[12737] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: The Club of Rome, and the globe's global view
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Tue Feb 16 20:08:21 1999
Date: Tue, 16 Feb 1999 17:38:25 -0600
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@well.com>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
FYI France: The Club of Rome, and the globe's global view
An upcoming event of interest to anyone involved in digital
libraries, the Information Revolution, or libraries or Internet
or multimedia or things digital generally:
in the spirit of The Club of Rome -- "The Global Information
Society: Actors and Victims -- Towards a Single Model?" --
Poitiers, March 1-5 -- a chance to consider all of the above from
a European, aka non - US, point of view...=20
I still remember my own copy of the Club of Rome's early book,
"The limits to growth : a report for the Club of Rome's project
on the predicament of mankind" (1972) -- this from a mysterious
and to these American ears slightly sinister - sounding
"European" organization allegedly, and very optimistically,
"dedicated to the improvement of the future of humankind".=20
For my UK edition of this report there was, I believe I remember
(my copy disappeared in one of many book moves over the
intervening 25 years), a preface by the elegant UK Environment
Secretary Peter Walker: recently - emerged from his successful
and lucrative "M&A" stint at Slater - Walker, and newly -
appointed overlord of Britain's largest and ugliest set of
government office buildings. =20
There also was Snowdon's / Anthony Armstrong - Jones' gauzy,
impressionistic cover photograph -- and upbeat and thoughtful and
certainly very global observations by a purposefully - eclectic
collection of the world's "great thinkers", of the time. Very
"60s", as I think about it now: although today the pelicans
_are_ back on San Francisco Bay -- and children _can_ breathe
deeply in Paris and in London, and swim in the Rho^ne.
The Club of Rome -- since that early report, which so bemused
world leaders, alarmed business people, enraged academics, and
inspired the youth of the era -- always has represented optimism
to me.=20
It is an optimism, moreover, of a particularly European variety:
"elitist" and "un - democratic", in the American sense, but the
more valuable for its objectivity -- the thoughts of an
un - official, un - affiliated group of like - minded souls,
European officialdom having such a tendency to cast a pall over
creative thinking there -- an effort along the lines of the
original Jacobins and the other "coffee house" movements which
have so influenced Europe's history, or more recently of the
Pugwash conferences (these in fact American), or of Constantine
Doxiadis' famous boat cruises.=20
The outstanding preoccupation of the Club of Rome always has been
to provide the "overview". Someone, somewhere, has to view things
"globally", in the Club of Rome's opinion -- "globally" in the
literal sense of "from the perspective of the entire earth", as
well as in the more general senses of "totally and unbounded by
traditional disciplines or parochial concerns". Even if the Club
of Rome has not always been "optimistic" -- it forever has been
viewing humankind and the earth as being in some sort of
"predicament", it seems -- its view has at the very least been
irrepressibly and unapologetically "global".
It is the sort of view which George Soros -- in a new book
distributed to the entire White House staff by the US president
with a "Read!" recommendation (of course it's true, I saw it in
_Time_) -- prescribes as the next step for solving the world's
financial crisis: we have a global economy without a global
society, says Soros, and you can't run the one without the other
-- this is Club of Rome - style thinking.=20
Next month the Club of Rome turns its attention to what my
favorite online radio announcer refers to as "the digital
domain": the core of the Information Revolution, digital
libraries, and what the Internet and libraries and=20
computerization today and in the coming century are all about --
=09"The Global Information Society: Actors and Victims
=09=09-- Towards a Single Model?"
