Prometheus
Revisited
Inaugural address by John M. Eger to the Institute for Humanistic
Studies at Tokyo Institute of Technology, October 7, 1991.
In greek mythology, prometheus was considered a savior because he brought fire to mankind. For that, unfortunately, he was chained to the top of a mountain and left to die.
Clearly the invention, if one can call it that, of the use of fire represented a major turning point in the development of mankind. The number of other major events, mythical or otherwise, contributing to mankind's development are few, when one takes a long view of history: block printing in japan, Guttenberg's printing press, Eli Whitney's cotton gin, marconi's wireless telegraph, Edison's electric light bulb, and the Bell System's transistor. From a socio-economic standpoint, the invention of the cotton gin, which transformed a largely agrarian, extractive economy to a new industrial one, was unprecedented in the impact it had on the modern-day world.
Today we are riding the crest of another major wave of change brought about by the invention, innovation, and pervasive use of microelectronics which, like fire unbounded, is spreading into every nook and cranny of our existence --and like the cotton gin of an earlier era -- is pushing us headlong into the long-heralded post-industrial information society and an economy not based on farming or the production of goods or even services so much as on the production, use and dissemination of knowledge.
What I would like to do today - in the next hour or so - is talk about how technology is drastically changing not only the world we live in, but changing the nature of the way foreign policy is conducted, the way people relate to their government, and the very fundamental way we relate to each other. I want to explore with you what the future holds in this escalating, technology-driven world and what it means for corporations, governments and individual citizens living in this new truly global communications community.
In looking at just the broadcasting business, where i have worked the last decade, the impact of microelectronics in every aspect of the production, distribution and reception of programming, is already evident.
In 1970, for example, there were three national commercial networks, about 73 independent stations, 128 public television stations, and a mere 5 million homes using cable.
Today, we have three national networks, and together with rupert murdoch's purchase of 20th century fox, the start-up of a fourth. We now have over 300 independent television stations, and 320 public television stations representing an increase overall of over 300 percent. Perhaps more importantly, 80 percent of the country is now wired for cable television, and 60 percent of the homes subscribe to a service with anywhere from 12 to 70 channels of programming. We also have 46 cable television networks, including eight so-called "super stations", like ted turner's wtbs, 25 national pay television systems, and 65 million videocassette recorders. Vcr's didn't exist just ten years ago, nor did personal computers. Low-tech devices like the fascimile machine were around, but not in general commercial use. All that has changed, and more change is on the way.
For here's a technology that knows no barriers, no national boundaries and does not recognize any of the artificial divisions between the different people and places of the world. Here is a technology that does not recognize color, creed, race, or nationality. It is a technology that is supernational, acultural, alingual, a technology of sight and sound, of binary digits that can indeed saturate the world. It is a technology that creates simply by providing the means - a flow of information and ideas - a force throughout the world that simply will not be stopped however we may resist its flow.
What we are dealing with is a technology involving social change - something technology has always done - but on a scale and at a speed never before experienced by human beings or their institutions. As this happens, your generation in particular will find yourself immersed in an age of truly vast and revolutionary change propelled by our technology towards acceptance of the concept that we are indeed one people on earth, one family living in one home, a family with common problems, concerns, and interests.
A fundamental question is whether we are ready for this. Are we human beings and are our political institutions ready to think of ourselves as one family, to address common problems in the work for common global goals? Or, as some have less optimistically suggested, are we so inexorably, so tightly bundled in national, economic, cultural and racial security blankets that we cannot reach out and communicate with the freedom our technology challenges?
This is the real challenge of the twenty-first century.
Already our technology is providing the means for a vast flow of information, data and new ideas throughout the world, and thanks to a vast and complex network of underseas cables, and satellites orbiting the earth, and readily available and affordable receiving and sending equipment, the world is bound together by an electronic nerve system carrying news, money, data and information almost anywhere in the world in microseconds. From the evening television news and the international electronic funds transfer of payment systems to the almost routine exchange of data between computers in one part of the world, and those in another. Drawing airline reservation information, or in the universities, drawing scientific or economic data to and from a terminal in Tokyo, London or Kuala Lumpur.
From the ubiquitous computer satellite tv link to the inexpensive handheld sony walkman, the steady stream of news and information is increasing at an unparalleled rate. Indeed, there is hardly anything of importance that happens in the world today that is not known instantly to everyone else in the world within 24 hours. The spotlight of a global media, it seems, is everywhere, in Tiananmen Square, the Berlin Wall or the Persian Gulf.
