Super Highway Summit at UCLA

could provide universal access to everybody with their cable telemarket yeah I think I have some anomic benefits

do although some social benefits my vote it will be routed out reverse slackness mr. Kay doesn't make a difference if

have universal access or that it was

just a plan the site there right no I think as we have blasted years ago we've

had years well a cos2 pub library something that all of the citizens a

country should amortize the over the joint valve I think the most haunting

image to me is a library I visited 20

years ago in the middle of a slum it was free but nobody was going into it and so

I think that information is one thing and will the hope the directions the

reasons for actually using it as elements of powers are what have to be

worked on first oh I think while we're at it we should definitely make sure that everybody is enfranchised in the

new sources of information mr. Kavon er yeah in the last panel a Steve Case I

think made a very important observation that a lot of what we're talking about

is allowing people to communicate with other people in new new ways and that

when you think about universal access and what we have today in terms of

today's communication system I think we need to make sure that we bring forward

into this new world where the the communications with our eyes as well as

our ears the ability of all people to

communicate because what we're talking about is creating new sense of community

I think the question for us on the panel is how is it's a tricky thing you know I

know how it was done for the communications network we had a regulated monopoly and the

government regulated the bail system to see that everyone in America no matter

where they lived on a farm or in any inner city or in the suburb had access

to a lifeline type of services and that worked and achieved a certain goal we

will not have that in this new world and so the

for us is to to hold the value of universal access for for all the

appropriate reasons and then the noodle through during this pioneering period

the mechanisms to allow people to form

new senses of of community I think to Bell Atlantic TCI

announcement is a it's a good statement of intent to to begin that and just add

something that's going to be from what I understand in the public schools not

private schools the original proposals for public and private but this is

empowering public schools so again obviously some decisions have already

been made miss Caplan how do you feel about this issue when you talk about

universal access who pays for it should the government regulate it or should

free-market take over free market will not result in universal service we know

that from telecommunications in the past and we can expect that in the future one

group that has consistently been left out of past definitions of universal

service or people with disabilities a group that we have become more and more

cognizant of through measures like the Americans with Disabilities Act and also

because our society is aging and more and more people who are going to learn

to depend on this technology will find that they may not be able to use it mr.

Diller gave a great little anecdote in the beginning of the last panel about

the interface with remote controls and how difficult they currently are to use

that is something that many people commonly experience some more extremely

than others we are currently paying government is paying and ratepayers all

over the country for an add-on system so that deaf people can use the telephone

through state mandated relay programs that are using operators to provide a

service that other people can do without operators now in California alone the

cost is twenty four million dollars a year for this service and you multiply

that by 50 states and it begins very

expensive we've learned through architectural design that it's very

expensive to retrofit accessibility or usability in for people with disabilities and what

we're learning is that when we build accessibility in to the blueprints and

we're at the blueprint stage of the information highway now that we don't

just save money we enlarge the market who we're selling products and services

to we make sure people get left in and we also have the key to ultimate user

friendliness if people with disabilities can use it than everyone can use it

this is something that government should mandate and something that all should

pay for it cuz all will benefit from that all should pay for and government

should mandate do you agree with that mr. caper well I think that just as we

had universal access for telephones for

the last 60 years it's pretty uncontained

a guaranteed right to get a service brought into the home is going to happen

there's a question of who pays for it but I want to raise another question and

on access which is access to what if it's access to the cubic zirconium

Network it's not all of that interesting how many people here have email

addresses could I see some hands quite a few why that is if we came back in five

years 80 to 90 percent of you would have email addresses if things go well the

big question about access is are we going to have access to a future that

consists only of 500 channels of what somebody else says that you should be

watching or will it be access to a great diversity of services in which we're not

so much treated just as consumers buying things but also as citizens and in which

we have citizens at the local level and creative artists and entrepreneurs all

have a chance to put content onto that network that's a network worth having

access to and that's the kind of network we should be building sounds great how

do you do that doesn't it seem absolutely inevitable that that'll

happen given what's happened already and what the technology Fosters if I thought

it were an I wouldn't be up here I mean we live in a world in which people can literally

talk about packaging and storing

experiences so that it B can be consumed on video servers I find that pretty

frightening I don't think experience is the sort of commodity that could be

packaged like that and to the extent that there's a mentality that winds up

reducing everything to a least common denominator and to economics and to

money and believes in pushing for mass audiences because that's the only kind

of audience that's understood that's very problematic I'm neither an optimist

or a pessimist I think we have control of the future to shape it in our hands

but we just can't sit back but the but the possibilities are so in that

direction I mean what the technology will allow us to do is to introduce

people the subjects through video or conversation or images or you know

conversation with a professor and facilitate that the possible just said

one more thing about this and give other people a chance the possibilities are infinite and exciting and if you go out

on the internet and you do net surfing or if you can find some very bright 19

year old who understands it already and can deal with all the all the weird

interfaces of it to show you you get viscerally really excited about it but

you know every time there's been a new medium whether it was radio or television or cable there have been the

same high hopes lofty aspirations this is going to be terrific for culture it's

going to terrific for education and it hasn't materialized and until we

understand how to make it different this time it's just living in a fool's

paradise to believe that utopia is around the coin I really agree with that [Applause]

when the term couch potato is now thought of being so neutral that it was

actually used as the title of the previous session to me that is

disgusting and what we're looking forward to is not couch potatoes but

mouse potatoes we don't want more mouse potatoes in the world we have to have

some way of changing the value system of the culture not just changing the axis

all I agree with Mitch that we don't want 500 channels or a thousand channels

we want one channel one channel that connects to everything and then some

values that will get us to look at more than just shiny interesting things on a

shopping channel or whatever I think that right now we're if you look at

America over the last 20 or 30 years there's an interesting phenomenon is

going on in the under the guise of convenience this and convenience that

convenience foods what people are getting are things of lower quality and

after a generation has passed they don't know it's lower quality anymore because

that is what they know so when we shape an entire environment here we're also

shaping a set of values for people and people will pick up the values from the

environment just as they have from television so a lot more care than

private enterprise usually puts in has got to go into thinking about what this

thing is this is the biggest thing that has happened since the printing press and we have to do it with thought

television should be the last medium to

ever be allowed to be invented naively without a surgeon general's warning on

it that we have to make sure that the

computer medium is one and where people understand when it is really appropriate

to use it when it's powerful people so that people can tell the difference

between education and entertainment not just slam them together in such a way

that education is lost the new suggests experiments if you will information town

hall meetings so everybody will understand what this highway is about

and what it's supposed to do is that how you gather information from people and learn what they want to see or what they

they should be seeing to use it in a more viable way well here's here's a here's an arena in which I think you

really ultimately do have to put your trust in the marketplace if you are willing to build network that

is genuinely open not just to consumers

of information but to providers such that anybody who has something to say or

to make something no matter how foolish we might think it is has a chance to do

that and get on whether it's educational or health or entertainment or whatever

then we'll very quickly learn and be surprised by the results we have the

experience of the computer industry where I come from nobody predicted the

invention of the applications like the spreadsheet that I was involved with or

desktop publishing that made that industry sperry and burrows and CDC and

other companies that are no longer in business did not sit around in symposia

like this telling everybody what it was going to be like and if they had they

would have been wrong the way that you create the future is you lower the

barriers to entry for the consumers and the providers and you try to make as many things happen as possible and that

yes that does include government subsidizing education because it doesn't

pay for itself but they ought to be going out and buying net connections on

this new broadband highway just like everybody else and if the government

gives them a grant great we'll learn a lot over the next 10 or 20 years about

what works and what doesn't work and that's what we ought to be doing there are other major players in our society

who need to be encouraged and incubated to become information providers

government nonprofit organizations my

organization is a non-profit we're not techies we have our own bulletin board

service that's on exhibit here wid net other nonprofits need to do the same and

in this way we will create more than the

infotainment network of the future but

we will create experiments that will lead to directions that underlie the

values that we were talking about that give people good positive values from

the institutions that we really rely on to keep our society going in a direction

it needs to go in I think if I can sort of come to the defense to some extent of

the industry when when we're talking about this and in highway you gotta apply a little bit

of the the Willie Sutton theory to this you know you got to do things where the money will come from

you just can't build something and feel the dreams hope they will come

somebody's got to be able to pay for it so some of the applications that the

industry is talking about initially are those things that will generate some

revenue stream that will allow the tremendous capital and investment that's

going to be necessary to make this highway a reality so when you talk about

shopping and video-on-demand and electronic banking transfer or virtual

reality whatever you're talking about there has to be the economic component to it to get to that other level and I

would hope that we would not sort of thumb our noses at those applications

because they are if you want to put it that way necessary evils to get this

highway constructed so we have to look at those things as a step to building

this highway but once that's done we still have to make sure that people have

access to a fundamental basic level of

communications interactivity within the society and somebody's got to pay for

that I think the industry will step up and pay its fair share I think taxpayers would pay their fair

share and to some extent users should pay their fair share and the other thing

I think we need to be careful about is some sort of we were talking about the

value system who's going to be the keeper of the flame who's going to decide the values what values should be

