Vice President Al Gore Remarks Prepared for Delivery G-7 Ministerial Conference Brussels, Belgium Fe

[David Farber <>]

> Vice President Al Gore Remarks Prepared for Delivery G-7 Ministerial
> Conference Brussels, Belgium February 25, 1995
> 
> My friend, James Burke, the historian, tells a compelling tale about
> the last information revolution and the changes it wrought.
> 
> Over five hundred years ago, not far from here in Germany, a goldsmith
> who had bungled a sure-fire money-making venture by getting a crucial
> date wrong, was looking for a way to mollify his business partners. He
> decided to use his goldsmithing skills to mold what became known as
> movable type and to use the type in his new printing press to print
> the one book he knew would sell--the Bible. In this case, the
> Gutenberg Bible.
> 
> Now, inventions rarely spring full-blown from one brain, totally
> without precedent. Gutenberg's invention is no exception.
> 
> After all, movable metal type had been invented in Korea two hundred
> years earlier. But conditions conspired to keep that first movable
> typeface from spreading. Confucianism prohibited the commercialization
> of books and the Korean royal presses would print only classical
> Chinese literature, not the more popular Korean literature.
> 
> By Gutenberg's time, there were better conditions: better paper,
> better metals and eyeglasses. And Europeans were ready for a cheaper
> way to copy books than using scribes who charged for one copy what a
> printing press would charge for a thousand.
> 
> The result: not only books, but enlightenment; the scientific
> revolution; the Age of Reason and the political revolution symbolized
> by the document I am sworn to uphold some 200 years after its
> drafting--the Constitution of the United States.
> 
> All, in a way, from a goldsmith's mistake.
> 
> What lessons can we draw from Gutenberg's spectacular success? Let me
> name two.
> 
> First, our view of the future and our ability to exploit and develop a
> new idea are always constrained by the circumstances we find ourselves
> in at the moment. Yes, Gutenberg had a great idea. But he is given
> credit for revolutionizing our culture because he exploited his new
> idea at a mount when the circumstances were conducive to the rapid
> spread of print technology.
> 
> Second, change is incredibly hard to handle, manage and predict--or,
> as the physicist Neils Bohr once said, "Prediction is very difficult,
> especially when you are talking about the future."
> 
> We gather here today to chart a path to the future--at a time when
> prediction is as difficult as ever, but also at a time when our
> circumstances are clearly conducive to the rapid spread of a new
> capacity to process and communicate information that will benefit all
> humankind. It is a path that will take us from our shared vision to a
> new reality. Just as human beings once dreamed of steam ships,
> railroads, and superhighways we now dream of the global information
> infrastructure that can lead to a global information society.
> 
> But our dream today is not fundamentally about technology. Technology
> is a means to an end. Our dream is about communication--the most basic
> human strategy we use to raise our children, to educate, to heal, to
> empower and to liberate. In its most basic form, communication is the
> transfer of information from one human being to another. Information,
> in turn, is the raw material of knowledge, and knowledge sometimes, if
> we're lucky, ferments into wisdom. And of course, in all of our
> countries it is by now a clich&e_acute;i to note that the information
> revolution now in its early stages will ultimately transform our
> concepts of both communication and information.
> 
> The changes wrought by Gutenberg are our common heritage. The changes
> we are here to discuss will become our common legacy. Today I would
> like to outline some principles that the Administration of President
> Bill Clinton believes ought to determine the kind of legacy we leave.
> 
> Last year in Buenos Aires I attended the first World
> Telecommunications Development Conference to present the United
> States' vision of a Global Information Infrastructure that will
> promote robust and sustainable economic progress, strengthen
> democracies, facilitate better solutions to global environmental
> challenges, improve health care and, ultimately create a greater sense
> of shared stewardship of our small planet.
> 
> The Buenos Aires Conference adopted a set of basic principles we
> believe are the building blocks of the GII: Private investment,
> competition, open access, universal service, flexible regulations.
> 
> These principles have been central to the discussions about the GII in
> bi-lateral, multi-lateral and regional fora, most recently at the APEC
> meeting last week in Vancouver, but also at the Summit of the Americas
> meeting in Miami last December and in memoranda of understanding
> between the United States and both Russia and Ukraine.
> 
> They will be central here in Brussels, at this meeting, proposed by
> President Clinton, and graciously hosted by the European Union under
> the leadership of President Santer and former President Jacques
> Delors. For the first time, more than forty representatives of the
> private sector are formally participating in this conference. They and
> the hundreds more who are participating informally are demonstrating
> at this conference an impressive array of applications that signal to
> the world that the G-7 nations are committed to leading the
> development of a GII by their example in word and deed.
