Speech by the President of the Republic of Finland




 

SPEECH BY PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC MARTTI AHTISAARI AT A SEMINAR MARKING THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF Institut Français des Relations Internationales
IN PARIS ON 4.11.1999


A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE FUTURE OF THE INFORMATION SOCIETY IN A GLOBALISING WORLD



France and Paris are an excellent setting in which to ponder the nature of the information society.

We know France as a country that is a pioneer in questions of the information society. A fact that was understood here years before it was recognised elsewhere is that the most important thing in building an information society is to get the entire nation and all citizens involved in the process. Our host country is also a cultural great power with not only a splendid history, but also a strong grasp on the future. France is a central actor in international economic and intellectual interaction.

I am pleased that France and Finland have especially close cooperation in questions of the information society.

 

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Here in a country whose own revolutionary ideals ushered in a new epoch in the history of our continent we can say in all good conscience that we are again living in an era of revolution.

Technocrats have never triggered a revolution. The revolutionaries have been the people with a clear view of the direction in which they wanted society to develop. They have been able to give verbal expression to the values in which they believed. "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" was the slogan that two centuries ago set in motion a change that led to our modern Europe. The same three words still reflect the ideals in which we Europeans believe. Can we, however, still say in all good conscience that these or some other values are guiding our decision-making in questions relating to the information society? Indeed, can we say at all what values we want a European information society to be based upon?

What we are dealing with is a challenge facing the whole of Europe. The citizens of our countries have every right to ask what objectives we are striving for in European cooperation.

Europe should now rally its forces and move up to the vanguard of development of the information society, as a continent which reconciles the requirements of technology, the economy and balanced social development with the rights of the individual. The goal must be that our entire society – young and old, the successful and the less-fortunate, individuals and communities – are allowed to have a stake in development. A social breakthrough like that will give us an opportunity to demonstrate what our values are.

Next I want to deal with the transition towards the information society from the particular aspects of the economy, culture and democracy.

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The transition towards the information society is strongly altering the structures of the economy. It is spawning an enormous services market. It is also forcing us to make many difficult political decisions. Perhaps I can take the example of Finland in the present decade to describe the situation on a more general level. My reason for taking my own country as a case study is that we have long experience of the development of an information society. Therefore, as pioneers, we were among the first to face many new challenges.

Increasing competition in the telecommunications sector in Finland was a conscious decision based on an initiative of our own. Deregulation of the market began already in the 1980s and had advanced so far by the beginning of the following decade that access was completely free. Unimpeded access to the market and the ensuing competition facilitated growth in the range of services on offer and led to the breakthrough of new services such as the Internet. This, in turn, has been reflected in other sectors of the economy. Growth and evolution towards the information society would not have been possible had constraints on competition remained in place.

However, it would be something of an embellishment of the facts if we were to attribute the transformation of our economy solely to the wisdom of our political decision-makers or claim that it had been a planned process. Economic historians often emphasise the importance of creative destruction. We in Finland experienced our fair share of that, too.

In the beginning of the present decade, a confluence of several factors drove our economy into a deeper recession than had been experienced in any Western country since the second world war. Public finances plunged into crisis and unemployment soared within a short period from a couple of per cent to many times that. Nearly every Finn gained personal experience of economic distress.

The established structures of our economy were immediately put to the test. Our patterns of thinking likewise came in for re-examination. We knew there was no going back to the earlier world. We had to set about developing something new.

Therefore we channelled our energy into developing new technology. Our research and development inputs had been increasing for a long time anyway, and we had plenty of well-trained personnel to call on.

Sacrifices began paying off. Our competitiveness improved and our companies began doing better and better in international competition. New technology and especially telecommunications equipment became a new supporting pillar of our economy, which went into an upswing that has remained strong to this day. Our unemployment has now fallen below the EU average. We were also able to join the Euro Zone and enter a period of low inflation.

What could our example teach others? The fact that what is especially involved is a change of mind-set. The fact that we managed to cope with the crisis was due in large measure to our being able to shake off old attitudes when we had to and turn our gaze towards the future.

There may also be other lessons to be learned from our experience. Structural change has, namely, prompted new questions. Although development is bringing our nation as a whole economic success, prosperity is unevenly divided. Up to now, the distribution of incomes in Finland has been one of the most equitable in Europe. The Finns are now growing richer on average, but that does not guarantee that our society is just and fair.

It is clear that enterprise and special ability must be rewarded. It is equally clear that a society divided into winners and losers can not be just and equitable. Therefore we cannot invest all of our resources in elites. We must see to it that all citizens are on an equal footing when it comes to availing themselves of the potential of the information society. This is a central goal.

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A pattern of thinking that has ingrained itself on our minds in recent decades is that development leads towards bigger units, greater concentration and disappearance of diversity. It has often been feared that this applies both to the economy and culture.