available for example in this society I don't believe politically you could

mandate that the Super Bowl become a pay-per-view event I don't think you

could do that politically but at the same time heavyweight boxing

championship boxing is a pay-per-view event there's a value judgment in there

some people decide boxing is not valuable enough so that you have universal access but the Super Bowl is

there some value judgments being made and there other examples like that so I

believe that we have to not only determine the value system but we also

have to have some input and to say who's going to decide what those values are

let's talk about a downside if you will

someone could possibly bring forth the argument well we're going to create a

generation of people who sit around pressing buttons as to going out and say

you that Public Library that Alan Kay is talking about do we have an opportunity

here for the super information highway to become the savior of education as we

know it or could it turn in the opposite direction I mean it sounds great for a

student in Southern California to be able to read a book in the Library of

Congress well that student do that is that going to improve education well I think the I

think one of the ways of thinking about a different perspective is if you

remember Socrates didn't like writing there's a big gone complained about it

we Revere like writing today but if Socrates said the problem with writing

is that somebody it forces you to follow

arguments rather than participate in them so he thought of writing is

distancing and the thing he really didn't like about it is that the person who wrote the argument down could then

go off and die and never be able to be talked out of it so this thing this

thing that's awkward so there are lots of different perspectives and of course the book has been thought of as a very

alienating technology in different cultures as well

so I don't think it's necessary the the alienating aspect of the technologies

it's a question of using it where they're really powerful for larger scale

goals I think the hard thing about any new technology that comes along is finding

out what its fundamental idea is what it actually makes easier to think about and

what it makes harder to think about and then I have a value system that's set up

that way I don't think anybody can choose the value system what I'm urging

is that people reach for value systems when they're encountering this stuff so

when I would like to have a child for instance and not like to tell a child

you have to have a value of reading a book but I'd love a child to know that

he's making a decision not to read a book and instead to go off and do

something like that rather than just not even think about books as being a

possibility the point the point I'm making the point that concerns me is that all the libraries of the world are

both by been written and put together by

people who control the dominant values of the society if you're part of

minority group your values don't make it into the server and my big concern is how do you

make sure without stimulating the creation of software that has a

diversified opinion how does that get into the server so

that the kid who's sitting there punching up what's in this sort of library server along the information

Highway can get his or her values transmitted back to him

those are the kinds of issues I think we have to address I think this is a very

important point which is who fills the server and the servers it's not one

server that's out there that I think that if we could develop this

environment where there are many many servers innumerable always one more

tomorrow then we have the opportunity of having

education servers I would like to see a

lot more energy coming out of the education community and understanding

what we're talking about today the answer to your question I believe is

that this environment the interactive

broadband environment is much more on

the positive side of Education potentially than the negative and it is

ours to screw up if the education community would rally around building

servers and this may be the the way tax

money moves from traditional forms of

Education to electronic and traditional

forms of education I think we'd all be better off the education community sits

back and only allows us to be driven from a commercial mindset I think we're

going to land up I don't think that will happen because you can see today already

a great deal of interest I mean talk to any teacher the kids come into school playing Gameboy and watching TV and open

to a world of technology that our schools today don't have and and I know

for a fact that many of the leading educational groups are extremely

concerned to have children have access to video on a rainforest or on a tiger

on anything that could begin a conversation and perhaps lead them to a

book and I I mean obviously I can't speak for them but I know many of them are extremely

excited about that possibility and facing the everyday fact that almost

most of our classrooms have one outlet don't have computers and them schools

don't have phones they don't have voicemail I mean there's a tremendous infrastructure upgrade that the majority

of schools does not have a telephone system in the building I mean it is not

wired for communication one phone in the ownness Mr Cable I was going to say

there are some lessons from economics about how to make this medium good for

education you have to make it as cheap as possible you have to drive the cost

down and in that sense you want a mass-market you want everybody in the

country actually everybody on the world on this kind of network and in that sense building it in order to deliver

video on demand and home shopping is

great because it's going to help pay for it that's necessary the key question is

whether the systems that are built in the private sector and owned and

operated where those private sector companies also control a lot of the content whether they also have a full

stranglehold on everything else or whether there is a kind of public

right-of-way down the information Highway whether we find some way to

preserve the principle of common carriage yes let's get rid of all the

regulatory baggage that has really hampered innovation and I think the

vice-president I hope will have a number of interesting things to say about that greatly but you have to let everybody on

to the network who wants to and if they want to put up a server let them put up

a server we have enormous diversity in print compared with broadcast today a half a

million books in print a hundred thousand different periodicals that

begins to approach diversity yes you've got a lot of noise yes you've got a lot

of problems but five hundred channels is not diversity we have to be prepared for

chaos because there's going to be chaos and we have to be prepared for noise

because not everybody that you know pipes up and says something's going to

do it either with good production values or in a way that we find agreeable and

so the policy bedrock for this to get to your question is really the First

Amendment which says that we want to encourage maximum freedom of speech let's get

clever with technology to give parents controls so that if they don't want kids

to watch things kids have to sign in with their own remote and on that remote

there are certain channels that just don't show up I mean we can get very clever about that but if we try to start

imposing values either from the government or private sector fearing

government intervention and saying well we have to police ourselves if we do that in a way to say there are certain

things you can't say and certain things you can't do we're going to lose an

enormous amount of the value the weird ideas in society that start on the

fringes migrate into the center in two or three generations that's how we got

women's right to vote that was a radical disgusting idea about a hundred years

ago go back and read the history books if we have an open network a lot of the

weird radical ideas that we find today to be totally unacceptable will have the

seeds within them 20 40 60 80 years down the road for things that we'll all want

to believe in we need to permit that process to happen all right mr. paper we

used it everyone should have access to the network who wants and we are talking about some violet pornographic material

I think there's been talk of a Heidi Fleiss channel or something like that what do you do

sorry what do you say parents should be allowed to block this if they want to

how do you get you know it's on the responsibility of the parent right I can

hear some people saying how do you get everybody to do that there's gonna be some kid who's gonna fall through the

cracks and watch what he wants to anyway because the parents not going to be worried about if the original theory of

the parent isn't it that they're supposed to be responsible maybe we

should but what I'm what I'm saying is

is that I think that in all of these areas we're talking about including

education that no amount of Technology injected into the home in any which way

are gonna make up for parents who are not interested in learning as a value

and so I think that one of the one of the things that we have to be most careful about is and again here's where

I'm sort of sticks in my throat because I hate the idea of telling other people

what they should do on the other hand I've seen for 25 years

successful schools and unsuccessful schools that I work with and the

successful ones all have close involvement with the parents it's a it's

a three-way consortium between the

parent the child and the the teacher and the school those those three work

together and if they don't work together the system none of the other systems can

make up for it I think the same thing has to be true with with pornography or

any of any of these other things that we may not like the parents is part of the

heritage of living in this country that the parents are supposed to have a strong say in what how their children

are to be raised that's why we have so many school boards we don't want to have

a central association for running all the schools in the in the country but in

order for that to work everybody has to take much more responsibility than they would in say a country like France in

which everything is run from Paris I think I think an issue sort of as

difficult as that may be in terms of parental control over what you view is a

whole question of what voices will be allowed to have full expression without

somebody and voguing and political correctness on the on those opinions and

this is an issue that I think government policymakers are gonna really have to

grapple with and I think the First Amendment is the basis on which you

should make those kind of decisions but it will be a big issue if the if the

questions go to should the klu klux klan be allowed to go on this network and

raise hundreds of millions of dollars spinning out what I believe to be hate

and negative images vice versa should

groups that you would consider negative

to women or homosexuals whatever be allowed access to this main superhighway

and should the cacophony of voices no matter how negative or how bad be

allowed to just to be thrown out against the society and you know I don't know

how you make those kinds of determinations maybe there's still the off button on the system then maybe they

don't they don't control the off button so you can still turn it off but those are things that we'll have to

grapple with and I can assure you that certain members of Congress will not

want to vote for this kind of total first amendment kind of expression but

it's an issue that I think is clearly going to be one that we'll have to

wrestle with privacy and a lot of other things that go along with that well you know this is going to go the other way

though it seemed to me that that Ku Klux

Klan program is not going to be a broadcast program in this world

someone's going to be saying I want to access something I want to connect and I

want to connect to other people who have that common interest and I think that

it's a dicey er First Amendment issue going into this future you know in the

communications industry today you know I think it is fairly clear that the First

Amendment is not is totally protected in terms of what you can say on

communications networks now that you put content in a communications network

should we as individuals of the society be able to access whatever we want and I

think that becomes much dicey right I hope so I mean I can't really actually

we have a very strong First Amendment tradition in this country for a couple

hundred years mostly through the print medium the last 50 years of broadcasting

because of spectrum scarcity opening the door a crack to very intrusive

government regulation of content visa vie other media that history with

broadcast has been counter to the general support for freedom of

expression we don't really need the First Amendment for popular opinions we needed for unpopular opinions and as I

was saying today's unpopular opinion may be hateful in 50 years or it may be the

conventional wisdom it's the nature of a democratic society to tolerate unpopular

