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Clinton Links Net To Terror, Digital Divide Policies
Wednesday, February 27, 2002
(5:21 AM CT)
By Adam Creed
Newsbytes

Out-of-date text books, or no text books, would no longer be a problem if the world could ensure that every remote village had just one computer and printer, he said.

ADELAIDE, Australia
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton today called on the global information technology (IT) industry and governments to consider the ways in which technology can develop globalization into a force toward a more integrated world.

Clinton was speaking on the first day of the World Congress on IT, the flagship annual event of the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA).

In a speech laced with references to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Clinton's theme was the potential and power of IT -- particularly the Internet -- to build a world with “more partners and fewer terrorists.”

“We are more and more connected in a web of possibility that has not yet run its course,” Clinton told the audience of 1,800 delegates and media representatives.

“The challenge is to make an interdependent world integrated,” he said.

Clinton, who reminded the audience that his presidency was blessed with economic growth of 30 percent thanks to the IT boom, backed information and communication technologies as the main facilitator of this transformation.

While concentrating on the global digital divide, he didn't underestimate the power of technology in the more immediate, so-called “War on Terror.”
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2002 © The Washington Post Company.

“Print is dead.”
-- Dr. Egon Spengler

Not exactly a novel idea -- in fact, WorldCom and I are working on that very task today, particularly with China, the old Soviet Republics and South America. The thing with Afghanistan and a networked PC in every village, however, is the logistics of supply. You’ll need to set up the power grids, phone companies (landline or satty), pave the roads for PC, paper and toner deliveries, not to mention PC servicing, and teach the students how IT, not to mention PCs in general, function -- with real in-village instruction.

Then again, when you personally know the guy who invented the internet, I suppose a lot of this gets lost between the floorboards. Good points, but it’s nowhere near the cut-n-dried project he seems to think it is.

Dan