-- a blue - ribbon conference, to be held March 1-5 at the
Futuroscope convention center in Poitiers -- perhaps the best
occasion for a non - European to pick up the European view on
what is happening with digital information, and perhaps even a
good opportunity for all of us to develop a view of all of it
which is truly "global".=20
The conference dignitaries will include:
=09=09
- Claude Alle`gre, Ministre de l^=D2Education Nationale, de la
Science et de la Technologie -- and one of the most powerful
members the current French government;=20
- Martin Bangemann, Member of the European Commission -- and
author of the famous "Bangemann Report", which set the tone for
current European "privatization" trends;
- Raymond Barre, former Prime Minister of France
- Belisario Betancur, former President of Colombia
=09=09=09=09=09=09
- Ricardo Diez Hochleitner, President, Club of Rome of Spain
=09=09=09=09=09=09
- Kurt Furgler, former President of the Swiss Confederation
=09=09=09
- President Go:ncz of Hungary
=09=09=09
- Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan
=09=09=09
- Hisanori Isomura, President of The Foundation of Japan
=09=09=09
- Jacques Levy, President of the Confe'rence des Grandes Ecoles
=09=09=09
- Ruud Lubbers, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands
=09=09=09
- Ketumile Masire, former President of Botswana
=09=09=09
- Federico Mayor, Director - General of UNESCO, Spain
=09=09=09=09=09=09
- Shimon Peres, former Prime Minister of Israel, Nobel Laureate
=09=09=09
- Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Laureate, Belgium
- Mario Soares, former President of Portugal
and the presidents of France Telecom, Socie'te' Bull, and --
"digital librarians" and librarians and "book" and "information"
people everywhere take note -- Klaus Eierhoff, the head of
Bertelsmann Multimedia.=20
The "themes" of the conference -- always a valuable clue, in
Europe, to the preoccupations of the conference sponsors and
leaders and decision - makers, if not necessarily to what
actually gets discussed at the conference itself -- US
conferences tend to have a bit closer, and less valuable,
correspondence between conference themes and outcomes -- include:
=09* Governance facing globalization
=09* Knowledge and Training : Networking education and educating
=09networks=20
=09* Business in the 21st Century : Financial and technical
=09infrastructures of the networkwed economy
-- so there is great interest in "governance" in Europe, the sort
of thing which the White House and Esther Dyson and Network
Solutions Inc. are trying to grapple with now in the US -- the
Europeans have a keen desire to be "invited to the table" in an
ecommerce development which increasingly they see as the
salvation of their recently - teetering economies. ("La Grande
Illusion", Alain Minc has called this sort of thinking, actually
referring to pan - Europeanism in general although his cynicism
applies particularly to information networking's aspirations.)
The Conference format:
=09"The objectives of the Symposium, melting pot of our
=09hopes and ambitions, the first World Forum devoted to the
=09Information Technology, is to develop proposals of
=09concrete projects, supported by attractive presentation
=09techniques and materials. To achieve that result,
=09participants will benefit from:=20
=09* the advice of the International Seminar PLATO with some
=09of the great thinkers of our time
=09* Keynote and plenary presentations by visionaries and
=09world experts
=09* Exchange of experiences in thematic workshops with
=09reflections, updating of knowledge regarding changes in
=09Information Technology and the convergence of the
=09different media (telephones, computers, radio,
=09television, satellites, etc.) and designing strategies
=09for best practice and implementation in local conditions
=09* International meetings of people coming from the five
=09continents
=09* Discussions with and between experts of scientific,
=09technical and social sciences, academics, politicians and
=09business leaders
=09* An opportunity to meet about a hundred young people,
=09chosen from among the brightest members of their
=09generation from all over the world, with special mastery
=09of the concepts and tools of Information Technology :=20
=09researchers, inventors, entrepreneurs...
=09* Demonstrations of the latest technologies and their
=09most innovative applications
=09* Summary of the most interesting meetings on Information
=09Technology held throughout the world in the course of the
=09previous year.
=09* An Annual Meeting followed up by action, information
=09and training and a permanent Website for discussion.=20
Keynote speakers will include Manuel Castells, Seymour Papert,
and Philippe Queau, the latter the Director of Informatique et
Information for UNESCO.=20
Plenary presentations will include:
Day 1, Monday March 1 -- "Visions"
* What changes will IT bring in society, attitudes and =09culture?