opinions one of the advantages of going to an on-demand user controlled

environment is that the stuff doesn't get in your face if you don't want to

see it it does lead tho to potential problems of fragmentation loss of a mass

culture if everybody is doing their own thing do we believe in anything and I

think those are the sort of issues that we really need to be focusing on but

let's let's get the First Amendment in cyberspace where belongs you know I don't think we can

hold the country together by going rigid at any given point in time we have to

learn how to live with flexibility and change this century I think has been

McLuhan said this is the century in which change changed so maybe we can't

handle that extra that extra gear that's going on but I think that we have as

Mitch says we have to have absolutely open access we have to have choice and

we have to have a way for each individual and each family to block out

the stuff that they don't want to see but the whole issue of pornography and

objection objectionable programming or speech is something that is predictable

a new medium comes along and you have

horror stories about kids getting into areas parents don't want them to get

into and then there's call for regulation and there's a call for clamping down if we can predict those

things I think those companies who want to avoid over-regulation and who want to

protect a freedom to be able to have a diversity of programming really need to

be looking at what are the first kinds of programs and the first kinds of

examples of what this technology will mean that they are putting out it needs

to be more than entertainment in order to create a vision of what the community

will be that we will all be connecting the companies really need to look at partnering not just with other companies

but with government with nonprofit organizations to come up with shining

examples examples that they can point to that aren't pornography and and people

writing hate messages to each other but examples of the benefits that this

technology and the information holds out to all segments of society proactively

with community groups now so that we all

can participate in creating a vision of where this is going the biggest problem

that we all have is explaining to people who don't have an involvement in this

area of what on earth we're talking about and we're trying to avoid having

these bad example get thrust in our faces yeah question is

will they own it will the builders of the superhighway the information highway

have a public interest obligation over 90 percent of their capacity 10 percent

of their capacity you know how much of it will be contained in a public

interest standard that the government will say you are licensed to use this electronic magnetic spectrum which is

what we are ultimately talking about what your digitizer to analog you will

be obligated to buy this much as public

access now on the public access people can do what they will you will control

90% 50% 60% and therefore you have some

editorial discretion over what you will let on this system or let into this

server or let into this access system or not and if you use the models that we've

been working with within the past and and and to some extent we're always we

have to build on what we know I don't know how are you gonna divvy up that

role everybody thank you the broadcast

model is not the only model there's the telephone network the telephone

companies don't care what you say they don't look at it they're not allowed to do that in the new world it's not like

you've got scare spectrum you have virtually infinite bandwidth and if you

run out on one fiber you can put in another fiber there is no reason to

allocate to chop things up to control things let people say what they will say

and stand aside the notion of Public Act

Public Interest obligations doesn't work we have a lot

of history to show that it's a very well-intentioned idea which does not

work on the contrary figure out how to take common carriage which is the right

of the users of the system to control the content to do their thing strip it

of all the regulatory baggage that gets in the way of innovation stand back and

make billions of dollars hauling people's traffic around and by the way

you'll also be able to own some of your own content and make money off that if

people watch it that's the way to go I was going to come and very very

similar attempt to Mitch be first you

know I think the values that Deborah and Bob are expressing are important but

what I what I think is going on here we have two present-day worlds heading for

a future world one present-day world is a broadcast world and if the if the

model that is in your mind is a broadcast model that you propel into

this future I think you create the wrong you solve the wrong problem I agree with

Mitch I think we're heading more towards a communications type and environment

where the power goes to the individual and then the problem we have that

Deborah lays out is it's going to be the individuals choice to access whatever

they want to connect to any other human beings they want to whether it is a

common interest in gardening whether it's a common interest in a political

point of view or the diplomat interest on some productivity or gaming or

shopping or whatever and we need to be very careful and delicate that those

rights of the individual are maintained while we find the mechanisms to deploy

the values that you know I think you eloquently lay out are necessary but we

can learn from the history especially of cable and how cable was deployed there

were wonderful expectations that we

would have lots of community programming and we would have more than the

commercially oriented programming that we have but look at what happened the

community oriented programming and public access was not produced with much

money community groups were sort of given access to a studio and do what you

want without the training and without the capability to put on programming

that would be attractive especially that could stand up to the more fancy

produced more commercially oriented programming we need to invest and maybe

government needs to do this although I think private businesses can do this as well in

sources of programming that come from the community that enhance what

government is trying to do that enhance what the nonprofit's I've been talking

about are trying to do and give them enough capability enough know-how and

production behind them to be able to compete and to be able to put something

out there that people will be drawn to does anybody else want to comment on

this subject there's one more kind I think part of the answer to that is the

analogy to desktop publishing which has

changed what kind of thing you can put it of course people have always been

able to write people can put up billboards but desktop publishing

actually allows you to make something that looks like a book that used to cost

hundreds of thousands of dollars to make and I think that is going to extend the development tools for allowing more

people to make things like the professionals do is going to extend into

this media and I think the the other capper on what Mitch is saying is that I

was one of the original one of many who

helped design the ARPANET which turned into the Internet and 25 years ago when

we were doing it the telephone was the model that we had except of course we

didn't want to be able to call two places but two people but we just wanted

to ship bits around we didn't want to say what it was going to be or anything

the service would just take little packets and move them from one place to

another in such a way that when you sent something to somebody it could get to

them regardless of where they were in the world what's happened is the internet over the

last many years has been growing at the

rate of 20 percent a month it still is I believe wouldn't you say Mitch I think it's and there I think there are almost

40 million computers on the internet now worldwide and any of them could be set

up as servers there are hundreds of thousands of servers but there could be

40 million servers there and the network

does not care what you send around because everything is ultimately reduced

to bits and so you have model in the Internet of the kind of thing that could

be it happens that the backbones for the internet are paid for by the government

the government I think NSF had no idea what it was going to grow into but in

fact every time you get on America Online or CompuServe or something and

send somebody to somebody's internet address NSF which means us are paying

for a little bit of that transport of the message that's how Universal

enfranchisement works on that thing there is a guarantee that it will try

and find any of the networks connected to it or as people who are directly on

it so this is a this is the network that has grown over the entire world without

any planning at all it was started off with something much more like the United

States of America with a constitution rather than a detailed plan the

Constitution governed how the thing grew over the years and I think it's through

constitutional strategies that we can

get into the future not with detail plans and trying to specifically anticipate every part of the future

all right turning to something different what happens when the super information

highway moves to your neighborhood in other words we hear a lot of talk about

video malls replacing brick malls is that likely to happen should people

be concerned about losing jobs actually

a good company to be these days would be a company like UPS if you look at if you

look at the way Walmart Walmart is a

tremendous success because it changed the balance of the interactions between

the suppliers and the shippers and how things were going to be buffered in in

warehouses UPS which is already

everywhere or Federal Express is in a

position to be the major broker for getting small items to you through

computer shopping because they already are going by almost every house in

America and so the slightly better packing scheme in their cars they can

they could in a very economical way deal

with small packages at very small cost and so you have this interesting thing

that these changes are not are not only electronic but there's a whole set of

logistics that you have to look at and the strangest companies wind up looking

like big players they really aren't companies like Procter & Gamble because

they don't have a way of distributing it's really a company that can get the

goods to you overnight that are going to be the biggest players in this augmented

by the electronic network but that's where it's some of the possibility for attendant services and new employment

possibilities might emerge I mean yes maybe not as many people are bringing out the cash register at the local mall

but things like what you're saying is people will invent all kinds of ways to

bring new options instead of going out to your home it's obvious and they could

be very exciting see an expert tell you about this and then choose to buy it but

it also seems like there's some family kind of experiences going together to

eat a yogurt and wander into a bookstore that aren't replaceable either because

they're their physical and they're they're part of life too I think I think

another question is it's probably a bigger question is will the neighborhood

be there when the highway gets there [Laughter]

it's you know when we're sitting here talking about spending hundreds of

billions of dollars to rewire America how much of that money is going to be

spent in creating jobs for these people who live in the neighborhoods that are supposed to be the in line of that

