Closing Connections

Abstract

Let me start, as I said in the beginning, by putting things in context. The fact that two-thirds of the world has never made a phone call, as Reed Hundt noted, puts this esoteric, high-tech interchange into some kind of perspective. There are 5.5 billion people on the planet, but when did you last hear from the other 4.9? Like the kid retorts when his mother tells him to eat his cornflakes because millions are starving around the world: “Name one.” With regard to the rest of the world, perhaps the most important thing to be said about this conference on the future is that everybody here was in the future before we started the meeting. It’s as though we were living in 2007, roughly the year the average person in the developed countries will be living with the technology we at this conference already have; for most of the old Eastern Bloc, 2015; and for most of the third world, we’re already in 2047.