-- Jacques Attali, Professor and writer, France
* Summary of the Ottawa OECD Conference on the Electronic Trade
-- Kimon Valaskakis, Ambassador OECD, Canada
* Summary of the Langkawi International Dialogue on "Smart
partnership for global co-operative prosperity" -- Noordin
Sopiee, Chairman & CEO, ISIS, Malaysia
* The Planet, vision 2100 - "Homo Connecticus" -- Thierry Gaudin,
President, Perspectives 2100, France; Jean Michel Billaut,
General Manager, Internet Intelligence
* Changes in the ways firms are structured and in management
methods -- Thierry Breton, President Thomson Multimedia, France;
Didier Livio, PDG Synergence, former President of the Centre des
Jeunes Entrepreneurs
* Summary of the XV IFIP World Computer Congress of Wien and
Budapest -- Maria Toth, Secretary General SJSzT, Hungary
Day 2, Tuesday March 2 -- "Explorations"
* Summary of the Ecole Polytechnique conference of April 28, 1998
on Firms facing the Information society -- Christine Nora,
Director, College de Polytechnique, France
* What can IT be expected to do to help the unemployed, slow
learners, young people in trouble? -- Laurent Benzoni, economist,
France
* Distance Learning and perpectives for the Future -- Michel
Moreau, Director of the Centre d^=D2Enseignement a` Distance, France
* Will IT cause the disappearance of public bureaucracy? --=20
Nirmal Jain, Tata Infotech, India; Jack Pellicci, Vice President,
Oracle, USA
* The influence of IT on government functioning -- Orhan
Gu:venen, State Planning Organization, Turkey; Charles Rizk, Lebanon
Day 3, Wednesday March 3 -- "Practical Considerations"
* Does the management of firms (the decision-makers) have
adequate mastery of the tools of IT? -- Joel de Rosnay, Director
of Strategy, Cit=E9 des Sciences et de l'Industrie, France
* Use of IT in the day-to-day running of the firm -- bugs and
obsolescence -- Priscilla Douglas, Manager, Public Sector Market,
Xerox, USA
* How to select from the vast mass of available knowledge? --
Tonino Cantelmi, Psychiatrist, Italy
* Which is stronger: government pressure in support of the public
interest or the pressure of manufacturers of these technologies?=20
-- Roberto Di Cosmo, Professor, Ecole Normale Supe'rieure, France
* How to help organizations to become more intelligent. The Team
Syntegrity Model -- Mark Schwaninger, Professor, St Gallen
University, Switzerland
* Sharing knowledge across frontiers : harmonization or threats
to cultures, languages, scripts? -- Philippe d'Iribarne,
Sociologist, France
Day 4, Thursday March 4 -- "Strategy Development"
* What is government role in the development of IT? -- Jean Noel
Tronc, Prime Minister Technical Counselor, France
* The role of IT in transforming primary and secondary education=20
-- Guy de Panafieu, President, Bull, France; Abdallah Hitti,
Directeur Ge'ne'ral de Kle'line
* Matching academic training and firms' needs in IT and prospects
for jobs -- Peter Cochrane, Head of Advanced Applications and
Technologies, British Telecom Laboratories, UK; Dr. Mouaffak
Da'boul, Syrian Computer Society, Syria
* Why are large multimedia firms particularly affected by global
mergers? -- Klaus Eierhoff, Head, Bertelsmann Multimedia,
Germany; Juan Luis Cebrian, General Director, Group PRISA, Spain
* Is access to IT really the key to joining the global economy?=20
-- Donald Odera, Director Telecom Forum Africa, Kenya; Peter Da
Costa, Senior Communication Adviser, UN Economic Commission for
Africa, Ethiopia
And there will be 9 workshops: these sometimes are the most fun
-- you yourself get to talk --
* Theme no. 1 : Business in the 21st Century --
1) Enterprises confronted to the globalisation of the market
2) The future of electronic commerce
3) Models for job creation and self employment
* Theme no. 2 : Knowledge and Training --
4) Networking education and education networks
5) Conditions for poor countries to catch up their economic
backwardness
6) New role and responsibility for teachers and educators
* Theme no. 3 : Governance and globalization --
7) World public domain
8) World citizenship on-line and "information rights"=20
9) Control by governments over world economy and commerce
One quick "editor's comment":
By far the most interesting aspect of this conference to me
personally is the question in its sub - title, "a single model?"