> 
> The very act of holding this conference is in keeping with the advice
> given to dreamers long ago by Mahatma Gandi: "You must become the
> change you wish to see in the world."
> 
> Moreover, moving forward aggressively on a GII is the best way to deal
> with concerns highlighted during the G-7 jobs summit in Detroit last
> year. At that conference we confronted the central dilemma facing
> every government: how do we make sure our economies provide enough
> jobs?
> 
> The initial OECD jobs study outlined the connection between jobs and
> what we do here. Those nations best able to adopt the new technologies
> for a knowledge-based economy have been the best at creating jobs. The
> fact is that government policies based on faulty assumptions that try
> to block change or protect the status quo have themselves become job
> destroyers. This time we have a chance to get it right. We can open
> markets to create job opportunities. We can use education and training
> to enable more workers to adapt to the new workplace.
> 
> The liberating effects of these new technologies have been clear
> around the world. Satellite stations brought medical advice to those
> tending to the suffering in Rwanda. Radio and TV broadcasts in South
> Africa promoted the role of voting in a democracy. Wireless
> technologies are allowing emerging nations to leapfrog the expensive
> stages of wiring a communication network--for example, in Thailand,
> where the ratio of cellular telephone users to the population is twice
> that of the U.S.
> 
> The effects are also visible in education. One of the biggest
> handicaps for those who want to learn has been distance. In
> Washington, the Library of Congress is a wonderful place. But we must
> ensure it become a tool for, let's say, a schoolgirl from my hometown
> in Carthage, Tennessee, 600 miles away.
> 
> Already, distance education is helping some citizens overcome
> geographic difficulties. In Japan, over 100 institutions are linked by
> computer and satellite, with some 150,00 students currently enrolled.
> In India, there are five open universities and more than 35 distance
> learning programs in conventional universities. And in Canada, the
> Knowledge Network delivers courses to adult students living on islands
> in British Columbia. In France, the newly-discovered cave paintings in
> Ardeche, almost impossible to reach in real life, are accessible on
> the Internet to scholars, teachers, and most important, children.
> 
> The Clinton Administration is committed to the goal of connecting
> every classroom, every library, every hospital and every clinic to the
> national and global information infrastructures by the end of this
> decade. We must provide our teachers and our students with the same
> level of communications technology that shipping clerks, construction
> workers and government officials use every day.
> 
> Information technology is a critical element of economic policy. But
> there are great obstacles. How do we begin the hard work of turning
> the obstacles before us into opportunities.
> 
> First, by focusing squarely on those who will drive the demand for
> information products and services: the users. User demand will define
> the marketplace. Competition to serve the users will speed up
> innovation and cost-effective deployment of new technologies. Private
> investment in diverse technologies will mean new sources of capital
> and expertise for rich and poor nations alike. Computer networks have
> created new, rapidly growing markets. These networks help small and
> medium sized enterprises from both poor and rich countries to become
> more effective competitors in world markets.
> 
> In the United States, our spectrum auctions have speeded up the
> licensing of personal communication services and are leading to the
> creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in the next several
> years--one indication that communication is a source of economic
> change and growth, not just the result of it..
> 
> The GII will not be created in one place at one time by any one group.
> It will be the product of cooperation among governments, industry and
> citizens on a global scale. But how do countries with widely varying
> needs, cultures, and technologies cooperate?
> 
> First, by acknowledging that the fruits of our cooperation should be
> open access to markets for all providers and users of creative content
> and information products, equipment and services. For the competitors
> in the 21st century global economy, there is no substitute for being
> in the marketplace and providing the users we represent the greatest
> variety of products, information and services for the least cost.
> 
> Second, building the GII is going to require robust competition. And
> you cannot create robust competition by excluding competitors, whether
> those competitors are at home or abroad. It is vigorous
> competition--which means global competition--that creates jobs.
> 
> And so I say on behalf of President Clinton, let the message of this
> conference be clear: we support competition in open markets that
> allows any company to provide any service to any customer.
> 
> What concrete actions must we take to realize that goal?
> 
> First, we must drop our barriers to foreign investment together. For
> more than 60 years the U.S. has had limited restrictions on foreign
> investment in certain telecommunication services. In this respect, we
> are going to change and change this year. Whether by new law or new
> regulation, we intend to open foreign investment in telecommunications
> services in the United States for companies of all countries who have
> opened their own markets.
> 
> But we also recognize that the information society demands more than a
> piecemeal approach. The governments represented here and others have
> an historic opportunity to open telecommunications markets around the
> world in the negotiations within the General Agreement on Trade in
> Services. The deadline for these negotiations is April 1996.