Highway how many people will be brought into the economy by the hundreds of

billions of dollars of spending that are going to this new technology how many

people will be trained to work with this new technology and I think if anything

that the that this Advisory Committee that's advising on the information

Highway and indeed the industry should be looking at is how can we while we're

building this highway create the kind of jobs create the kind of stability and

families and in a neighborhoods that will allow us to have customers at the

end of the the construction period and that's got to be a major concern of what

we're facing that that's why I think

that the Bell Atlantic TCI kind of approaches is absolute striking the

right because unless the people are there to

be employed to be consumers to provide some level of security in the in the

neighborhoods you're not going to see that last mile get to the home it's

going to end up in Georgetown it's not go get over in Southeast Washington and that'll be the last mile and these are

the kinds of things that you have to think I think that that we should be experimenting with every kind of way we

can on this information Highway to see if it can help deal with some of the

urban social problems I don't know if it can or not but it's just for example

this is sort of wild but suppose that a parent could create a system where they

could track where their kids are going to be at all times you know it sounds

like you put them in prison and you're putting these little rings around it showed around their hand but perhaps

that might be necessary today where you can say gee I can look on the map the kid tells me he's going over to his

neighbor's house I looked at this system he's not at the neighbor's house he's down at the local club I called him on

his beeper and said get your butt over your neighbor's house you know maybe that's what you have to do to deal with

some of the problems in in the urban environment but I'm for looking at

everything and I think this this this major shift in how we interact has to be

addressed to fundamental social and societal problems today

[Applause]

first of all let's not sell anymore utopias because we're bound to be

disappointed the trick is as Alan said to figure out what this wonderful new

medium is good at and what it's not good at and maybe it is good at helping

people figure out where they are what I worry about though is to the extent to

which people give up even further on their real face-to-face relationships

with each other in favor of some new even more powerful electronic form of

addiction I mean we can go one of two ways the way I see video games going

especially when you can do them over a network where you have violent you know

sexualized violence and what we see today is just a preview you could just

increase the amount of alienation in society and people's inability to see each other as

people a hundredfold through powerful technology or and at its best we can see

seeds of this on the Internet today people are figuring out how to leverage

a small amount of face-to-face contact

over networks so that they are relating to people who have some common interest

that they have even though they're not geographically proximate even though

they form a community that is global in its scope a kind of virtual community we

don't know very much about how to form those and how to keep those together and

how to build on them and I think that's actually should be a very important research agenda for social science

because to me that would be leveraging technology in a very positive way to

help people be more human but if we become more machine like because we're

interacting with these machines we all lose if we can somehow delegate off to

the Machine the drudgery and and leave

ourselves so that for instance teachers stop being policemen and police women

and can become mentors and guides because the computer is used to help

with with the fact that would be a terrific outcome neither outcome is is

written in any book or on any wall we have to make it if we sit back then it's

going to be letting somebody else make those decisions but you know there's a cartoon of two dogs sitting in front of

a computer terminal and one says to the other you know on the internet nobody

knows you're a dog [Music] and behind that cartoon is the reality

that because it's an interactive medium and people are already using the

Internet people are communicating one of the larger groups on the net are people with

disabilities who tend to face a lot of obstacles and barriers to physically

getting out in going places and find the net to be a wonderful place not to be

isolated and a wonderful place to connect with other people that needs to

be Tramp that reality and promise needs to be transposed against the current

reality which is a lot of people not getting out and going anywhere

but being couch potatoes and sitting in front of the tube which is not an

interactive medium and I don't think that's the reality that a lot of us well

some people in this audience do want to encourage but that's not exactly where

we want to go but the marriage is where it's exciting like say you could take

any series that PBS does or that Bob does or that we do and say let people

after it interact with the people who did this put on the Civil War or the

people who watch wings on the Discovery Channel or to any series and let them interact later with the expert write

letters and then interact with each other that's where the video could spur conversations and spur communities of

interest groups that I think would you know bring a richness to people's lives

that could be very exciting do you see

other businesses closing down because of the super information highway because it

is more accessible Oh doing shopping say

going to a video store and buying an actual videotape instead of pressing a button and having it I think Ruth said

two important things in a previous comment and just now but I think the the kind of environment

you justice Clark described is where we should be heading there's probably more

more of the past in the future than we probably normally are willing to admit

and I think we're all going to go to stores and malls because of what

Ruth said earlier in terms of the social side of it but I do think it is

inevitable that more drudgery side of

merchandising and purchasing will be done through the network and that will

be done interactively - I'll be able to call my daughter I live in New Jersey

and call her in San Francisco and say Brenda would you like to go shopping for

an hour I have an hour and and we talk

we chop we talk we talk whatever that's

going to happen and maybe it's not my daughter Brenda you know maybe someone

that Bob knows that I've never met but we have a common interest at that moment

and and I think that's the kind of experimentation that we should be doing

in this pioneering period I also would

just mention that no time in history has

there been an open discussion about the

next revolutionary change as what we're having now that there's something about

art following life and life following art we are actually living at the moment

a very important part of the process of

maybe doing this thing differently because this discussion did not exist

when we went through other periods of massive change before so there is I

think some some reason to be optimistic and yet be very cautious about it as

well well the amount of or the unlimited amount I should say of information that

will flow at our fingertips should we be concerned at all about guaranteeing the

right of privacy all right yeah I think we should be extraordinarily concerned

about it I mean for one thing when you have a lot of individual choice the

dossier that will be compiled on you and your family asked not only to what you

watched but what you bought is going to

be extraordinarily detailed and if there aren't suitable protections you know

that that information is going to be commercially exploited in what that you as the subject of that

information will have no control over and that the point that I want to make is beside the point that you could spend

a whole day just on this issue is there are two types of protections there are

legal protections it is against the law to do X & Y & Z and there are

technological protections the best one of which is not to collect that

information to begin with in other words to build privacy into the system through

technologies of encryption in a way that lets business get done in other words

it's one thing you need to be able if you're the vendor to charge somebody $1

or $2 or whatever it is and to know that

they're going to be able to pay if they're not paying on the spot so you have needs for for that kind of security

and reliability typically we do that through knowing people's identity oh

here's my driver's license you know here's my credit card and it's got my name on it the good news is you don't

have to have somebody's identity to have that security we have $20 bills and $10

bills and cash today and that is one of the great things about cash is you can

go in and buy something anonymously and the merchant takes the money but it

doesn't have all the convenience of credit cards we could have a form of money on this network that combined the

best properties of both that there's sort of security and reliability so

vendors get paid but the anonymity so that if people don't want to become one

more record in a big database it just doesn't happen and they don't have to

trust us of law that might or might not ever get passed that's a pretty

contentious statement what I just said I know the NSA doesn't like it and the

intelligence agencies don't like that because if you give people strong cryptography and if you bake it into the

if you bake it into the system then maybe it does let bad guys do things

that you can't listen in on I don't want to minimize the importance of that

debate but I'll just conclude this point by saying that's the debate that we need

to have how do we get privacy technologically as well as legally how

do we balance that against other there's also the nice escalation for instance

between police radar the kind of sophisticated radar detector

you can buy for your car you know once once we were able to spot radar the

police went to lasers now they have laser detectors and I think I think one

of the problems you're always going to have with privacy is that many

institutions will just have a lot more computing power than any individual and

a lot of the encryption codes are based on problems being theoretically hard but

in fact most of those are just a bunch of brute force work and I think that

it's just like locks blocks are not there to be unbreakable they're there to

to create a certain level of difficulty to keep you want to keep amateurs out

that's fairly easy with locks and there's a group of professional

criminals at each stage of locking that you want to keep out you just want to

make it make it harder for them there's a roller for both industry and

government I have a question for the audience given that there are a lot of company representatives here how many

people work for companies that have a written established policy regarding

privacy consumer privacy not very many

companies can proactively write their own policies and figure out what the

rules are one of the issues around privacy as consumers have to know what

the expectations and what the rules are about information that they're putting

out unwittingly or wittingly about themselves another major point is that

information it should be assumed belongs to the consumer and no one else and

unless the consumer proactively does something not through negative options

where if you don't do something then everybody learns about you unless the

consumer proactively does something and says yes I want that entity over there

to know this about me it doesn't go

first what I said about locks applies even more strongly towards organizations

like the NSA they can put a lock on data that no ammeter could ever uncork so if

they don't want you to find out that they know about something there was no

way that you would be able to that's that's the the other side of the the

ominous coin go ahead just think another there's

nothing about the technology that won't allow all of us to give the customer the

individual the right to determine how much privacy they want are not one and I

think we also just strive to give that choice to the individual the individual

wants to to have be totally private and anonymous they can do that there's

nothing about the technology that prevents that if they would like to advertise or their shoe size so that

people could could let them know about sales of shoes at that size that's their

choice and so I well the problem is that the Bill of Rights that guarantees

unreasonable search and seizure was done before telephone wiretapping was invented so I

would consider somebody tapping a phone to be unreasonable search and seizure

but it it's not that it's not considered that way by the legal system because it

happened afterwards and they decided well we won't just make that part of

what that meant when you had to have physical people to go into your house so

I think that I think that there are some very gray areas here and I agree with

everything you're saying but I think it's one that we have to be cognizant of

that anybody who has a wonderful rationalization for why they should find

out about you already is and they can

have the information locked up in a way

that is almost impossible to prove that they have it okay Allen we have about five minutes left we have time for for

