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TechnologyDaily Mobile
Global Net Expansion Is Key To Growth
by William New
Bruce Mehlman, the Bush administration's assistant Commerce Department secretary for technology policy, is pinning hopes for future economic growth in part on the global expansion of the Internet, he said in a recent interview.
"The growth of the Internet will be only about 10 percent in the United States and 90 percent internationally," he said. "Services will have to be sold to these tornado tech countries." The number of people online worldwide, he said, is expected to grow from some 400 million now to 1 billion by 2005.
Other business issues in Mehlman's work plan include workforce development and presidential trade-negotiating authority -- "the single issue brought to me by every tech company I've talked to," he said. Mehlman also anticipates playing a role in debates about e-commerce taxation, privacy, intellectual property and the export-licensing system.
Mehlman's office is benchmarking U.S. technology strategies against those elsewhere in the world, looking especially at other countries' workforce training strategies. The office also will look at critical emerging technologies, such as nanotechnology, and try to improve technology-led economic development within the United States. The fifth aspect of his overall plan is to review the government's technology-transfer program.
Mehlman said he will strive for a balance between policy analysis and working with industry. "If what we are doing isn't relevant to U.S. industry and policymakers," he said, "then we're not doing the right thing."
Mehlman came to the government from Cisco Systems and said he shares Cisco CEO John Chambers' "absolute conviction that technologies will transform society for the better" and reshape all aspects of human existence. "And I can say that since coming here, my conviction has rapidly grown," he said.
WTO Head Criticizes 'Dot-Com Types'
In a speech to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) at the World Trade Organization in Geneva last week, WTO Director-General Mike Moore appealed to those organizations to separate themselves from WTO protestors who use the Internet for their ends.
"It would strengthen the hand of those who seek change if NGOs distance themselves from masked stone-throwers who claim to want more transparency, anti-globalization dot-com types who trot out slogans that are trite, shallow and superficial," Moore said. "This will not do as a substitute for civilized discourse."
Meanwhile, the WTO working party on China's accession to the body plans to meet again next week. The group is nearing agreement on terms for letting the giant nation -- often criticized for its human rights, labor and environmental practices -- into the trade body, a WTO source said.
Mexico is the last member country with which China has not concluded a bilateral deal, and the Mexican trade minister is expected to head to China the week of July 21. Details also must be resolved with six Central American nations, the source said.
European Union Beats The Free-Trade Drum
European Commission President Romano Prodi on Monday called on Japan to open its markets further to goods and services from the European Union. "As you know, the union still has some concerns about the high cost of entering the Japanese market," Prodi said at an EU-Japan Business Dialogue roundtable in Brussels.
Prodi said it is particularly important for Japan and Europe to act on investment and trade given the slowing economy in the United States.
"After a 10-year expansion, the U.S. economy has now entered a period of slower growth," he said. "The whole world -- and Asia in particular -- is looking to the EU and Japan to take up the slack." Prodi said since he met President Bush last month at a bilateral summit in Sweden, his impression is "that [Bush's] administration will be less introspective than many people initially feared."
Meanwhile, European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, speaking Tuesday in Brazil, urged the nations of the southern cone of South America to further open their markets to international competition in technology and services. Lamy was speaking about the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur), the trade union between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (with associate members Chile and Bolivia). The European Union is engaged in trade negotiations with the Mercosur.
"Achieving international competitiveness in these sectors requires a policy of encouraging foreign investment, a trade policy favorable to the acquisition of capital goods and technology abroad, and the protection of intellectual property and opening up to international services," Lamy told a private-sector gathering in Sao Paolo. He further said strengthening WTO rules could help smaller countries attract investment by increasing predictability.
Belgium Plans EU E-Gov Conference
Having begun its six-month stint as the president of the European Union on July 1, Belgium was quick to announce Monday that it will organize a high-level conference on e-government. The conference will be held in Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union, on Nov. 29-30. It is part of a larger effort to push the deployment of e-government services in Europe, according to a European Commission statement.
African Technology Summit Nears
The African Computing and Telecommunications Summit is scheduled for July 30 to Aug. 2 in Pretoria, South Africa. The event is being billed as the "continent's top gathering of [information technology] users, suppliers, service providers, policymakers and innovators," and reportedly will attract high-level decision-makers.
Meanwhile, in a meeting with the leaders of Mali, Senegal and Ghana late last month, Bush spoke about Africa's infrastructure needs, including better connecting roads between capitals, as well as "the need for better communication infrastructure [and] the need for Internet connectivity in order to promote economic development," according to a senior administration official.
NSF Funds Database On Endangered Languages
A team of researchers funded by the National Science Foundation, led by Anthony Aristar of Wayne State University in Detroit, is developing an endangered-languages database and a central information server to enable users to access the material from remote locations. The $2 million grant will fund work that includes Eastern Michigan University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Arizona. The so-called Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data will create a public, Web-based digital archive, starting with 10 endangered languages.
EU Minister Outlines R&D Goals
Erkki Liikanen, the European commissioner for enterprise and information society, has outlined three priorities for research and development in information technologies next year. He said the European Union should invest in "longer-term, pre-competitive" R&D, including maintaining its leadership in mobile technologies beyond third-generation wireless devices and promotion of the development of ambient intelligence.
The multinational body also should focus on "inclusiveness," supporting areas where market failure has occurred, and on targeting information technologies as an aid for many other industrial and service sectors, and for research.
India To Open Telephone Market By 2002
A senior Indian official said on Monday that India will be open to international telephony by 2002, two years earlier than expected. Tapan Sikdar, a communications minister, said the government had decided in 1999 to open the telephone market by 2004 but that it now seeks "healthy competition" earlier, the Times of India reported.
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