While we still haven't sorted out the troubling question of whether what we see is the media covering the news, or a distorted view of the news because it is covered by the media, it is clear that because of the pervasive (some would say omnipotent) presence of the media in the world, no government, no matter how popular or dictatorial, can set its nation's public policy agenda. No. It is world public opinion that now sets the world's public policy agenda. How else could a dock worker, not a general, form that great vision of the future of solidarity, and rise to become president of his country; a black woman say no to the ravages of apartheid and the world stop and listen; or an ordinary housewife aspire to the dreams of her country and rise to become the president of the Philippines.
Clearly the global village Marshall McCluhan talked about is here. We have been talking about it so long perhaps, we forgot to notice it arrived. It's not quite the world community he envisioned, but a new mosiac is taking shape, a mosiac in which every community is somehow connected to every other, and to a truly global economy and society.
How did this happen? Why and what does it mean to those of you living in this new global arena? Well, let's start in europe where private systems of television and telecommunications are springing up everywhere.
Most observers feel it all started in italy in 1977. Italy's constitutional court held that freedom of speech could not be limited to just print. Only in italy, overnight there were 300 television stations dotting the landscape. Now where tv used to be a state monopoly, you have private tv, cable and satellite television in France, West Germany, Belgium, Norway and Spain and new channels coming on stream in Portugal and Greece, and whole new systems of regulations coming out of Brussels that after 1992 will change the character of all audio-visual communications and telecommunications in the new Europe forever. For the freedom to communicate is not limited to just media. It encompasses the whole array of technologies essential to everyday life and a robust economy.
Deregulation is taking place in Asia as well, in Hong Kong, in New Zealand, in Australia, and some form of commercial television is taking hold in India, in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the People's Republic of China. I was involved in helping China adopt a commercial system of broadcasting in 1983 when I worked for CBS. It was such a success, the Chinese held the first third-world advertising congress in the Great Hall of China in Beijing for over 40 developing countries in 1987. Perhaps if the experiment had a few more years, China would not be where it is today.
But let's move beyond broadcasting as we know it today. What will happen when voice recognition, for example, and the fax, the personal computer and the vcr are built into every television set, and video and data of all kinds are available on demand from thousands of data bases around the world. When every rooftop has its own .9 meter aerial or earth station capable of receiving hundreds of high-definition signals from anywhere there is a satellite dish. When three satellites are interlinked in orbit, capable of delivering any signal from any point, to any other point in the world, or from one point to millions or billions of other points on earth, at sea or in the air.
Science fiction? Hardly. Given the rate of advances in electronics and photonics and the current trend toward privatization and commercialization, that future is just around the corner.
But this is only the beginning. What we've seen so far is a technological revolution, the first wave of yet another shift of the tectonic plates of our communications infrastructure. What will happen when the system is truly global and broadband, with infinite capacity? What will happen when the system integrates all kinds of digital networks into it, and when our advances in computer and telecommunications intertwine to provide new pathways into every home and office, in the air or at sea, giving the user, whether it be corporations or individuals, a highly interactive, unlimited capability.
Take DBS, or direct broadcasting by satellite, for example. It was only in 1977 that the world decided, under the auspices of the United Nations International Telecommunications Union, that every country ought to have the right to have an orbital slot, or a parking spot if you will, at 22,000 miles above the earth to relay signals and other information back to their own country. At the time, Luxembourg, which is entitled to its own orbital slot, recognized the power of the satellite, coupled with the sophisticated receiving station which often had to be 10 feet or more in diameter, would give Luxembourg a signal covering Luxembourg with a little bit of spillover to France and Belgium and West Germany.
In less than five years, because of advances in technology, the footprint of the signal from that satellite covered all of western europe. Today it covers one-third of the earth. Because those satellites can be interlinked in orbit, any uplink, let's say out of Luxembourg, can send a signal theoretically to any point, anywhere on the earth.
And again, because of the sophistication of the electronics, the receiving terminals are getting smaller and smaller. In Great Britain and in Tokyo, and in 1992 in the U.S., through one or more joint ventures, a tiny one foot "squarial" or satellite dish will be available for about $300. It can be hung on a window, inside or outside a house, or put in the trunk of a car and taken to the beach. These systems will be capable of sending and receiving more than one hundred channels of television. In addition, each channel will be capable of being further subdivided into hundreds of channels of voice or data. Japan already has dbs systems in operation, but not yet exploiting them to their full potential, but clearly the applications are global.
A major driver for the development of these global systems is the globalization of markets and the development of a truly global corporation.
Unlike the multinational corporation, the global corporation is one that recognizes, as the New York Times put it, that "as the world becomes smaller...markets are now driven more by what they have in common than by what sets them apart". Ted Levitt, professor of marketing at Harvard said this means that, "companies must learn to operate as if the world were one large market - ignoring superficial regional and national differences".
