist perspective that currently dominates society.

I strongly believe that it will be impossible to solve the many problems we are now facing if we think that we are perishable machines guided by the “survival of the fittest” doctrine. This is the same principle that fostered climate change, the proliferation of nuclear arms, AI-based cybercrime, as well as the income inequality mentioned. This same egotistical doctrine is also behind the endless series of wars that have affected humanity since recorded history.

I believe that humanity may overcome the challenging times in front of us only when science finally recognizes the existence of consciousness and free will as properties that cannot exist in deterministic systems.

Only strong cooperation can save us, not the life-and-death competition inherent in the “survival of the fittest” doctrine. We need to recognize that in the connected world, we live in, the good and the evil we do unto others will inevitably return to their doers.

I believe this is the only option left. We are indeed all living together on a tiny planet sailing in the unfathomable space of the universe. Only by working together with respect and love for each other can we overcome the serious problems we have created for ourselves.

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The Marconi Society wishes Signore Marconi a happy birthday with messages from some of the innovators who have taken his work further than he might have ever dreamed.

__________

Vinton Cerf

1998 Marconi Fellow, recognized for the technical achievements and ambassadorial leadership which have been such major factors in the creation and evolution of the Internet.

Dear Sig. Marconi, 

It is 2023 and your dramatic demonstration of transatlantic radio transmission in 1901 has fulfilled the promise of global radio communication in ways that might surprise you. Whole industries have been created from commercial radio services to wireless, hand-held telephones and Earth orbiting satellites that connect every square inch of the Earth to every other square inch by way of a global “Internet.”

In our homes, businesses, cars and persons, we carry radio-based devices. We connect to the global Internet with local radios using “Wi-Fi” technology. Devices with computers in them (based on transistor technology invented in 1947) are also connected to the Internet with low power radio.

As I write this, rockets are taking radio to the Moon to support long-term human research and commercial sites there. We have been using a Deep Space Network system with antennas 70 m in size to communicate with spacecraft that are 14 billion miles away from earth and entering interstellar space. We are far from fully exploring all the implications of your pioneering work. We use radio to connect our watches (!) to our smartphones to the Internet to monitor our health. Our manufacturing facilities are using radio to connect equipment together with our computers to automate manufacturing. Robots are becoming increasingly common and for mobility, they use radio to communicate status and to receive instructions.

How I wish you could return to see what has been wrought from those early experiments at Villa Griffone!

Vint Cerf
Chairman, Marconi Society
Co-inventor of the Internet

____________

Marty Cooper

2013 Marconi Fellow, recognized for  being a wireless visionary who reshaped the concept of mobile communication.

My Dear Signore Marconi,

Over 120 years have passed since your vision of wireless communication was proven and you successfully commercialized that vision. You started us on a path that has positively revolutionized the human experience. Science has expanded the capacity of the radio-frequency spectrum by a trillion times and is opening the door to further revolutions in education, health care, and the elimination of poverty. Congratulations and Happy Birthday!

Marty

__________________

John Cioffi

2006 Marconi Fellow, recognized for pioneering research that helped create DSL (digital subscriber line) circuits bringing broadband Internet access to hundreds of millions of people.

Giovanni Corazza

Marconi Society Board Member and President, Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi

The wireless revolution started in the outskirts of Bologna, where a young inventor had the dream to realize non-line-of-sight connections through electromagnetic wave propagation. In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi succeeded in overcoming the Celestini’s Hill in front of Villa Griffone, a milestone that the IEEE has recognized as the start of a new era. 

Since then, myriad applications for telecommunications, navigation, sensing, and control followed in a restless progression that will continue in the years to come for the pursuit of Marconi’s vision of a fully interconnected planet Earth.

John Cioffi and Giovanni Emanuele Corazza

_________________

Whitfield Diffie

2000 Marconi Fellow, recognized for his invention of public-key cryptography to protect privacy on the Internet.

Radio created the modern field of cryptography.  Radio bypassed all the information security techniques known at the turn of the 20th Century, except cryptography.  The result was an explosive expansion of cryptography to meet the needs of radio.  Eventually, the tubes that had made radio possible became the basis for cryptographic devices.  Today there is a radio (built from transistors, the successors of tubes) in everyone’s pocket and we use transistor-based cryptography to protect their communications.

 Whit

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Federico Faggin

1988 Marconi Fellow, recognized for his pioneering contributions to the implementation of the microprocessor, a principal building block of modern telecommunications.

I believe your confidence in the power of electromagnetic waves to be general carriers of information at all scales, combined with the information processing capabilities of microelectronics and software, have changed our world in ways that would make you most surprised and proud.

Best regards and wishes

Federico

_________________

Leonard Kleinrock

1986 Marconi Fellow, recognized  for his scholarly pioneering work in telecommunications particularly as applied to computer networks.

Dear Sig. Marconi, 

You represent the essence of what drives an inventor and an innovator.  As a young man you were fascinated with the magical world of invisible electricity.  You combined that which makes great scientists, namely, the search for how things work and, importantly, why they work that way.  

