Vinton Cerf, One of the Internet's Inventors, to Partner with Better Hearing Institute; Lauds New, Digital Hearing Aid Technology on PBS Program.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Vinton Cerf, a computer pioneer who is now Google's "Internet evangelist," is joining the Better Hearing Institute's (BHI) campaign to educate Americans about new, technologically sophisticated solutions to hearing loss. Dr. Cerf, who has used hearing aids since he was 13, will urge millions of public television viewers to stop ignoring hearing problems in a PBS documentary that will be aired starting in August. He will also be a BHI spokesman. E[acute accent]"I have spent much of my life thinking about the potential of communications technology to transform people's lives," said Dr. Cerf. "Now I'm equally excited about how digital technology is transforming the lives of people with hearing problems. It's about time for people to start embracing digital hearing aids in the same way they have embraced iPods, BlueTooth technology and other portable communications devices." E[acute accent]The PBS program, "Spotlight On: Hearing Loss", will be made available to public television affiliate stations around the country in the third week of August. It will be guaranteed a minimum of 500 airings and at least 3 million public television viewers by PBS. The 9-minute program conveys the negative consequences of untreated hearing loss and the advances that have revolutionized hearing aid technology in recent years. E[acute accent]Known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," when he was a professor at Stanford University in the early 1970s, Dr. Cerf co-designed the protocols and architecture that make it possible to communicate through cyberspace. He was also a pioneer in the development of electronic mail. His own hearing loss helped to motivate him to look for new ways to communicate. He recalls, "In creating the Internet with my colleagues, in part I wanted to help people with hearing loss as well as other communication difficulties. Written communication is a tremendous help for me, and so when electronic mail was invented in '71, I got very excited about it, thinking that the hard-of-hearing community could really use this." E[acute accent]Just as he has benefited from the Internet and email, Dr. Cerf explained, "I have also benefited from the invention of increasingly powerful and flexible hearing aids with substantial digital processing capability." He also says that "researchers have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible when it comes to enhancing hearing. Someday, for example, technology can and should benefit people with perfectly normal hearing, helping them to detect sounds that are not detectable now. We tend to focus on remediation only, but why not give people supra-normal hearing?" E[acute accent]"We believe Vinton Cerf is an ideal messenger who can motivate people to take advantage of communications technology that will improve their lives. And we hope he and PBS will help us send a wake-up call to the 25 million Americans who know they have hearing problems but aren't doing anything about it," states Sergei Kochkin, Ph.D., BHI's Executive Director. "As a result, they often lose income on the job, have psychological problems and find that intimate relationships and family life are disrupted. Untreated hearing loss isn't a minor irritation that can be safely ignored; it's a major health problem." E[acute accent]Dr. Cerf has held key executive positions at MCI, where he led the engineering of the first commercial email service to be connected to the Internet; the U.S. Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) where he played a key role in the development of the Internet and security technologies ;and the Corporation for National Research Initiatives. Currently he is Vice-President and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. Founding President of the Internet Society (1992-1995), Dr. Cerf also sits on numerous Boards of Directors including the Endowment for Excellence in Education E[acute accent]The PBS documentary "Spotlight On: Hearing Loss", part of public television's "Spotlight" series, is now available for viewing or download at www.betterhearing.org.

E[acute accent]Founded in 1973, the Better Hearing Institute is a not-for-profit educational organization whose mission is to educate the public about hearing loss, its treatment and prevention.