Nobody said better than Saatchi and Saatchi (at one time the world's largest advertising agency), "there are probably more differences between midtown Manhattan and the Bronx...than between midtown Manhattan and the 7th Arrondissement of Paris".
And with satellites, according to bob james of mccann-ericsson, you can tie these markets together. "the global marketing movement," he said, "is propelled by satellite communications, faster-than-the-speed-of-sound air travel and computers talking to computers even as we sleep. Cultures are merging, borders are blurring and markets are becoming more and more like each other everyday."
Total advertising expenditures now exceed 250 billion dollars a year. Of that, more than two-thirds is spent by less than 200 companies. You know who they are; it's McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Gillett, Sony, Nissan and others. These of course are the new "global corporations" Iam talking about. As they begin unfolding their global media strategies, we will see, I believe, a steady convergence of economics, technology and public policy likely to result in the development of truly global networks, truly global integrated systems of information and communications.
For example, satellites not only send information, they can receive it, or should I say "see it". For some years now, the U.S., The USSR and a handful of other countries have used sophisticated earth-sensing satellites orbiting hundreds and often thousands of miles above the earth. These satellites detect vegetation growth, spot oil deposits, troop movements, armament placements, and because of their high-resolution character, can actually see objects smaller than three-quarters to one-half inch off the ground. It is said they can read a license plate from 22,000 miles in space.
While the information gathered from these kinds of reconnaissance satellites, as they are called, is now only available for government use, in the future it is predicted that news-gathering organizations and others will be using such satellites to cover developments worldwide. Coupled with DBS systems, they will be sending that information instantly to terminals elsewhere in the world. It was a French satellite, by the way, called Spotimage, that detected the disaster at Chernobyl and compelled the Soviets to tell their whole story. Glasnost notwithstanding, without Spotimage, we might not have found out the actual extent of the damage until much too late. And it was spotimage that gave French and U.S. Intelligence experts a clear picture of Saddam Hussein's intentions in the Persian Gulf.
There are also plans for developing a whole new form of global radio via DBS on the horizon, particularly in France and Germany looking toward 1992 where Pan-European systems will be technically, will be politically and perhaps economically feasible. Within the next ten years perhaps, via such DBS systems, we may also see the evolution of the prototype Dick Tracy wristwatch. The Dick Tracy wristwatch, you will recall has a tiny television screen and a two-way transmitter. With a personal telephone number, it's predicted you will be able to reach anyone, anywhere in the world, anytime day or night. I am not so sure that this will be everyone's idea of telecommunications utopia.
Meanwhile while satellites are shrinking the globe even further, on the ground there is fiber optics -- thin strands of glass fiber (and now even plastic) capable of transmitting thousands of high-definition, two-way or interactive channels of programming into homes, schools and businesses on beams of light.
Arno Penzias, the nobel laureate and head of research at bell labs tells us what makes light or laser technology so fascinating is the photon, a unit of energy like the electron, but having no electrical charge, is not subject to any form of interference. Together with its indefinitely long lifetime, this will revolutionize the next century of communications and much more dramatically change the face of the communications landscape. The number of new futures that photonics or optical fiber offers is astonishing. It's no surprise that billions of dollars have already been invested in the technology.
The first efforts are already evident in such conveniences as fiber optic telephone lines, laser printers, laser scanners in supermarkets, compact disc players and credit cards with readable holograms.
With each innovation, the cost of building fiber systems and providing fiber to the home drops dramatically. In 1977 for example, fiber cable was about seven dollars per meter. Today, it's less than ten cents. Light-emitting diodes, or led's, essential elements in the optical switches of any fiber system cost $2000 just a few years ago. Today they sell for about fifteen dollars. Predictions now are that within the next few years, it will cost the same to lay fiber directly to the home as it now costs cable tv companies to lay copper coaxial cables.
But with a difference. Copper wire carries information at 64,000 bits per second. Fiber carries information at billions of bits per second, and one thin strand can carry as many telephone conversations as 625 copper wires, all with greater clarity, accuracy and speed.
Perhaps for that reason there are already 6 million miles of fiber in the United States connecting almost every telephone switching office with every other office throughout the country. Now it is that last mile, that last link directly into the home, school, library and business that has to be made.
There are at least two dozen experiments using optical fiber around the United States in communities like Cerritos, California; Perryopolis, Pennsylvania; Heathrow, Florida; and Queens, New York, where interactive television experiments are underway. In Queens, Time/Warner is building a system with 150 channels using fiber optic cable. In five years with digital compression and innovations in new programming, that could jump to 600 channels.
