One of the founding fathers of the Internet has predicted the
end of traditional television. Vint Cerf, who helped to build the Internet while
working as a researcher in America, said that television was approaching its"
iPod moment". In the same way that people now download their favorite music onto
their iPod, he said that viewers would soon be downloading most of favorite
programs onto their computers. "85 percent of ail videos we
watch is pre-recorded, so you can set your system to download it all the time,"
said Mr. Cerf, who is now the vice-president of the Google, the world’s largest
search engine. "You’re still going to need live television for certain
things-like news, sporting events and emergencies-but increasingly it is going
to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at
later." Although television on demand has not yet become a
mainstream activity in the UK, the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have ail invested vast
sums of money in technology which enables viewers to watch their favorite shows
on their computers. But some critics, including some Internet service providers,
have warned that the Internet will collapse under the strain of millions of
people downloading programs at the same time. Over the next four years, it is
thought that the number of videos watched over the Internet will quadruple
(成四倍), with people moving from short clips to hour-long programs. Broadband
companies claim that the service will cause "traffic jams", which will cost
millions of pounds to sort out. But Mr. Cerf dismissed the
warnings as" scare tactics", saying that critics had predicted 20 years ago that
the net would collapse when people all around the world started to use it en
masse(一起). "In the intervening 30 years it’s increased a million
times. We’re far from exhausting the capacity, "he said. "It’s an understandable
worry when they see huge amounts of information being moved around
online." Setting out his vision for the future of the Internet,
he said he wanted it to reach as many people as possible. "I want more
Internet," he said. "I want every one of the six billion people on the planet to
be able to connect to the Internet." What will cause" traffic jams" on the Internet according to Broadband companies
【参考答案】
The service of providing television programs on Internet.