Q&A one question Wow

is there anyone in the audience with a burning question that you'd like to ask this panel come to the microphone please

there on either side of the auditorium already got a candidate over here I'm

I'm the one that wanted to ask the question I thought you worked with us

I'm sorry sir thank you you know what you're giving me signals I

thought you meant alright five more minutes hey go ahead please

that mean we have more time if you don't recall I'm the person that told you at

the last town hall meetings that most of your voters probably most of your

viewers probably didn't vote mr. Juarez oh yeah I remember you yeah that was an

invalid I didn't mean to say it that way

but they were giving me the sign they gave dick cavett earlier my point here

is to drive to drive home the point of the partnership that miss Caplan and the

communities in mr. Johnson and I'm glad you're there in that panel are

discussing I represent the nonprofit network a LULAC project and the concept

of the nonprofit network is to focus on high school students in continuation

high schools and share with them this

information that's in the newspaper every day and give them some background

to telecommunications past present and future and make them facilitators in

their community so that they can go out and enlighten their community about it

and we want to use nonprofit organizations as the end users for what

we call a low-tech network that we want

to implement now this is a this is a win-win-win situation because in this

place you divert the at-risk youth and those those in continuation high schools

are the next step to the street you you divert them from a negative lifestyle

and interest them in something that is truly a it's not a grant it's not a

handout it's a real opportunity when we talk about a level playing field here

this is taking advantage of a real level playing field do you have a question

no I'm not trying to be funny seriously you made some good money this my know if

you have a question my question is is this the panel that will advise whomever

they are out there developing this highway that that at-risk youth need to

play a part in the role of facilitating this so-called communication revolution

and if so please take that message forward thank you mr. Juarez I'm a

member of the panel and I think so if

there are a lot of panel members if you know and I I think yes you're right I think if you trace the the concern I

have is that if you trace the development of communications in this

country it has to be traced to the economic opportunities that are

presented to certain different groups newspapers developed black Americans

didn't know newspapers radio licenses were granted black Americans were not

granted radio licenses when they were when they were granted television

licences were granted black Americans were not given television license

telephone company franchises were created black Americans did not run

telephones cable television systems were awarded very few black Americans owned

cable television system now comes the information highway PC NPCs information

highway I don't believe it'll be an absolute common carry model there will be strong

ownership controls simply because if we wanted a common carrier model the

government can build a common care like they build the highway to real highway

the road highway they're not going to do that it's going to take private money private money's good demand control and

return on investment as they should consequently I think there has to be an

effort made to ensure that diversity of ownership continues to go right along

with diversity of ideas without diversity of ownership you will not get

diversity of ideas I can assure you so my pitch is that as an a member of

the advisory committee at universal access will be a mandate that I will push for as well as diversification of

ownership of the technology ownership of the media that will I think will

stimulate the diversity of ideas that we'll get into the server that we'll get

back into the society that will stimulate a greater communications and discourse in a in a democratic

pluralistic society thank you thank you Robert there's a young lady at this

microphone I'm a teacher 85% of the teachers teaching today have no training

in technology if you think that library that people didn't go to because it was

in the middle of some community where people couldn't read very much as bad you should know that there are a lot of

teachers who would love to do the technology but it's very difficult

because 95 percent of our time is spent in front of students what can industry

help us do to become ready for this superhighway yeah I've been waiting for

that question all the panel time I think

it's the most important question there is about the stuff with regard to

education after the values question one

I work with teachers for 25 years and one thing things that is abundantly

clear when you work with teachers is that they work like mad and they're busy

all the time just prepping for their class is very very difficult to help

them in a couple of weeks in the summer get the kind of fluency that they need

in Japan a teacher in Japan only teaches

half the day they have twice as many teachers per student as we do and the

other half of the day that all of the teachers who are not teaching learn

about new things so one of the things that we really have to do in reforming education again it's

not so much a technological thing it's a social thing is the value the teacher's

time of having to spend continuous on-the-job paid time learning about this

new stuff all right I have I've been given a hard rep and don't want to

impede on the vice president's time thank you very much it's been a pleasure to service

right

Thank You audience

[Applause]

it's one more time for a stretch we're going to strike the set and the vice

president will be out in about five minutes so stretch time one more time

you're watching coverage of the day-long superhighways Summit held Tuesday at the

University of California at Los Angeles this event examined the future of

information and entertainment technology and was held by the Academy of

Television Arts and Sciences speaking

next Vice President Gore who spoke about the potential of the so called

information highway linking homes nationwide Vice President Gore speech

lasts about 45 minutes he then takes questions from the audience

bang bang Hey

okay this is the most on time event in

the history of Hollywood I think to to

introduce our keynote speaker today we have one of California's two United

States senators Barbara Boxer Barbara has served in the United States Congress

for 11 years first as a congresswoman

from the Bay Area until she began her term in the Senate last year she has

spent her political career as an outspoken advocate of common sense and

efficiency thanks to her we all became

aware of the $7,600 coffeepots that the pentagon was buying and it is estimated

that her bill to require competitive bidding by the Defense Department they

save taxpayers more than 1.5 billion dollars yes senator boxer will be

introducing Vice President Gore I'd like to take this opportunity on behalf of

the Academy to thank the vice president from for coming here today he is perhaps

the most knowledgeable political leader in the nation with regard to new

technologies in general and the information superhighway in particular

for this reason President Clinton has made him the administration's point

person on this incredibly important issue it is an extreme honor to have him

with us today and now it is my honor to introduce Senator Barbara Boxer

[Applause]

thank you it's so nice to be with you I am glad somebody got this box it would

be like remember when Queen Elizabeth spoke to the Congress and all you saw

was this that's the way it would have it's an eerie thought well I really want

to thank Richard Frank and the Academy for all of the work that they have done

to put together this historical event which is so crucial to California's

future and I want to thank our UCLA host the Center for communication policy and

recognize the important work of its founders geoff cowan and jeff cole I

think they deserve some praise

I am honored and grateful to be with all of you today to make just a very few

remarks and to introduce our great vice-president I think it's particularly

appropriate that today's event is brought to us by the entertainment

industry and academia to California institutions that will play such a vital

role in our nation's information Highway

make no mistake about it the communications revolution has the

potential to create economic opportunity thousands of jobs and greatly enriched

our educational system our health care system and our quality of life

experts project that after the highway is in place US companies could sell an

additional 3.5 trillion dollars worth of

high-tech goods in the beginning of the year 2001 2002 around that period many

project that by the end of the decade three-quarters of all new jobs will be

in telecommunications and by the year 2010 some estimates show that nearly one

third of California's economic output will be dependent upon the computer and

information industries the revolution will happen but the question remains who

will drive it as a United States Senator from California I say let it be

California we need it and we deserve it

and we're ready for it during the last half century the public and private

sectors invested heavily in our military and California's best in our brightest

went to work creating the finest defense industry notwithstanding some of the

problems we had in the world well the Cold War is over and I say that

California is in the best position to lead again in this era of change

California led the defense buildup now let's lead the information build up from

semiconductors to Seinfeld from Silicon

Valley to Schindler's List this is the state that can make it happen just last

year our cutting-edge computing industry employed over 90,000 Californians and as

trade deficits threatened so many parts of our economy American movies TV

programs and home video materials continue to be the envy of other

industries by creating trade surpluses of over four billion dollars we are the

state with the best higher education system and we better keep it that way

Thank You UCLA for applauding we are the state that brings the world

entertainment and we are the state that sparked the computer revolution now if

we seize this opportunity and I think we're going to do it the marriage of

entertainment education and information will be a match made in heaven for the

California economy Pacbell just announced it will invest sixteen billion

dollars in an information superhighway for California Caltech just linked

itself to UCSD with a high-speed data network and in the Silicon Valley the

public and private sectors have joined together in a project called Smart

Valley in the Golden State this Golden State the revolution has already begun

in California and nationwide information will be the lifeline bringing services

to and between our people and our institutions I pledge as a United States

Senator to work with this great administration with all of you and with this nation's

consumers to make sure that this superhighway increases access protects

privacy and gives our business or educators or medical institutions and

our law enforcement officers the tools that they need to flourish in this new

kind of global economy and now I have a

superb honor to introduce to you the

Vice President of the United States President Clinton in his wisdom has

given Vice President Al Gore some of the most important assignments in the

history of our republic and with good reason

he brings a wealth of intelligence and experience to the job of vice president

this is a man who is a nationally recognized leader on technology a man

who has spent most of his political career laying the policy bricks to build

today's communication foundation as a

senator Vice President Gore introduced and stared to passage the

high-performance computing Act legislation that created a national

high-speed computer network and increased the Rd of high performance

technologies this important legislation is part of President Clinton's

technology and economic initiative as the Vice President of the United States

Al Gore is working overtime to ensure

that government serves as a partner and not as an obstacle in this

communications revolution ladies and gentlemen without further ado I am so

very proud to introduce to you and to welcome to California the Vice President

of the United States of America Al Gore

[Applause]

thank you very much Barbara it is a it's a great privilege to be able to work

with Barbara Boxer we work together in the House of Representatives and we have

been great friends for a long time and she does an outstanding job for this

state she is tireless and determined and

really does a super job along with

Dianne Feinstein they she makes up one of the most effective and best teams in

the Senate that any state in our Union has I want to acknowledge also

congressman Howard Berman who I'm told is here I haven't had a chance to visit

with everyone beforehand so there may be

others I should acknowledge and I apologize if I've missed someone I also

want to thank rich Frank president of the Academy for his help in arranging

this and making this tremendous gathering possible and Andrea rich a

vice chancellor of UCLA for her hospitality and help let me also

acknowledge some of the administration officials who are here the chairman of

the FCC Reed Hundt technically not I said administration official part of the

the chairman of the independent FCC and Dan Goldin director of the that's not

supposed to be a laugh line I guarantee you and the director of NASA Dan Goldin

who is and NASA is not independent of the administration he does a great job

in is from California from the business

community here and Larry Irving the assistant secretary of commerce who is

playing such a key role in our task force and has been doing an outstanding

job well this is quite an event and let

me begin by saying that it is great to be here at the television Academy today

I feel as if I have a lot in common with those of you who are members of the

Academy I was on Letterman

I write my own lines I'm still waiting

for residuals at first I thought that

letterman show could lead to a whole new image maybe maybe a new career

no more Leno jokes about being stiffer than the Secret Service or about being

so stiff you need a strobe light to make it look like I'm moving I thought I

thought maybe it would even lead to an opportunity to do some other shows and I

was just thrilled when I was asked by

Star Trek The Next Generation to come on

the show and do a guest shot I was in

crestfallen when they made it clear that they wanted me to replace the Lieutenant Commander data the historian Daniel

