Internet Truth

At the end of his powerful, off the cuff remarks about climate change yesterday, Al Gore insisted that it was time to look people unblinkingly in the eye and tell the truth. It's hard to disagree with that statement, no matter what your politics. After a day and a half of CGI, it occurs to me that one of its underlying themes is that the digital age has created a very powerful set of instruments for fighting the new threats faced by the world. In other words, our newest threats have arisen at nearly the exact same time as our newest tools. It makes sense to use the one to fight the other.

Clearly, time is moving very quickly in the early 21st century. Carlos Slim Helu, the Mexican billionaire, announced that we had recently entered a "new civilization" of global interdependence and that the world needs to catch up to it. Many of CGI's most innovative commitments involved internet solutions to problems that can't be solved easily by traditional means. For example, it is now possible, in a way that it was not 10 or even 2 years ago, for a new form of microcredit developed in Bangladesh to be made instantly available to villagers in Peru. Or for digital-derived new wealth to be applied to huge problems (as the Gates Foundation has shown with its heroic efforts on health). Or for people far from New York to participate in CGI through the simple act of watching online (and then making commitments at MyCommitment.org). Or to simply read a blog entry and wonder whether it's right or not.

In an age of instant information, it will be much harder for corporations to pollute (as the smart ones understand), and for dictatorial governments to survive (as the bad ones fear). A case in point this week -- the ongoing demonstrations in Myanmar apparently have something to do with a YouTube video that a lot of people emailed around the country, showing the absurdly ostentatious wedding of the regime leader's daughter. Good on YouTube.

That is not to say that the Internet, like all tools, cannot be used to spread dishonesty and information. Of course it can. But it does seem that the simple act of looking up the facts has become far more easy than it used to be when one had to live near a library or university.

"Truth" is not merely honesty, it's information, and the knowledge of what to do with it. In remarks this morning (after a commitment to improve the way huge utilities function), Clinton urged people around the world to look into the laws that govern how utilities do business, so that they, with the utilities themselves, can help them all to find less wasteful ways of generating power (in every sense). In the new civilization coming into existence, faster than we know, it will be in everyone's interest to play as fairly as possible.

Ted Widmer is a former speechwriter and senior adviser to President Clinton, now the director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.