Telecommunications:
TECHNOLOGY POSES RISK OF ANARCHY, EXPERTS SAY
OSAKA, Japan -- The multimedia revolution
epitomized by the Internet is more likely to wreck
than improve your life, and could one day drag the
world into total anarchy, telecommunications
experts say.
"The telecommunications revolution is all
about control and power," Delbert Smith, a U.S.
lawyers, told more than 100 telecommunications
experts this week at the final session of an
International Institute of Communications
conference.
"Hell is a loss of privacy, and nothing brings
us closer to hell than telecommunications
technology. We will all end up consumers with no
privacy in a technological world with no
protections," he told London-based IIC's annual
conference in Osaka.
In a debate ending the three-day conference,
experts from 23 nations overturned a motion
insisting the telecommunications revolution would
usher in an era of "heaven on earth."
Instead, they decided that while it would
improve access to information, it would also
probably destroy jobs, isolate women, eliminate
time for "quiet contemplation," and possibly end
in complete anarchy.
John Eger, communications and public policy
professor at San Diego State University, said
there's nothing inherently wrong with new
technology, but mankind had misused it for
centuries and would probably continue to do so.
Eger said the divide between rich and poor and
troubles in Ireland, Canada, Nigeria and other
religious, linguistic and tribal conflicts, were
to some extent started and fuelled by the spread
of telecommunications, which lends itself easily
to sensationalism and propaganda.
"Is this what technology gave birth to? Is
this the potential reversal we will witness in the
wake of the communications revolution?" he said.
"This is the hell that we must do something
about if we are to succeed and survive."
-- Reuter
Sid Shniad