Boorstin who used to be the librarian of Congress once wrote that for Americans

nothing has happened unless it is on

television this of course leaves out a few major events in our history but this

meeting today is on television so apparently it is actually occurring and

it's great to be here I I join you to

outline not only this administration's vision of the national information

infrastructure but our proposals for creating it last month in Washington I

set forth some of the principles behind our vision today I'll talk about the

legislative package necessary to ensure the creation of national infrastructure

in a manner which will connect and empower the citizens of this country

through broadband interactive communication we've all become used to

stumbling over cliches in our efforts to describe the enormity of the change that

is now underway and the incredible speed with which it is taking place often we

call it a revolution the did revolution and speaking of stumbling

over cliches I often used to use the analogy to automobiles saying that if

cars had advanced as it rap as rapidly as computer chips over the last few

years a Rolls Royce would go a million miles per hour and cost only 25 cents

that is I used to use it until I used it at a meeting of computer experts and one

of them spoke up and said yeah but the rolls-royce would be about one

millimeter long in any event what we

have been seeing with this incredible pace of change especially in the last

decade really is amazing but even this change is nothing compared

to what will happen in the decade ahead the word revolution by no means

overstates the case but this revolution

is based on traditions that go far back in our history since the

transcontinental telegraph that transmitted Abraham Lincoln's election

victory where they were counted assembling the vote totals in the East

all the way to California in real time for the first time in history our

ability to communicate electronically has informed and shaped America it was

only a year before that election that the Pony Express was the talk of the

nation able to send a message across our nation in seven days of course the next

year it was of course out of business today's technology has now made it

possible a global community United by instantaneous information and analysis

protesters at the Berlin Wall communicated with their followers

through CNN news broadcasts the fax

machine connected us with demonstrators in Tiananmen Square and so it's worth

remembering that while we talk about this digital revolution as if it's about

to happen in many places it is already

underway even in the White House let me

give you an example but the day after the inauguration

I was astonished to see how relatively primitive the White House communications

system was President Clinton and I took a tour and found operators actually

having to pull cords for each call that came in and plugged them into the right

jack in order to complete the connection it reminded me of the switchboard used

by Ernestine that wonderful character created by Lily Tomlin and there were

actually phones like these straight from

the White House they're still there we

have made some progress they're only in the press room now

[Applause]

but these phones these phones just

didn't meet our needs so now we use modern phones and on trips I use a

cellular phone like this one which some of you have probably used has that ever

happened to Huey excuse me hello

Oh gracious how long have I reached hello have I reached the party to whom I

am speaking I'm not sure this is this is

the Vice President the Vice President Al Gore Al Gore Al Gore little Albert this

is Ernestine the operator my wires must have got crossed I was trying to reach

the vice president of AT&T that's a little company I work for sometimes um

well he may be here somewhere but KITT

perhaps I can help you

Oh mr. vice president

I think maybe you can't help me after all I I'm so glad I have this time with

you I must admit that I have been somewhat a technophobe me and my

switchboard have been codependent but

I'm not sure exactly I mean I'm not sure happy which which which trap to take

well are you sure you can't help me yeah

we're here talking about the the information revolution this is going to

provide lots and lots of information so

hard to change first I had to give up the bail there is no ringy-dingy anymore

there there's only this kind of loan muffled buzz and I never see where we

repairman anymore that's the part I really missed

but I want to be a futurist mr. vice president I want to be a futurist like

you because I think well frankly I'd have a better future well you may have

come to the right place because we're talking about all of these new changes

and all of the new information that's gonna provide the people oh really

mm-hmm let me pretend that I know nothing about this see if this is an

accurate description is it kind of like billions and billions of tiny little

Baykal bits of valuable information strewn in every direction across that

great salad bar in cyberspace is that

its name does that sound more like your local sizzler well you've got the part

about the bits right it does involve lots of you know but what I really want

to know is who's gonna connect those bits is it gonna be the electronically

elite or is it gonna be all of us the people well as a matter of fact that's

also one of the things we're talking about here and we're trying to design it

in a way that will help the people and will help you

Earnestine me you're not telling me is one of the people are you

well yes and we've got this problem in

the white house I was telling these folks about earlier and we're trying to

get rid of the old switchboard now you know about these billions of bits do you

think you might be willing to give up your switchboard and equipment and help

help us in the white house have access to your telephone calls in a heartbeat

here give this to the Smithsonian I'm

going to go now to the library so that I can cram and fill up with information

and lots of those little info bits it's been a pleasure give my best to tipper

[Applause]

she is terrific our new ways of

communicating after this revolution will entertain as

well as inform and more importantly they will educate promote democracy and save

lives and in the process they will also create a lot of new jobs in fact there

they're already doing it the impact on America's businesses will not be limited

just to those who are in the information business like Ernestine virtually every

business will find it possible to use these new tools to become more

competitive and by taking the lead and quickly employing these new information

technologies America's businesses will gain enormous advantages in the

worldwide marketplace and that is important because if America is to

prosper we must be able to manufacture goods within our borders and sell them

not just in Tennessee but Tokyo not just

in Los Angeles but Latin America last month when I was in Central Asia the

president of Kyrgyzstan told me his eight-year-old son came to him and said

father I have to learn English but why

president a Kiev asked because father

the computer speaks English well by now

we're becoming familiar with the ability of the new communications technologies

to transcend international boundaries and bring our world closer together but

many of you are now in the process of transcending other old boundaries the

boundary lines which have long defined different sectors of the information

industry the speed with which these boundaries are eroding is quite dramatic

I'm reminded of an idea of Stephen Hawking the British physicist Hawking

has Lou Gehrig's disease but thanks to information technology he can still

communicate not only with his students and colleagues but with millions around

the world incidentally I read the other day that his voice box has an American

accent because it was developed here in California anyway in that American

accent Hawking has speculated about a distant

future when the universe stops expanding and begins to contract eventually all

matter comes colliding together in what he calls the Big Crunch which many

scientists say could then be followed by another Big Bang a universe expanding

outward once again our current information industries Cable local

telephone long-distance telephone television film computers and others

seem headed for a big crunch big bang of

their own the space between these

diverse functions is rapidly shrinking between computers and televisions for

example or between interactive communication and video but after the

next Big Bang in the ensuing expansion of the information business the new

marketplace will no longer be divided along current sectoral lines there may

not be cable companies or phone companies or computer companies as such

everyone will be in the bit business and I don't mean the baked obit business the

functions provided will define the marketplace there will be information

conduits information providers

information appliances and information

consumers that's the future it's easy to

see where we need to go it's hard to see

how we get there from here when faced with the enormity and complexity of the

transition some retreat to the view best enunciated years ago by Yogi Berra when

he said what we have here is an insurmountable opportunity

not long ago this transition did seem

too formidable to contemplate but that is no longer the case because a

remarkable consensus has now emerged

throughout our country in business in public interest groups and in government

this consensus begins with agreement on

the right specific questions we must answer together how can government

ensure that the information marketplace emerging on the other side of this big

crunch will permit everyone to be able to compete with everyone else for the

opportunity to provide any service to all willing customers next how can we

ensure that this new marketplace reaches

the entire nation and then how can we

ensure that it fulfills the enormous promise of education economic growth and

job creation today I'll provide our

administration's answers to those questions but before I do let me state

my firm belief that legislative and

regulatory action alone will not get us where we need to be this administration

argued in our national performance review last year that government often

acts best when it sets clear goals acts

as a catalyst for the National Team work required to achieve them and then let's

the private and nonprofit sectors move the ball downfield it was in that spirit

that then Governor Clinton and I campaigning for the White House in 1992

said as a vital national goal linking every classroom in every school in the

United States to the national information infrastructure it was in

this same spirit that less than a month ago I pointed out that when it comes to

telecommunications services schools are the most impoverished institutions in

our society and and that has to change and so I have

been pleased that so many companies participating in the communications

revolution are now talking about voluntarily providing free access to the

NII for every classroom in their service areas and I would like to take the

opportunity today to congratulate two

companies Bell Atlantic and TCI for their joint announcement yesterday in

which they both individually committed to do just that that's leadership from

the private sector

setting goals for ourselves is important

setting the right goals is critical so

let me be clear here today in articulating what I believe is one of

the most important goals for all of us to agree to at this meeting that by

January 11th of the year 2000 you will

connect and provide access to the

national information infrastructure for every classroom every library and every

hospital and clinic in the entire United States of America

[Applause]

