Supercommunicator

But Don't Oversimplify

Early in my research I had the pleasure of interviewing Vint Cerf, one of the “fathers of the Internet.”⁹ I wanted to see how this legendary techie would explain his creation: TCP/IP technology or, in layman's terms, that which makes the Internet work.

Cerf offered me a line he borrowed from another brilliant innovator of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein. He looked me straight in the eye and told me that the key to communicating complicated topics is simplicity—but with a big caveat. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler,” he uttered.

What came next was a walk through the history of the ...