Already in Florida for example, you might watch the French Open on channel 1, or just follow Boris Becker if he's the star you're most interested in on channel 2. Channel 3 will give you Ivan Lendl. Channels 4 through 7 might give you different angles, or you can skip to one of the other twelve cameras covering other matches that day. There are other programs like news that will let you dig deeper into archival data bases for video on demand, texts or audio as you wish, and there are experiments in education linking schools with post offices or other public buildings for distance education purposes, and interactive learning experiments using a combination of computer data bases, video, voice and even facsimile systems to provide multi-media learning experiences. And there are other experiments, medical systems for example, that will save your life. It has been theorized that if we can bring high-definition broadband systems into the home, perhaps to provide cinema-like quality television, we can bring high-definition medical images out ot the home to hospitals and clinics where it can be analyzed. We can watch old or young people better with an electronic eye, than by a hospital attendant.
It's easy to see why these new "information highways" will change not only the way we view television and receive news and information, but also our systems of transportation, banking, healthcare, education and everything else in our lives. Of course, there are some regulatory hurdles in the U.S. And elsewhere, but most people expect within the next ten to twenty years, thousands of communities, rural and urban around the world will be wired.
Taken together with high-powered DBS satellites circling the globe, a new web of communications will be in place, and for the first time in history, we will build a distribution system befitting the post-industrial information age. Of course, all this may take a few years, but the outlines of what this latest revolution means are already in view.
For example, in a consumer-based information economy with distribution systems such as I have described, information goods and services will be cheap and widely available, and almost anyone with a better mousetrap will find marketing it is as easy as opening a lemonade stand. For the marketing and communications people again, it should be a bonanza. It is certainly going to be a lot more efficient. The old advertising adage says "50 percent of the dollars spent on advertising are wasted, we just don't know which half".
This will no longer be true. Mass media buys on national and global television networks or through magazines with mass circulation that may or may not reach their markets will no longer be the norm. Not that major advertisers will stop advertising on these global vehicles -- they will certainly use it for major image and identity campaigns -- but we will see a shift in dollars, as we already see in the U.S., going to cable, promotional tie-ins with individual network shows and early experiments with 800 and 900 telephone numbers on programs that get viewer/reader involved.
This is one of the reasons Time/Warner merged its properties to look for synergies between its magazines, its cable shows and its other outlets around the world to satisfy advertiser demand, globally and locally, and to target specific demographic groups. As you may know last year time magazine, people and sports illustrated launched a method of "selective binding" with rate cards that enables automakers, for example, to reach 50 year olds with $50,000 plus household incomes with no waste. Murdoch's news corporation has the same vision and is eyeing markets on four continents. Sony and Matsushita have similar plans in development.
But this new media world that allows for more efficient buys worldwide or one-on-one marketing, isn't necessarily going to be easier. Everyone is going to have to have much better research, know a lot more about the consumer and because of the technology, find a way to engage the consumer in a new form of social contract. Already the consumer, through its television can zip, zap or block their message, the advertiser's message if they don't want them. Already there's equipment available for residential telephone users to block callers they don't want to talk to. It's only a short step to pre-programmed calls or entire shows they want and reject the rest. The same could be said of unwanted fax calls, although in 28 states we're now seeing legislation prohibiting unsolicited fax messages. In the future, the respect for privacy, indeed some say codes of privacy will be marketing pluses worldwide, for privacy protection is a worldwide phenomenon. Security in communications, too, will distinguish some companies from others.
For those of you interested in the marketing more than the media side of the business, you'll be pleased to know that we'll see a greater reliance on promotion, public relations and philanthropy all of which will become more important tools in the effort to increase corporate visibility and create a favorable impression in the minds and hearts of the global consumer. And why not? Take this consumer for example:
"I don't know who you are. I don't know your company. I don't know your company's product. I don't know what your company stands for. I don't know your company's customers. I don't know your company's record. I don't know your company's reputation. Now - what was it you wanted to sell me?"
All of this, of course, argues persuasively for the concept of "total integrated communications", because bad news will probably still travel faster than good news, and if you are truly a global corporation, you can't afford to have your lawyers or public affairs people saying one thing to the government in Bonn and your advertising message saying quite another thing in Borneo. Eventually internal communications will become even more important than external communications. In the fast-paced business in a global arena with thousands of employees all over the world, internal marketing will become a new and highly valued specialty.
And having codes of conduct and a value system will no longer be just propaganda for prospective employees, consumers, suppliers or governments. It may well be a way of life. In a unique way, it may well distinguish a company from its competitors. It may be the only way to maintain a truly shining global image. It may also mean the difference between success and survival in the new global arena.