I challenge all of the CEOs who are on

the panel and in the audience during the CEO summit at the end of the day to make

this commitment at the conclusion of your meeting and then to challenge and

turn the CEOs of every other company in your industries to accept and help us

meet this goal if you will make this commitment today our administration will

issue the same challenge to state regulators governors mayors school

board's teachers librarians hospital administrators and citizens throughout

this country by meeting this challenge we can realize the full potential of the

information revolution to educate to

save lives provide access to health care and lower medical costs our nation can

and must meet this challenge the best way to do it is by working together just

as communications industries are moving

to the unified information marketplace of the future so must we move from the

traditional adversarial relationship between business and government to a

more productive relationship based on consensus we must build a new model of

public-private cooperation that if properly pursued can bring great

benefits to the American people and avoid the huge transaction costs which

are often associated with the old adversarial approach but make no mistake

about it one way or another we will meet

this goal the American people want it industry supports it our future demands

it it is one of the principal reasons we are moving this year on national

telecommunications reform as I announced last month we will shortly introduce a

legislative package that aggressively confronts the most pressing

telecommunications issues and is based on five principles this administration

will encourage private investment provide and protect competition provide

open access to the network take action to avoid creating a society of

information haves and arts and encourage flexible and responsive governmental

action many of you have our white paper

today outlining the bill in detail if you did not get your copy it's available

on the internet right now let me run through the highlights with you briefly

and talk about how they grow out of our five principles we begin with two of our

basic principles the need for private investment and fair competition the

nation needs private investment to complete the construction of the

national information infrastructure and competition is the single most critical

means of encouraging that private investment I referred earlier to the use

of the Telegraph to bring the news here to California in 1960 of Abraham

Lincoln's election Congress had funded

Samuel Morse's first demonstration

project for The Telegraph in 1844 Morse

then suggested to the Congress that a national system be built by the

government but Congress said no and

insisted that private investment be used to build that information infrastructure

and that's what happened to the great and continuing competitive advantage of

our country to this day today we must

choose competition again and protect it against both suffocating regulation on

the one hand and unfettered monopolies on the other to understand why

competition is so important we need only recall what has happened since the

breakup of AT&T ten years ago this month as recently as 1987 AT&T was still

projecting that it would take until the year 2010 to convert 95% of its long

distance network to digital technology then it became pressed by the

competition and as a result AT&T made its network

virtually 100% digital by the end of 1991 meanwhile over the last decade the

price of Interstate long distance service for the average residential

customer declined over 50 percent now

it's time to take the next step we must open the local telephone exchanges those

wires and switches that link homes and offices to the local telephone companies the

pressure of competition on the information superhighway will be great

and it will drive continuing advancements in technology quality and

cost incidentally when I first coined

the phrase information superhighway 15 years ago I was not prepared for some of

the unusual images it would ultimately bring into our language for example one

businessman made this point I'm making here about competition and the pressure

of competition when he told me last week that his company was accelerating its

investments in new technology to avoid

ending up as roadkill on the information superhighway and just this week I

received a letter from a group of companies wanting to be allowed to

compete who complained that they were scared of being parked at the curb on

the information superhighway in any

event to take one example of what competition means cable companies

electric utilities and long distance companies must be free to offer two-way

communications and local telephone service to accomplish this goal our

legislative package will establish a federal standard that permits entry to

the local telephone markets moreover the FCC will be authorized to reduce

regulation for telecommunications carriers that lack market power we

expect open competition to bring lower prices and better services but let me be

clear we insist upon safeguards to ensure that new corporate freedoms will

not be translated - sudden and unjustified rate increases

for telephone customers the advancement

of competition will necessarily require

more opportunity as well for the regional Bell operating companies

current restrictions on their operations are themselves the legacy of the breakup

of AT&T and must now be re-examined the

administration endorses the basic principles of the Brooks Day bill which

proposes a framework for allowing long-distance and local telephone

companies to compete against each other

regulation and review of this framework should be transferred from the courts to

the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission this

process of change must be carefully calibrated we must make sure that the

regional bills will not be able to use their present monopoly positions as

unfair leverage into new lines of business that is why the administration

supports the approach of the Brooks tingled provision that requires the

approval of the Department of Justice and the FCC before the regional bells

may provide inter exchange services most notably in long distance in working with

Congress the administration will explore the creation of incentives for the

regional bells we want to increase the transparency of these facility based

local services that raise concerns associated with cross subsidization and

abuses of monopoly power our view of the

entry of small local telephone companies or local telephone companies generally

into cable television also balances the advantages of competition against the

possibility of competitive abuse we will continue therefore to bar the

acquisition of existing cable companies by telephone companies within their

local service areas we need this limitation to ensure that no single

giant entity controls access to homes and offices but to increase diversity

and benefit consumers we will permit telephone companies to provide video

programming over new open access systems even these measures however may not

eliminate all scarcity in the local loop of course the local loop meaning those

information byways that provide that last electronic connection with homes

and offices for some time in many places there are likely to be only one or two

broadband interactive wires probably owned by cable or telephone companies in

the long run the local loop may contain a wider set of competitors offering a

broad range of interactive services including wireless microwave and Direct

broadcast satellite but for now we cannot assume that competition in the

local loop will end all of the accrued market power of past regulatory

advantage and market domination we cannot permit the creation of

information bottlenecks that adversely affect information providers who use the

highways as a means of supplying their customers nor can we permit bottlenecks

for information consumers who desire programming that may not be available

through the wires that currently enter their homes or offices preserving the

free flow of information requires open access our third basic principle how can

you sell your ideas your information your programs if an intermediary who is

also your competitor has the means to unfairly block your access to customers

we cannot subject the free flow of content to artificial constraints at the

hands of either government regulators or would-be monopolist we must also guard

against unreasonable technical obstacles we know how to do this we've seen this

problem in our past for example when

railroad tracks were different sizes a passenger could not travel easily from a

town served by one railroad to a town served by another but the use of

standardized tracks permitted the creation of a national system of rail

transport accordingly our legislative package will contain provisions died to

ensure that each telephone carriers networks will be readily accessible to

other users we will create an affirmative obligation to interconnect

and to afford non-discriminatory access to network facilities services functions

and information with the customer keeping the same telephone number we

must also ensure the future of non-commercial broadcasting there must

be public access to the information superhighway

now these measures will preserve the future within the context of our present

regulatory structures but in our view that's not enough we must move toward a

regulatory approach that encourages investment promotes competition and

secures open access and one that's not

just a patchwork quilt of old approaches but is instead a new approach that

promotes fair competition in the future we begin with a simple idea similar

entities must be treated similarly but

let's be clear our quest for equal treatment of competing entities will not

blind us to the economic realities of the new information marketplace we're

apparent similarities may mask important

differences this idea is best expressed in the story about the man who went into

a restaurant and ordered the rabbit stew when it came he took a few bites and

call the manager over and said this doesn't taste like rabbits - it tastes

well it tastes like horse meat the manager was embarrassed and he admitted

that he had run out of rabbit and he

said well I I did put some horse meat in it the guy said well how much horse meat

did you put in and he said the manager said well it's equally divided customer

said well what do you mean equally divided he said well one rabbit and one horse

maybe the lesson is obvious a start-up

local telephone company isn't the same as a baby Bell what we favor is genuine

regulatory symmetry that means that regulation must be based on the services

that are offered and the ability to compete not on corporate identity

regulatory history or technological

process for example our legislative package will grant the Federal

Communications Commission the future authority under appropriate conditions

to impose non-discriminatory access requirements on cable companies as cable

and telephone service become harder and harder to distinguish this provision

will help to ensure that labels derived from past regulatory structures are not

translated into inadvertent and unfair competitive advantages as different

services are grouped within a single corporate structure we must ensure that

these new can combine the entities are

not caught in a crossfire of conflicting and duplicated regulatory burdens and

standards this administration will not let existing regulatory structures

impede or distort the evolution of the

communications industry in the information marketplace of the future we

will obtain our goals of investment competition and open access only if

regulation matches the marketplace that requires a flexible adaptable regulatory

regime that encourages the widespread provision of broadband interactive

digital services that's why the administration proposes the creation of

an alternative regulatory regime that is unified as well as symmetrical our new

regime would not be mandatory but it would be available to providers of

broadband interactive services such companies could elect to be regulated

under the current provisions of the Communications Act or under a new title

title seven that would harmonize that those provisions in order to provide a

single system of regulation these title

seven companies would be able to avoid the danger of conflicting or duplicate

of regulatory burdens but in return they would provide their services and access

to their facilities to others on a non-discriminatory basis the nation

would thus be assured that these companies would provide open access to

information providers and consumers and the benefits of competition including

lower prices and higher quality services to their customers this new method

itself illustrates one of our five principles that government must be

flexible our proposals for symmetrical

and ultimately unified regulation demonstrate how we will initiate

direction-- that furthers our substantive principles but that adapts

and disappears as the need for government intervention changes or ends

they demonstrate as well the new relationship of which I spoke earlier

the private and public sectors working

together to fulfill our common goals the principles that I have described thus

far will build an open and free

information marketplace they will lower prices stimulate demand and expand

access to the national information infrastructure they will in other words

help to attain our final basic principle avoiding a society of information haves

and have-nots there was a Washington Post headline

last month that read this way will the information superhighway detour the poor

well not if we have anything to do about it

our administration believes that it is

basic to require that all be served

after all governmental action to ensure universal service has been part of

American history since the days of Ben Franklin's post office we will have in

our legislative package H wrong mandate to ensure universal

service in the future and I want to explain why we have become an

information-rich society almost 100

percent of households have radio and television and about 94 percent have

telephone service three-quarters of all households have a VCR about 50 about 60

percent now have cable and roughly 30 percent of households have personal

computers as the information infrastructure expands and breadth and

depth so too will our understanding of the services that are deemed essential

this is not a matter of guaranteeing the right to play video games it is a matter

