[CROWD APPLAUDING]
Good afternoon, everyone.
Welcome to the Karl
Taylor Compton Lecture.
I want to do a couple of
things before our speaker takes
the podium.
I want to give a
little bit of context
for the lecture and
then, of course,
I want to provide some
kind of introduction
to today's speaker.
The Compton Lectures were
established more than 50 years
ago in 1957.
And they were
established to honor
one of MIT's presidents,
Carl Taylor Compton, who had
died just three years before.
Carl Taylor Compton guided
MIT for almost a quarter
of a century, from 1930
until his death in 1954.
His first role was
president from 1930 to 1948.
He then served as Chairman
of the Corporation, our board
of trustees, from 1948 to 1954.
As you all know,
that quarter century
was a tumultuous time
in the United States.
It included the
Great Depression,
it included a
World War, and then
it included an economic and
intellectual transformation
of the country of which we are
the great beneficiaries today.
Compton was a transformative
figure in MIT'S history.
He was, I like to
think of him, as
a constructive revolutionary.
He transformed MIT
and frankly, he
transformed engineering
and engineering education
and practice everywhere,
with his passion
for uniting the physical
sciences with engineering.
I'd like to believe that
he would have really loved
what's going on today
between the life
sciences and engineering.
And in fact, he
actually used the term
Biological Engineering,
though very briefly,
for our Department of Biology.
But that really is a
story for another day.
The Compton Lectures honor
his wide-ranging intelligence
and curiosity.
And they were
begun, let me quote
from the establishing
documents, "to bring to MIT
some of the great minds
on the world scene."
Since 1957, the lecture series
has brought to campus voices
in science, technology,
public affairs, education,
and the arts.
From the physicist, Niels Bohr,
who gave the first Compton
Lecture, to our
Senator, Edward Kennedy,
who spoke just last year.
Our speaker this
afternoon will touch
on the transformative
power of technology.
It would be hard to choose a
subject that would have pleased
President Compton more.
In 1937, Compton
gave a speech that
was entitled, "The Electron,
Its Intellectual and Social
Significance."
Now, remember, that
was 70 years ago.
It two years after the
invention of the FM Radio,
and for years before the first
commercial television station
was commissioned in New York.
Yet, Compton saw, in vivid ways,
the potential, as he put it.
"No instance in the
history of science
is so dramatic, as the
discovery of the electron, which
within one generation
has transformed
a stagnant science of
physics, a descriptive
science of chemistry, and
a conventionalized science
of astronomy, into dynamically
developing sciences
fraught with
intellectual adventure,
interrelating interpretations,
and practical values."
Today, 70 years
later, the electron
and its countless progeny, have
so colonized our consciousness
that it's impossible to
escape their presence.
So we are especially
grateful for the perspective
of our speaker today,
who will not remind us
that life is not virtual.
Tom Brokaw, our speaker,
has such iconic status
in American life, that one can
hardly image introducing him
in any serious way.
His wide-ranging
accomplishments have
moved in intriguing directions
and to extraordinary depths.
As the longtime Managing Editor
and Anchor of the NBC Nightly
News, he was truly an
anchor for the nation.
A wise, unwavering,
trusted voice
that helped us make sense of
the world, from NATO airstrikes
in the former Yugoslavia
to the vagaries
of our presidential politics,
to the incomprehensible
facts of September 11th.
Yet while sounding the
voice of constancy at home,
he's also been an
agile and world
hopping war correspondent.
Peripatetic, seen
everywhere around the world.
He was the first to conduct
a one-on-one interview
with Mikhail Gorbachev and
later with Vladimir Putin.
He reported from the scene of
the fall of the Berlin Wall,
from the Oklahoma City
Bombing, and from the tragedy
of TWA Flight 800.
He may be the only person to
have earned a place in both the
National Academy of Sciences
and the Television Hall of Fame.
He is the forward-looking
journalist,
who pushed America
to examine questions
like Affirmative Action.
He is the Bestselling Author who
also helped us to stop and look
backward, to appreciate what
we owe the great generation.
And he is a deeply
committed environmentalist.
He continues to be the most
popular news personality
in the United States.
And he's also one of the most
thoughtful voices in America
today.
Please join me in welcoming
to MIT, Tom Brokaw.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
Thank you.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
Thank you.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
Thank you very--
thank you, very much.
Let me just say at the outset.
Truth in advertising, these
are the only circumstances
in which I would be admitted to
MIT, I can assure you of that.
When I graduated
from the University
of South Dakota with a
degree in Political Science
after a rather rocky
beginning, there
was a legendary political
science chairman there
by the name of Bill
Farber, who was
a kind of academic godfather
to generations, mostly
of young men in those days.
He looked after us in
large ways and small
and turned out Rhode Scholars
and Governors and Senators.