> 
> Let us resolve to meet this deadline to remove our investment barriers
> together.
> 
> Second, let's develop and enforce effective intellectual property
> rights for the GII. If our content providers are not protected, there
> will not be content to fill the networks and give value to services.
> 
> Third, all parties should participate in the development of
> private-sector, voluntary, consensus standards through the existing
> international organizations, such as the International
> Telecommunications Union, the International Standards Organization and
> the Internet Society. The creation of truly global networks will
> require a high degree of interconnection and interoperability.
> 
> Governments are not the best arbiters of technology, and government
> intervention risks encouraging adoption of standards that are either
> ultimately inferior or inappropriate to demands of the market.
> 
> Our vision of an information society is one in which the most valuable
> resource--information--is also the most abundant. My hope is that the
> open exchange of ideas of all sorts and the greatest access possible
> for all citizens to the varied means of communication will stimulate
> creativity.
> 
> Global communication is not about conformity. Some fear that in losing
> the distance between ourselves and others we lose our distinctions as
> well. But communication is about bridging the differences between
> nations and people, not erasing them.
> 
> It is about protecting and enlarging freedom of expression for all our
> citizens and giving individual citizens the power to create the
> information they need and want from the abundant flow of data they
> encounter moment to moment.
> 
> Communication is the beginning of community. Whether it is through
> language, art, custom, or political philosophy, people and nations
> identify themselves through communication of experience and values. A
> global information network will create new communities and strengthen
> existing ones by enriching the ways in which we do and can
> communicate.
> 
> Ideas should not be checked at the border. We have much to learn from
> each other and we should follow practices and policies that
> incorporate, not exclude, the greatest diversity of opinions and
> expressions. We all gain from the exchange of cultural viewpoints and
> experiences that occurs when open minds engage each other.
> 
> At the same time, users of the GII want and will demand privacy. When
> you ask Americans about information technology, it is their biggest
> concern. We must protect the privacy of personal data and
> communications.
> 
> Governments and industry need to work together to develop new
> technologies, new standards, and new policies that will provide the
> necessary security and privacy protection.
> 
> Of course, in order to protect privacy and financial transactions and
> enforce intellectual property rights, the GII must be secure and
> reliable. The OECD should continue its leadership in the area of
> computer security.
> 
> Fortunately, technology and human imagination keep providing us with
> new opportunities to enhance our communications capabilities. Take,
> for example, non-geostationary satellites. They hold remarkable
> potential, especially for remote or thinly-populated regions, and for
> societies eager to reap the benefits of 21st century technology even
> before completing expensive land-based networks. These advanced
> technologies can provide everything from basic telephone calls to
> remote medical diagnosis. Like the Internet, they have the potential
> to knit together millions of people in different locations and
> situations--and do it economically.
> 
> Every one of the low earth orbit satellite systems--and, in addition,
> the intermediate-orbit Inmarsat-P affiliate--is multinational, and
> each satellite consortium welcomes and actively seeks out the
> participation of both developed and developing countries. Of course,
> each nation retains the power to determine whether the LEOs may serve
> it. But countries that license these international satellite consortia
> help their business communities become more competitive in the global
> economy and provide their citizens beneficial satellite services.
> 
> Our purpose in meeting together is to advance our common goal of a
> Global Information Infrastructure that will bring to all countries the
> benefits of a Global Information Society. Our challenge today is to
> create the commercial, technical, legal and social conditions that
> will establish the foundation for the GII.
> 
> As we work across our common boundaries and oceans to build a GII, we
> cannot think only of today's debates about wireless or satellites; we
> must perform our work in the service of a global vision that can be
> realized in every community and village of the world.
> 
> I began by talking about Gutenberg, whose voyage of discovery has
> influenced the lives of every person on this planet. His was not an
> easy voyage. There were skeptics and enemies; when his financial
> backer took twelve Bibles to Paris the book dealers took him to court,
> arguing that so many identical books could only be the work of the
> devil.
> 
> His work challenged his society to change. And they learned what we
> cannot ignore: that we cannot choose to delay or deny the future; we
> must be ready for it.
> 
> There is no better way to prepare for the future than to make the best
> of the present.
> 
> That is why a shared vision is so necessary. We have now a great
> opportunity to see the world in a new light and to re-think the way it
> operates and the way in which we should operate with it.
> 
> I have outlined today the concrete steps we must take to embark on
> this new voyage of discovery. Empowered by the movable type of the
> next millennium we can send caravans loaded with the wealth of human
> knowledge and creativity along trails of light that lead to every home
> and village. I thank you for your devotion to this vision and look
> forward to our journey together.
>