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McCain Addresses CIO Communications Inc.
August 17, 1999
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Address of Senator John McCain to CIO Communications Inc.It's a pleasure to be with you tonight and to join in celebrating the success of those who are making information technology work for business. But tonight is more than a celebration of individual accomplishments. Tonight is also a testament to how the combination of advanced technology and free markets, not government-managed competition, is producing real economic benefits.
By any measure, our economy is benefitting mightily. The Commerce Department estimates that in the last three years the information technology sector, while accounting for only 8 percent of our Gross Domestic Product, contributed 35 percent of our nation's real economic growth while at the same time bringing the overall rate of inflation down, thereby enabling us to keep interest rates low.
Moreover, the last three years, as impressive as they have been, are merely prologue, if current projections are to be believed. An estimated $100 billion in e-commerce last year is forecast to explode to over $1 trillion within the next four years as over half of all US businesses sell their products over the Internet.
Against the backdrop of incredible statistics lie these, it should come as no surprise that as Chairman of the Commerce Committee I spend most of my time on telecommunications and information technology-related issues. And that's entirely as it should be. Because the simple truth is that Internet-based technology will continue to change, in a profound and permanent way, how we live in, and learn from, the world around us.
I would like to share some of my thoughts and the implications of this change.
The Internet has the potential to be a great equalizer, extending to all Americans a true equality of opportunity that the imperfect powers of government cannot. By striking down the many barriers that have historically separated us, Information Age technology can empower all Americans to pursue their dreams, and live their lives, in a way never before possible.
In my life I've learned many lessons. One of the biggest is that, when all is said and done, "freedom" is defined by the ability of each person to realize his or her fullest potential. In this sense, information technology is quickly becoming an indispensable element of individual freedom. The promise this holds out for all of us, and especially for young Americans, as we enter the next millennium can scarcely be imagined, and it must be allowed to become a reality.
To make sure that it does, there are certain things we must do, and others we must at all costs avoid doing. First of all, we must understand that information technology-driven changes are not a product; they are a process whose development no one can guess or try to predetermine. For government, this means resisting the urge to try and make technology-driven changes fit into timeworm molds of vested interests and traditional expectations. Nothing could be more inimical to the promise of information technology that the regulator's conviction that federal meddling is necessary to avoid marketplace chaos and consumer meltdown. Only if an immediate, severe, and otherwise unfixable problems crops up regarding online services should government try to step in with solutions.
Just as important, however, in my view is that all of us - government, industry, and individuals - recognize that we share a common responsibility. As Information Age technology becomes ever more integral to the achievement of individual freedom and empowerment, we have a responsibility to assure that all Americans have ready access to it. We must make sure that the economic disparities that are the worst legacy of the Industrial Age are eliminated by Information Age technology, rather than perpetuated because Information Age technology winds up being less available to some people than others.
The "Digital Divide" is something we should all be concerned about. The Commerce Department recently found that differences in race, income, and education are contributing to a substantial and growing disparity in access to information technology. This domestic "Digital Divide" also has a global counterpart. The United States, with 4.7 percent of the global population, accounts for more than 26 percent of the world's Internet users. South Asia, by contrast, with 23.5 percent of the world's population, has only .04 percent of the world's Internet users.
These disparities are not to be lightly dismissed as something the market will take care of - in time. Because, as the statistics of information technology's current contribution to our economic prosperity so graphically show, our economic, educational, and social welfare increasingly depends on - and follows - the deployment of advanced network facilities and the advanced information services they make possible. In terms of how advanced Internet facilities and services correlate with peoples' overall welfare, the words of the Bible never rang truer: those that have, shall get; those that have not, shall lose.
The must not lose, and there are many things that we can do to make sure they do not. I continue to support the goal of wiring all of our classrooms and libraries to the Internet, with a first priority for our neediest schools and students. The Internet is a powerful learning tool, and the children in our society who face the greatest limitations deserve first claim on the advanced learning technologies that can help them overcome them.
The current federal program complements the voluntary efforts of corporations and individuals throughout America, which had already connected more than half the schools and about a quarter of our classrooms to the Internet. These private efforts are continuing, while other industry representatives are providing technology centers, training programs, and similar online tools and resources. These companies and individuals are shining examples of how private initiatives, with government support, can make life better for all of us. We should not only continue these voluntary efforts at home; we should find a way to spread them abroad, where the need is also so great.
Our shared responsibility does not end with computers in the classroom. If we are to continue to lead the world in the next millennium, we must realize maximum results from the use of advanced classroom technology - and to do that, we must bring ourselves to adjust all aspects of our educational system to assure its most productive use. We must empower a better-paid and better-trained corps of highly professional teachers. We need to empower states - the great incubators of change in our federal system - to find their own solutions to their own unique problems. And above all, we need to get ride of federal mandates that stifle innovation. The federal government needs to support and facilitate, not prescribe and dictate.
For us as parents, the advent of new learning technologies must be complemented by new attitudes about what we have to teach our children outside school. In a learning environment where any and all information is available to kids by simply pointing and clicking, the 'Net experience can encourage expectations and behaviors that outstrip youngsters' emotional maturity. The more our children come to expect the instant response of the Internet, the less they may appreciate the need for patience and effort. The more the Internet becomes the means by which our kids confide their innermost thoughts and feelings, the more it become a haven for the disaffected, and a repository for expressions of alienation and anger.
Thus, with new learning technologies comes a greater need for adults to give children perspective rather that information, vision rather than facts, and context rather than content. And that, in turn presupposes the openness to rethinking what schools should be allowed to do and what parents must be expected to do.
We as a nation have demonstrated that we have the strength to confront changes like this honestly and deal with them intelligently. We have not achieved what we have by clinging to anachronisms, nor will we preserve what we have if we start doing so now.
Government faces another daunting challenge. Our country must not consign those who live and do business in rural or low-income areas to second-class citizenship in the Information Age by permitting advanced Internet "redlining." Unfortunately, thanks to the seemingly endless perversity of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, we are on course to achieve precisely that result.
That makes absolutely no sense at all. Why place such importance on federal policies allowing local telephone companies to provide advanced Internet-based services to every school and library, while simultaneously enforcing other federal policies handicapping local telephone companies from providing advanced Internet-based services to every home and business? Information technology companies are flourishing, in large part, thanks to the fact that they are largely free from federal regulation. Why would we not apply the same deregulatory approach toward our local telephone companies when they seek to provide the network capabilities that make advanced information technology possible?
These are but some of the challenges we face today in adjusting to Information Age technology. But its tremendous possibilities make the controversy involved in tackling these challenges more than worth the effort.
I have come to believe that we find the best in ourselves when we work to achieve something greater that our own self-interest. In meeting the challenges involved in bringing Information Age technology to all Americans, we leave future generations a legacy - the ability to experience the best of a world we cannot know. In doing that, we will find the best in ourselves as well.
I appreciate the opportunity of being with you tonight to acknowledge the achievements of today and anticipate the promise of tomorrow.
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