It would appear that the development of the information society is shattering this idea. Our transition has been, in fact, from large organisations towards flexible networks. The value of diversity as a source of creativity and flexibility is being understood better all the time. Increasingly often, smallness is a sign of strength rather than of weakness; more often than not, David is more agile than Goliath. Today it is possible for a computer operating system developed by a Finnish student to challenge the world’s biggest software house to a contest on equal terms.

Have we understood what kinds of opportunities are now opening up? It might now be possible to level out, in a way that has never been done before, developmental disparities both between and within countries. What is involved is a capacity for innovation, an ability to apply expertise in a new way. That is a genuinely inexhaustible natural resource.

We must start developing completely new kinds of solutions and also a new kind of regional policy. With the aid of telecommuting, distance learning, telemedicine and other applications of telecommunications, we can make it possible to use the skills and innovation resources of remote and sparself-populated areas. If we are able to declare in festive speeches that new technology is reducing the relevance of distance, why should we not believe in it also in our practical lives?

The same thinking is applicable globally. It would now be possible to offer many a less-developed country an opportunity to acquire expertise and play its part in development through a substantially smaller investment than would earlier have been necessary. I make so bold as to believe that steering a course towards an information society could be one way of getting places like Africa onto a path of strong development.

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The economy is not, of course, the only thing that progress towards the information society is affecting. It is probably influencing culture even more. People’s lifestyles and the ways in which they contact each other are changing. Borders between nations are likewise blurring as distance loses significance.

Change is affecting also small cultural regions. We are following with special interest the way in which languages like Finnish are being influenced. A frequently-expressed fear is that major languages will gain an overwhelming position and gradually smother smaller ones.

That has not happened. Of course we need skill in foreign languages to be able to go about our business in the world. At the same time, however, I can tell you that the Finnish language is more vital today than it has probably ever been. Finnish is one of the official languages of the European Union. Moreover, modern technology is making it possible for more and more Finns to avail themselves of services in their mother tongue while abroad. Naturally, the same goes for speakers of other languages. This opportunity is especially important in a continent like Europe, where there is such an enormous wealth of linguistic diversity.

Already now many small, geographically dispersed groups are using advanced technology to keep in touch. Herein lie the seeds of great changes. From now on, people’s identity will not be as rooted in their geographical environment as it used to be. Their hobbies and interests, views on society or religious beliefs will assume a more central position. Thus societies are becoming more pluralistic. In the information society, minorities can be a de facto majority.

This ability of minorities to maintain contact – even globally – will lead to many positive things. It supports linguistic and cultural diversity and it prevents the majority from stifling the opinions of minorities. On the other hand, it can also strengthen negative forces whose attitude to some group or another is hostile. However, censorship or surveillance is not the way to defeat these forces. The strongest antidote to them is a society that is healthy in its foundations, and in which tolerance is a central value.

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Big social issues always concern the individual. If we ask how democracy can develop in the information society, we must also ask what kinds of instruments it can offer individual citizens.

Many non-governmental organisations have already seized the new opportunities. They keep in touch with each other and try to influence public opinion through information networks. I think we have had only a foretaste of how this development can strengthen civil society.

The conventional decision-making system must likewise boldly set about restructuring itself. Citizens must be provided with advance information about preparatory handling of decisions and given an opportunity to participate in discussions and decision-making. The experience that local-government experiments have yielded indicate that prejudices towards new methods of decision-making are often unfounded.

The information society is an important part of our lives, but our operational models, administrative machinery and management thinking are still based on the hierarchic patterns of bygone days. We must learn to operate in a new environment, one in which commands and restrictions have given way for cooperation and where open networks have replaced closed structures. It is with regret that I must note that the European administrative machinery still has a long way to go in this thinking.

What can we learn from the things that I have been talking about?

An evolving information society contains great opportunities. We have the possibility to build it in a way that enables the ideals of liberty, common responsibility and equality to come to fruition. Thus we are dealing with more than just technology policy. It is a matter of developing the whole of society on a basis of shared values.

We must not be in a state of perplexity as we await the future; instead, we can now set about shaping it the way we want.

First of all we must resolutely struggle against inequality. Experiments in Finland have shown that the development of remote and sparsely-populated areas can be stimulated by increasing their inhabitants’ ability to exploit the potential of the information society. It is important to strengthen regional equality not only in a European context, but also globally.

Secondly, we must also get the older segment of the population involved in the information society. A period of rapid change calls on others besides the young to embrace new things. We have gained good experience from, for example, projects in which the roles of different age groups have been reversed and children have started teaching their parents IT skills in special study circles. This has not only spread skills, but also broken down intergenerational barriers.

Thirdly, we must continue to work for tolerance. New technology is making it easier to spread all kind of opinions, both positive and hostile. Tolerance and protecting the weak against the stronger will be more important in the future. European societies can be healthy and strong only if they are pluralistic and tolerant.

I am convinced that Europe is able to cope with these challenges. However, doing so will call for a lot of work and revised thinking.