of guaranteeing access to essential services we cannot tolerate nor in the

long run can this nation afford a society in which some children become

fully educated and others do not

nor can we tolerate a society in which some adults have access to training and

lifetime education and others do not nor can we permit geographic location to

determine whether the information highway passes by your door I've spoken often about a vision of a

school child in my hometown of Carthage Tennessee being able to come home after

school and turn on her computer and plug into the Library of Congress Carthage is

a small town its population is only about 2,000 so let me emphasize the

point we must work to ensure that no geographic region of the United States

rural or urban is left without access to broadband interactive service so yes we

support opening the local telephone exchange to competition but we will not

permit the dismantling of our present national networks now all this won't be

easy it is critically important therefore that all carriers must be

obliged to contribute on an equitable and competitively neutral basis to the

preservation and advancement of universal service the responsibility to

design specific measures to achieve these aims will be delegated to the

Federal Communications Commission and of course to the states but where the FCC

is concerned their actions will be required in the legislation they have

the flexibility and it will be carefully defined but our basic goal is simple

there will be universal service that definition will evolve as technology and

the infrastructure advance and the FCC and we're confident the states as well

will get the job done reforming our communications laws is only one element

of the administration's NII agenda we'll be working hard to invest in critical

information infrastructure technologies will promote applications of the NII in

areas such as scientific research energy efficiency and advanced manufacturing

we'll work to deliver government services more efficiently we'll also

update our policies to make sure that privacy and copyright are protected in

the networked world will help law enforcement agencies thwart criminals

and terrorists who might use advanced telecommunications to commit crimes and

the administration is working with industry to develop the new technologies

needed for the information infrastructure initiative I've been

working as well with the First Lady's healthcare task force and former Surgeon

General C everett Koop and others to develop ways we can use networks to

improve the quality of health care beginning this month we are

concentrating first of all on the legislative package that I outlined

earlier we haven't invented all of the ideas that it contains representatives

Dingell and Brooks Markey and feels voucher and Oxley and senators Hollings

in Norway and Danforth have all focused on these issues in constructive ways in

many ways our legislative goals reflect or compliment their work we expect to

introduce our legislative package in short order and to work with Congress to

ensure speedy passage this year of a bill that will stand the test of time

our efforts are not of course confined only to government the people in this

room and the private sector in general symbolize the importance of private

enterprise our economic future will depend in a real sense on your ability

to grasp opportunity and turn it into concrete achievement as we move into the

new era we must never lose sight of our heritage of innovation and

entrepreneurship in some ways we appreciate that heritage more when we

see countries that don't have it last month in Russia I had a chance

again to see close up a country that tried to hold back the Information Age a

country that used to put armed guards in front of copying machines in a way I

guess we should be grateful they did that it helped to strengthen the desire

and courage of the Russian people to bring about the end of communism my hope

now is that Central and Eastern Europe and all the states of the former Soviet

Union can use in the free market to build democracy

and not thwart and my hope is that

America born in revolution can lead the

way in this new peaceful world revolution so let's work on it together

a few months ago Toni Morrison won the

Nobel Prize for Literature it was a proud and signal moment for this country

recognition of an african-american woman who has communicated inside and

narrative power to readers all over the world in her acceptance speech Toni

Morrison used one version of an old story a parable really to make an

interesting point it was about a blind

old woman renowned for her wisdom and a boy who decided to try to play a trick

on her he captured a small bird cupped

it in his hands and said to her old

woman is this bird alive or dead if she

said dead he planned to set it free and prove her wrong if she said alive he

planned to quickly crush its life away and prove her wrong she thought a moment

and said the answer is in your hands her

point is that the future of language is in our hands or put more broadly the

future of communications as we prepare

to enter the new millennium we are learning a new language it will be the

lingua franca of the new era it is made up of ones and zeros and bits and bytes

but as we master it as we bring the digital revolution into our homes and

schools we will be able to communicate ideas and information in fact entire

Toni Morrison novels with an ease never before thought possible and so we meet

today on common ground not to predict the future but to make

firm the arrangements for its arrival let us master and develop this new

language together the future really is in our hands thank

you [Applause] [Music]

[Applause]

[Applause]

thank you are we on here yes thank you very much that's I think giving us a lot

to think about and quite an aggressive agenda the vice president has agreed to

and will also be with us in addition saxophonist and tonight's star music

director Branford Marsalis will be here we begin with Jim Sheridan and Gerry

Conlon in 1974 Gerry Conlon was arrested and

convicted for the IRA bombing of a pub outside London his father and several

members of his family were also convicted as part of the bombing conspiracy none were members of the IRA

and authorities had virtually no evidence against them after 15 years in

prison Conlon was proved innocent Jim Sheridan the oscar-nominated director of

my left foot adapted Conlon's memoir in the name of the father for the screen it

stars Daniel day-lewis and Emma Thompson and we're pleased to have Jerry and Jim

with us to talk about this film that's gotten a lot of praise at Oscar time

welcome great to have you here thank you thank you good to have you tell me why

you say that this is more of a film about a father and a son than about

injustice well when the script came to me it came

from a friend of mine Terry George who was asked to originally write a

screenplay by Gabriel Byrne who's the executive producer on the firm and the

story that Terry had detailed after a

lot of conversation with Gerry was an in story of the Guildford four injustice

and I was interested in it and you know the people were free of jail you know

and I'd remember Gerry walking out of

the Old Bailey and given this famous speech that you know didn't actually

play an American television but he basically walked out and said you know I spent 15 years in jail for something I

didn't do I saw my father die in a British prison for something he didn't

do and had a huge reverberation now it

was only when I read the script that I thought hold on a second did they call it the Guildford four

and the McGuire 7 you know the father was part of the McGuire 7 and Jerry was

part of the Guilford forward 9 thought well how can you break a family up like

that into component parts so I thought my idea was to kind of put the family

back together again and the only way to do that was to put the father and son

into a situation you know obviously in the prison and I was looking for a story

about a good father and Guiseppe Conlon was that Jerry's father it was a saint a

saint I think so you know in lots of ways he was you know it's when you say

something about a saint that almost demean somebody no in the world you know

because it sounds like somebody who's dry and arid he wasn't like that he just wasn't a well man and but he followed

Jerry to England after Jerry got arrested you know in a kind of innocent

way to just get Jerry a lawyer and it's

a tragedy like his lawyer was supposed to turn up at his house that night in

Belfast and he didn't and Giuseppe got on the boat and you know he went to

Jerry's forest Anne's house who had already been arrested so they went there

and then he went to the next house and he went in meanwhile the police were you

know pather and Jerry and getting a confession of them and then they turn up

at the aunt's house and giuseppe's arrested and he's brought and it's like Orpheus in the underworld

his dad goes after him into hell to try and rescue him and in a way Guiseppe to

me represents all the victims not just the people of West Belfast who are

essentially Catholic and would be you know tarnished with the name of IRA or

wherever or you know the authorities would basically say you know IRA once

you're from that part of the city but to me he represents everybody who suffered

like the Catholics the Protestants even the soldiers who you know are young kids

from the north of England who are 20 widely you know it's like giuseppe dough

was the you know is so quintessentially

innocent yes before we I want to come back to you but didn't when you went

into prison did you think of your father this way no I did not the last thing I

imagined - my father would end up in prison with me but I'd seen my father shortly before

I was moved England my mother and father had come to Springfield Road police

station in Belfast where I was being held they put in some clothes that had

been requested by the RUC because the

baton I had received at our Hans had left my clothes saturated and blood would say they'd stripped off me so

therefore they had to get me some fresh clothes and when my mother and father arrived I actually seen them but talking

did that their sergeant and when I made an effort to try and contact him I was trilled into the toilet by the her by

two English policemen and an Irish policeman and I was given the further baton and the last thing I thought was

that I'm gonna bump into my father in prison so it was a tremendous shock to

suddenly realized her he was along with me I just couldn't believe it here was a

man who'd never harmed anyone in his life was totally anti violent along with

my mother there was no politics ever involved in our house the only pictures of her in

our house were religious pictures so the enormous shock of not only myself being

arrested and tortured and taken to England but then finding that not only

had my father been arrested but several members of my family been arrested as

well and tainted with the evidence which was obviously fabricated