ON THE OCCASION OF THE 25th ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF COMMUNICATIONS
IN TAMPERE, ON SEPTEMBER 6, 1994 One might think that global trends would come late to a country on the periphery of Europe, with small population and strange language. In fact, for better or worse, Finland has for decades been among the first European countries to feel global trends. Finland has kept its doors open for information and communication innovations, so much so that it sometimes has been called the Wild West of the new media. Our legislation on press freedom is based on tradition dating back to the mid of the 18th century when a Finnish clergyman Chydenius was among the first to push for those liberal values.
[...] I hope that the IIC still has its crystal ball, because it is now needed, more than ever, to chart the course of the information superhighways, which are being built, unlike roads or railways in their time, without a clear idea of where they might lead. We know how perilous it is to try to predict the fate of emerging technologies. Telephone, radio, television, videocassette players and home computers did not die because of lack of practical use, as some of the early sceptics predicted. On the other hand, they did not kill each other or older forms of communication, as some others thought would happen.
Trying to find out what the national and global information infrastructures of the future might look like, we would probably - like blind men touching different parts of an elephant - come to very different conclusions depending on who we talk to. Are we going to have 500 TV channels with an unlimited supply of movies at any time, thousands of global discussion clubs complete with video, audio and virtual reality, contact with all data bases and libraries of the world or the convenience of electronic shopping?
Probably all the above, and much more. And we can be sure that put together, these things will have a huge impact on all aspects of our lives.
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We can also question equality in an international context. Will new technologies be mainly used to broaden and pave the infamous "one-way street" of international information flows, or can they be used to redeem the situation? There are examples of both. Cooperation among third world broadcasters has led to encouraging results, creating intra-regional television news exchanges and at least a trickle of a counter-current, from South to North. To be competitive in the news marketplace, third world broadcasters need credibility, tools and training. If they themselves supply the first, their colleagues from North should be able to give them the rest.
Diplomacy and international relations will face new challenges, when television news gathering technologies and 24-hour news services replace traditional "diplomatic channels", as leaders get more and more of their up-to-the- minute information from news services and as live television images from current crises make their impact on public opinion. Leaders may even have to negotiate by live satellite, with hundreds of millions watching.
This applies, in my opinion, in the context of domestic politics, where media influence can be heavily felt, and is likely to grow with the help of new technologies. Access to data banks and advanced new gathering techniques are potent tools for skillful journalists. They can have an edge over politicians and bureaucrats who do not have facts and figures equally well organized at their fingertips. Again, the solution is not to get mad, but to get even.
At the same time, new technologies pose formidable challenges to journalists themselves, and to the media as a whole. Free from many earlier physical and technical limitations, seemingly easier news coverage encounters more difficult problems of criteria, relevance and selection. To quote a prominent American TV-journalist: "Focusing a camera on a live event is a miraculous technological achievement, but it is not journalism. Journalism lies on the evaluation of the event, it lies in analysis and editing. (...) To a certain degree, we all, in this day and age, are prisoners of the electronic tail wagging of the editorial dog."
In other words: what is in there for them - for Somalia and Rwanda, for other countries of the South still ironically called "developing", and for the 2,5 billion newcomers on this planet by 2025, most of whom will be born in the less affluent part of the world?
In his book "Preparing for the 21st century", Paul Kennedy reminds us that the pessimistic predictions by Malthus were proven wrong because industrial and agricultural revolutions brought the curve of economic growth again ahead of that of population increase. Now, as we are confronted with even more serious population explosion, Kennedy points out that - unlike in Europe 200 years ago - the "power of population" and the "power of technology" might not as easily match and cancel each other, because they are now based in different geographic areas, and because today`s fastest growing technologies might not be of much direct help to the poor South. He is afraid that instead of creating masses of discriminating consumers of design suitcases, the coming of a telecommunications revolution to developing countries could well cause billions of "have-nots" to feel ever more angry at the "haves".
Others are more optimistic. In the latest "State of the World" report of the Worldwatch Institute, computer technology and communications networks are seen to bring potentially enormous resources into the fight against the two interconnected problems of Third World development - poverty and environmental degradation. The report points out, however, that without careful attention to the public policies that govern their evolution and application, they are unlikely to be a force for reducing the environmental impacts of industrial civilization, ending poverty and strengthening participatory democracy. And further: it would be a mistake to use these technologies as simply a new, more effective way to dominate the world. "They can also help us learn to live with nature. Rather than our machines controlling us, we can begin to control them - and ourselves", the report concludes.
Let me elaborate. Statesmanship now calls for global concern on what might be called "cultural ecology". Our common future depends on not only the physical environment but on the cultural and informational environment as well. Indeed, mankind does not only live in a biosphere but also in a mediasphere.
I find an ecological approach to communications problems particularly useful as it helps us to get beyond the narrow national or special interest perspectives. As a matter of fact, the original idea of the United Nations 50 years ago already inspired to look at media issues in terms of universal human rights and in terms of global conditions for world peace. Today the challenge is even more vital and essentially the same for both communications and the UN as such: how to serve at the same time the increasing needs of a delicate civil society and of the ecologically fragile global community.