INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION UNION

Telecom Interactive 97
Geneva, 8-14 September 1997

Opening Remarks
Opening Ceremony, TELECOM Interactive 97
Monday, 8 September 1997

Dr. Pekka Tarjanne, Secretary-General, ITU

Your Excellencies, 
distinguished guests, 
ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to TELECOM Interactive 97.

The video clip we have just seen illustrates the remarkable potential of interactive communication and information technologies.  They truly have the capacity to transform our world and how we understand it in a way that happens only once every few centuries.

We are all familiar with the comparison between today’s information revolution, the industrial revolution that created modern society, and the agricultural revolution that first gave rise to civilization.  In some ways, this comparison misses the significance of the transformation that lies before us.

Of course, it is true that the information revolution brings different kinds of jobs, different lifestyles, and different social problems from previous revolutions.  But this is just on the surface.  Underneath, the information revolution brings a new way of looking at the world.

Agricultural societies were mainly local.  Their inhabitants lived in an orderly and eternal world, based on acts of gods or laws of nature, in which men and women knew their place – in the sense of where they came from and where they stood in the social order.

The scientific revolution gave us a very different picture --  of a universe spread out in space and evolving over time, in which man progressively assumed the powers that formerly belonged to God alone and asserted his dominion over nature.  Recent advances in bio-technology, which promise to give us the power to create life in our own image or the image of our choice, show that we have not yet finished with the consequences of this revolution.

How does the information revolution alter our world-view?  At base, it reduces the significance of space and time as organizing principles of economic, social and political life.  Geography, history, national culture and social structure – the immutable certainties of the past --  no longer provide a stable structure for building societies or living individual lives.

In cyberspace, as we shall see over the next few days, interactive communication technologies create a world of almost infinite possibilities in which reality is virtual, there is here, then is now, and I am them.

There could be no more compelling illustration of the power of communications technology to obliterate these distinctions than the reaction to the death of Princess Diana just one week ago – a woman whose life, works, and tragic end were themselves a perfect illustration of the possibilities and dangers of the electronic media.

While thousands queued in London and other cities to write messages in books of condolence, more than 16 million did the same on the Internet.  About two million people attended her funeral; hundreds of millions took part by television.  Was there any fundamental difference in their sense of loss or shared grief, whether they were there in person or present only electronically? Whether they were in London, Geneva or anywhere in the world touched by her life?

In the past, when distinctions of time and place defined our world, we might have debated this question.  Today, and in the future, I think we will not.  As a result of the information revolution, we are paradoxically more free as individuals and more united by our common humanity than ever before.

While the interactive media that will be on exhibit and discussed over the next few days are indeed revolutionary, we should remember that they have not sprung suddenly or fully-formed onto the world.  They are the product of two decades of spectacularly consistent evolution according to the rhythms of Moore’s famous law, that technological capacity doubles and prices halve every year or two.

The technology is indeed marvellous; but we need to see it in context.  What difference has it made to the quality of human life?  Have economic and social progress kept pace with technological progress?

The answer to these questions, I regret to say, are probably negative.

If we look at the developed world, we see that economies have grown -- but real wages have not.  Productivity has been enhanced in every economic sector -- but good jobs are scarce in most countries and the working week certainly has not shortened.  No one seems to talk of the leisure society any longer.  If anything, I suspect that most of us are working harder and longer hours in our present positions today than we would have twenty years’ ago.  Private empires and fortunes have been built on new technologies -- but governments are bankrupt, and public services under pressure everywhere.

It is true that tremendous economic progress has been made in many emerging economies.  But it has usually come at a very high human cost --  which can be measured in overcrowded cities, polluted environments, questionable business practices and stunted political development.

In other developing countries, just as the famous gap in access to basic telecommunications  is beginning to close, a new and potentially more dangerous gap in access to information is opening up.

Looked at in context, it is clear that the challenge of the information revolution is no longer technological.  It is to use the incredible power of interactive communications to solve the real human problems facing the world today, including those related to our natural environment.

This is a challenge that cannot be underestimated.  It is probably true that the old certainties of time and space, of geography and history, of national culture and social structure will appear to our successors as quaint and curious artifacts of a bygone era. We thus have a lot of work to do in understanding how to apply technology for human ends and how to build new economic and social structures for the interactive global community of the future.

Let us begin this noble enterprise today, as we inaugurate TELECOM Interactive 97.