This is not pure altruism.
The fact is the influence of global media, the demand for global markets and the pressure for national solutions to essentially global problems are changing the role -- indeed, some would say the existence -- of the nation state, changing the conduct of foreign policy and compelling a rethinking of existing institutions, structures and relationships. Walter Wriston, former chairman of Citibank, explained the dilemma in political terms a few years ago. He said "whenever anything of importance happens in the world, tens of thousands of computer screens light-up in the trading rooms of the world producing a kind of giant vote-counting machine...A sort of global plebiscite". A referendum on the government's policies. What Wriston was saying in effect was that if people don't like a government decision or a policy or a treaty, say like the united kingdom entered into an agreement with china for control of hong kong -- money leaves the country instantly and the trader's opinion is reflected in the value of the country's currency. The sheer size and speed of the financial market will, wriston said, "dooms all type of central bank intervention -- (no) one can resign from the global market by holding a press conference. There is no place to hide".
The nation state, as Norman Cousins, the author and philosopher put it years ago, is still too big to solve the problems of the city, and too small to solve the problems of the world. It is struggling desperately to accommodate itself to the complexities of the global economy as it redefines its own basic national mission.
By contrast, the corporation has proved itself as the single best engine for creating wealth and jobs and meaning for peoples lives. It is now entering a whole era, however, when it must prove its ability to serve communities and individual citizens in a very different way to give meaning and value to their lives if it wishes to continue to be the engine, the chosen instruments of governments and their people.
Companies that think truly global will act locally whenever they can to deal with problems of education, the environment, energy or aids, applying solutions often learned in one part of the world to another. Sony calls it "global localization". Nissan calls it "glocalization", a terrible word, but the import is clear.
Yes, it's a brave new world, a world where new alliances are made, old ones changed or altered dramatically. The public sector, the government, will change too, including the traditional role of the university which is uniquely positioned to serve as a bridge, a kind of private and public sector laboratory for exploring new ideas, a workshop for testing them and a forum for forging new alliances to implement them.
Since the universities are more concerned with learning and linkages, than power or policies, all this should lead us, hopefully, to a more "techno-global" world as opposed to a techno-national one.
I know that getting from here to there will not be easy, it will take both commitment and compassion: commitment to changing the way we do business in the world and compassion; for the revolution in communications is not really about computers or telecommunications or optical fibers, or bits and bytes, or about programming or advertising. It's about people, and the way these technologies help them in their work and their life.
Today, despite the efforts we have made as a people to harness technology, to solve business as well as basic human problems; despite the promising effort toward liberalization in the world and the gee-wizardry of optical fiber, dbs and dick tracy wrist watches, the public policy process is still dangerously behind the movement of technology and markets. Tensions over trade are awakening nationalistic and protectionist fears, and those stake-holders with the most to lose by a possible step backward in communications reform, those global corporations who in effect created the global market have to take the giant step forward, and develop a new agenda for cooperation and consensus on communications policy issues. I sense that it is changing, I hope so. It will most certainly change with the next generation. It must, of course, if we are to have some semblance of the world community marshall mccluhan once talked about.
But of course there are barriers, basic copyright infringement for one, a basic recognition that there is an inherent legal right in intellectual property. Unlicensed use of copyrighted material on video cassettes, audio tapes and records is a severe problem in many nations of the world. Likewise, the vast majority of people and businesses are concerned with cultural restrictions as barriers themselves, including quantitative restrictions on programming or program quotas, restrictions on broadcast advertising and on the use of foreign-produced commercials. There are other trade barriers, including foreign ownership restrictions, transborder data flow restrictions, quantitative restrictions on the import of products or quotas or licensing, restrictions on earnings, discriminatory taxation or limitation on rental, terms of royalties, discriminatory customs valuation practices, local work and content restrictions, and hiring and immigration restrictions.
Everyone with a stake in the communications industry, indeed everyone with a stake in creativity and freedom should take a position against these barriers. Information and ideas will flow, will permeate the world. They must, say those of us like me who believe in the freedom of ideas. But we must know that there are other people in the world who do not share our belief in freedom. We must admit that there are people who fear that we can exercise our freedom only at their expense, and this is the heart of the problem. It is the problem of finding a way to make the maximum use of our communications technology, while convincing others less optimistic that the global unity of man can be achieved without destroying mans diversity, that our technology will advance, and not retard the fortunes of mankind.
As I said at the outset, this is the real challenge of the twenty-first century. It is a challenge to our humanism, our basic existence. It is also a marvelous time to be alive.
Thank you.