Vint Cerf Says, “Rendering” is a Problem With the Internet.

Vint Cerf, VP and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google, gave the opening Keynote at Internet Librarian in Monterey 2009 and spoke, in large part, about the problem of “rendering” information across software and hardware platforms.  In essence, the problem of rendering (which is new concept for me, so forgive me if I butcher the definition) is that new versions of software and hardware make older versions obsolete and the information contained in those older versions can no longer be rendered and the information is lost. Or, as he said;  “as we build more digital media, the information may become meaningless with the lack of ability to render the bits, or we might no longer have the capability to read the bits.  There could be a lack of software or hardware and how do we address the problem of lost information through the innovation and creation of new media rendering tools?”

There are many great examples of this issue.  One demonstration is with the current battle between competing E-Readers such as the Kindle and the Nook.  Because the e-books and therefore the information contained in them is not transferable between brands of readers and as publishers select specific devices to deliver their books, the public is going to suffer from a lack of access or ability to render the information.  This issue becomes even more apparent as new forms of information storage and transmission become available and the older forms begin dying out.  For example, issues of compatibility between various word-processing documents and various versions of the word-processing programs can cause vast amounts of information to become unreadable or “un-renderable” and consequently lost or inaccessible.

I hadn’t realized that this is going to be the big challenge that librarians are going to be facing.  As he spoke I began to see that we have quite a few questions to ask ourselves as we move forward.  Some examples include;  How is it that we are going to ensure that the information is accessible by solving the problems that are created with materials that can’t be rendered?  As archivists, how can we ensure that we are able to provide older versions of information via newer forms of access points? As reference librarians, how can we ensure that we are finding the most valuable answers and not simply the most accessible?  As catalogers, what do we do with materials that are in forms that are no longer used or accessible?  And, as libraries in general, how do we ensure that we are maintaining a collection of materials that is currently relevant (renderable) and employ those that know how use the current (and previous) tools necessary to render that information?

As Mr. Cerf spoke, it became apparent that there are even more questions that we are going to have to answer in the coming years and Vint Cerf didn’t provide the answers to any of these questions.  He did however, hint at a potential solution in cloud computing.  Unfortunately, it looks like this concept is far beyond my understanding and because the Internet access in the conference is spotty at best I’m unable to Google a solid definition so I’ll leave that to you.