To me this is a plaintive cry, one largely ignored by those of us
in the US to our own and others' peril. Here are the Europeans,
faced as we all are now with an inundation of digital
information: pornography, and politically - subversive and
extremist literature, and "religious" and "market"=20
fundamentalisms -- the latter pace Messrs. Soros and Bangemann --
and all the rest of the more mediagenic variety, and also with
less - mediagenic data bits in their sheer and awesome volume.
None of us knows what it all means, or will mean.
Still only a few of us, however, sit at the table where what can
be decided now about all of this is being decided.
I sit and "click" and type, every day -- in American English and
sometimes in French and occasionally in Spanish and Italian -- in
a medium which I know still reaches primarily only wealthy and
well - educated and English - speaking males, most of them young
and most of them of "Anglo - American" political and philosopical
and life - style persuasions, if not actually that particular
ethnic background. It is a small digital world, still.
The Europeans are the first part of the rest of the world to have
joined the new network of global digital villages in significant
numbers. They share a great deal of background with the Anglo -
Americans who assembled all of this originally: those three
"languages" which I happen to use all are narrowly - Romance --
Latin - based, for example. But the Europeans are different, if
only in speaking different languages and in not "getting" all of
the insider Internet and political jokes.=20
And they represent the world: the Chinese "get" Internet insider
jokes even less easily than the Europeans do -- try translating,
and marketing, "Neuromancer" in France much less in China.=20
And they want a seat at the table: if the European economy is
going to be ravaged and turned inside out and revolutionized by
"ecommerce" as much as the US economy apparently is going to be
-- NASDAQ ceased following the NYSE's Dow Jones averages at all,
some time back -- _and_ if the very traditional European
educational system suddenly is to become "distance learning",
_and_ if European reading, and politics, and telephony and much
other communication, and intellectual property law and book
distribution and publishing itself all suddenly are going to
become "digital", the Europeans would like to have a say, at
least, in making whatever relevant decisions can be made.=20
Or in _not_ making them. There is a persistent myth in the US
Internet community that the thing "just growed, like Topsy". It
is part of the "market fundamentalism" of the US Internet
approach -- pace Soros, again -- that these things when they
"just happen" also "just happen" to come out looking the way they
do in the US, embodying ideals of democracy and justice and
community so dear to US hearts.=20
These ideals are dear to hearts in Thailand as well. But the
Thais also cherish other ideals -- Buddhism, reverence of their
Royal Family -- which are not so much a part of the US "market
fundamentalism" approach. And even if the Thais cannot further
such "local" ideals, in an Internet somehow being "spontaneously
generated" in and by the US, both they and the Europeans still
would like -- anyone would -- to be "present at the creation", if
they can, if only to see and prepare their own people for what is
coming.
So the Poitiers conference is concerned with "governance". As so
they should be.=20
They are not much involved with it now: standards and trends all
stem from Silicon Valley and Leesburg Pike, and content
increasingly from Beverly Hills, and even Washington D.C. is
completely behind and completely lost in their development and
regulation.
To an outsider, the Internet and digital information generally
present -- as the Europeans suggest in their conference title --
a "Single Model" now.=20
For the purposes of digital information the short - sightedness
of using any "single model" should be obvious but isn't: we still
seem to be chugging along in a US - dominated direction -- at the
most this leads us to conflicts with "foreign" priorities and
biases and governments -- at the least we should remember that
these "foreigners" are our potential ecommerce customers... and
among the sacred tenets of US "market fundamentalism" are, "know
thy customer", and "the customer is king"...=20
This Poitiers conference may offer one of the more outstanding
and easy ways of reaching and understanding the "customer's" /
the rest of the world's reaction to the US homebrew approach to
digital information which is spreading everywhere so wildly now.
More details at: http://www.fwsymposium.org/
Recommended. And it _is_ being held in France, in Spring...
=09=09=09=09--oOo--=20
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*
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=09=09=09=09--oOo--=20