It was your curiosity and vision that led to your huge contributions to the wonders of radio waves and their applications.  In your backyard you launched those waves using equipment that you yourself crafted.  How magnificent!  Those breakthroughs have brought us forward for over a century of innovation and impact.  

Now, as we celebrate your 149^th birthday, we can only imagine what follows over the next many decades.  We live in the world of the Internet today, driven in so many ways by the wonders of your wireless legacy.   We can look forward and imagine how wireless could assist us in producing a pervasive global nervous system in which the Internet and its progeny will be invisible in that they will disappear into the infrastructure.

Leonard Kleinrock

__________

Brad Parkinson

2016 Marconi Fellow, recognized for technical leadership in the design and development of the Global Positioning System.

Happy Birthday Inventor Marconi,

You would be gratified to see the fabulous advances in communication that you pioneered. We now have the ability to transmit and receive full three-dimensional images between virtually anyone, anywhere in the world. You pioneered radio navigation that is now advanced to a worldwide submeter level capability. 

In your IEEE acceptance speech, you correctly anticipated that we could use radio waves to locate and sense the shape of distance objects. This has now progressed to the point we have several such affordable devices, called radars, on many of our new automobiles.  

You did not experience a technology that we call artificial intelligence. This has now reached the point that machines can simulate people in all aspects that are virtually indiscernible from the real thing. So, looking to the future, predictions are hard. But the intersection of this new artificial intelligence and the ability to re-create completely realistic images of people at a distance probably has some very profound implications. I think it will be incumbent on all of us to try to avoid any dark underside of these developments and ensure they are used for positive purposes rather than to harm humankind.

Brad

________________

Arogyaswami Paulraj

2014 Marconi Fellow, recognized for his pioneering contributions to developing the theory and applications of MIMO antennas.

Dr. Marconi,

Happy Birthday!

Your inventive spirit, perseverance, and business leadership made wireless telegraphy a truly global service – bridging continents and connecting ships across the vast oceans. Later, these same skills helped you build a successful radio broadcasting service reaching millions of homes with news and entertainment. You pioneered global connectivity.

Wireless has evolved in amazing ways, and today it enables anytime / anywhere access to something called the internet, allowing billions of people to connect to services that would have seemed magical in your day.  Indeed, wireless has become a key transformative infrastructure of the world today. But the revolution continues, and wireless will soon connect hundreds of billions of machines and sensors, creating a new magical world in the years to come.

Your legacy lives on!

Paul

_______________

Eric Plum

2009 Paul Baran Young Scholar, recognized for his work in dynamic control of metamaterial optical properties.

Dear Inventor Marconi,  

It is the year of 2023 and there are more radio transmitters than people. Your invention of wireless communication now enables my children to find out about everything they can think of within seconds. The world is undergoing another transformation, with machines now able to perform tasks perceived as creative, imaginative, and intelligent, from writing speeches, stories, and poems to creating realistic images of paintings, sculptures, people and events that never existed. The implications for society are immense and the power of radio makes these new tools available to all.  

Eric Plum 

_________________

Dennis Roberson

Marconi Society Board

Senator Marconi,

Happy 149^th Birthday!  Thank you for the enormous gift you bestowed on our world through the creation of the field of wireless communications.  Through your tireless efforts you continuously extended the reach of your creation.  

Since your time, the forms of information communications have dramatically expanded, including communications between humans and machines that store and disseminate  information including the instantaneous transmission of images and video information used for academic, commercial, government, and leisure applications.  

The knowledge of the world has largely been captured in massive data warehouses and is wirelessly available to an ever-increasing percentage of the world’s population.  Over the coming decade, wireless and computer technologies will lead to the widespread availability of driverless automobiles, virtual or augmented reality, remote medical services, worldwide educational opportunities and much more leading to an era of global digital inclusion.  These applications will run on an integrated broadband terrestrial and satellite network that will be universally available at an affordable price.  To some degree these capabilities will even be available on the moon and beyond.  

Though you foresaw many of the applications of wireless technology, I am sure you would be amazed and very proud of how your creation has evolved and how it has improved the quality of life for the peoples of the world.  We are deeply indebted to you for the foundational contributions you made to our modern world.

Dennis Roberson

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Andrew J. Viterbi

1990 Marconi Fellow, recognized for his achievements in the field of digital communications in many adverse environments, particularly through his widely used algorithm.

Egregio Senatore Guglielmo Marconi,

When Professor Henrich Rudolf Hertz (whose name replaced the archaic “cycles-per-second” measure) experimentally validated the phenomenon of electromagnetic signal propagation in the late 1880’s, he proceeded to predict that the phenomenon would have no practical purpose. A decade later, you proved him dramatically wrong through your early transatlantic transmissions,  followed by your creation of the lucrative radio broadcasting industry which began the distribution of information and entertainment worldwide and ultimately the transformation of society.

Complimenti e Distinti Saluti, 

Andrew Viterbi

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