Statesmen overwhelmed by technology, Kissinger says

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

LAS VEGAS - Statesmen and politicians are no better off in their decision-making despite a wealth of information delivered through information technology and the internet.

That was Henry Kissinger's message to an audience of some of the world's biggest buyers and users of computer systems.

The former United States Secretary of State, who is now a consultant to corporations and the business community but gives free advice in the political arena, was speaking at CA World, a conference held in Las Vegas by New York-based software giant Computer Associates.

Kissinger was the hottest ticket at the conference, where 10,000 of CA's customers and business partners looked at new technology and went to workshops.

His speech was largely a plot summary of his career, American foreign policy and what is wrong with countries.

In politics, he said, a gap had opened up between information and the politicians' ability to use it.

The statesmen he knew had had progressively more information, but were progressively more insecure because they did not have any training that gave them a sense of the likely evolution of the political systems and of the social systems.

Kissinger said his concerns about technology had grown since he expressed his fear about the impact of accelerating technology in his 1973 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

The key, said Kissinger, was "what technology can do to make the political world more conscious of the trends" and prevent statesmen from being overwhelmed "by the technology they are living with".

Despite the seriousness of the issue, Kissinger could offer no answers.

He said the problem was not related to the selling of technology but, rather, was "a problem of the educational system and how you can challenge the younger people enough so that they use their brains at an early enough stage".

"I am of the generation that grew up on books and when you learn from books, you have to train your memory because you can't invoke the information all the time," he said.

"You therefore have to develop concepts that teach you the similarity of events. When you learn from computers you don't have that necessity."

Kissinger was scathing about the growing global trend in outsourcing - particularly of information technology, which has seen countries like India develop a large market in software development, call centres and accounts processing. He said he was not a fan of moving work, such as computer programming and support, overseas.

"The question really amounts to whether America can remain a great power or a dominant power if it primarily becomes a service economy," he said. "And I doubt that."

He said movement overseas required "some really careful thought of national policy of how we can create the incentives to prevent that from happening".

* Richard Pamatatau was in Las Vegas as Computer Associates' guest.