And when I left the
institution, I'm
not sure what he thought
my future was going to be,
but I got some
insight into it when
I arrived at a certain
station in life
and began to be awarded
honorary degrees.
And when Washington
University in St. Louis
called Bill to get
some background,
as they were preparing my
proclamation, he said, "Well,
quite honestly, we
thought the first degree
we gave him was honorary."
[CROWD LAUGHING]
Let me say at the
outset, what a privilege
it is to be here on this campus.
I was worried that I
may have to also make
an appearance across town at
that lesser known institution,
where at Harvard I have
to speak more slowly
and use shorter words when
I address the student body.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
I was actually, as a high school
student, recruited by Harvard
as part of their effort to
have geographic distribution,
I'm sure.
And after the tedious
application process,
Harvard, in its wisdom,
decided that I was not
worthy of the financial
aid that would be required
to get me through four years.
And so as I have often
reminded audiences
at Harvard, fair Harvard, I
have been forced all these years
to wander in that wilderness,
reserved for those who do not
have a Harvard
degree, wondering what
may have happened
to me if only I
could have gotten into
Harvard and earned a degree.
And I pointed out
to those audiences,
well that along the way, I have
encountered Harvard dropouts.
And we have commiserated,
Bill Gates and I,
what might have happened to
him if only he had stayed there
for a while.
I'd like to take some
time today and have
more of a conversation
with you, I
suppose than a formal lecture.
I am in awe of this institution
and the young people
who are admitted
here and study here.
And this extraordinary
faculty/administration
that you have, and
the work that you
are doing, not just
for the institution
or for the students, but
on behalf of the nation.
And I know that you,
especially at MIT,
are in the intersection
of this exciting new era
that we're all sharing in the
era of information technology,
the power of the
personal computer,
and the reach of the internet.
But let me, if I can, offer
some observations that
may help us all keep it
in, I hope, some context.
Let me be clear about
something at the outset,
I'm not here to write new
code, to design new apps,
to build a network, or
even wire this room.
While I am a prolific
user of IT and have
been since its inception,
the inner workings
remain an opaque mystery to me.
I approach it as I do my
primary medium, television.
When people ask how the picture
gets from the studio where
I work to their home, I
answer, "It's a miracle,"
and I leave it at that.
However, as a journalist and
as a person of a certain age,
I was just smart enough
and astute enough
to recognize that the
introduction first
of a personal computer, and
then the many faceted software
programs that
drive it, and then,
of course, the explosive
expansion of our reach
through the internet,
would fundamentally
alter my time and the world.
And so it has.
We are living in the midst
of the most transformational
technology that I
can possibly imagine.
Moreover, what is
particularly intriguing to me,
is that we are at the
dawn of this new age,
on the cusp of this
era of technology.
We're in the seminal
stages of what
I call, "The second big bang".
When a new universe
is being formed,
just as our physical
universe was
formed by the first big bang.
We are still, at this moment,
trying to determine which
planets will support
life and which won't.
We've already seen some
that have drifted too
close to the sun and burned up.
Others have merged, or hope
to become more than the sum
of their considerable,
individual parts.
Some have grown from a small,
almost unnoticeable presence,
to a powerful force in this
new life form that we all use.
And through it
all, the expansions
and the use of this
technology have
been advanced not by a small
collection of monkish wonks,
working in a secret
lab, but instead
by a vast and ever
larger population
of inventive teenagers.
Laboratory scientists,
physicians, academicians,
business executives, merchants,
farmers, public servants,
military analysts,
and the Pentagon
and their grunts in the
field, environmentalists
and geologists, journalists
and librarians, NGOs
and multinational
corporations, people of faith,
and people who do not
believe, every day
with the power at
their fingertips
and in the bowels
of their servers,
they know that their
world is limited only
by their imagination.
Historians will look
back on this time
as a truly transformational
age in the long history
of the world.
A time when our planet got much
smaller, and the possibilities,
much larger.
However, the test of our
individual and collective place
in this time is
not yet complete,
for life is not a
virtual experience.
If we develop capacity
and leave out compassion,
what is the reward?
What are the consequences,
if speed overruns reason?
When I talk to young
people these days,
I am inclined to remind them
that global poverty will not
be eliminated by hitting
the delete button.
That climate change will not be
stopped by hitting backspace.
It will do us little
good to wire the world
if we short-circuit our souls.
When I am asked, as
I was just today,
who are the most
memorable people that I've
met in my more than 45 years
in journalism, most of them
expect me to say
all the presidents
since John F Kennedy, Dr. Martin
Luther King, Nelson Mandela,
Mikhail Gorbachev, Fidel Castro,
Golda Meir, Jonas Salk, Steve
Jobs, Fellini, Pavarotti, John
Wayne, Marlon Brando, Bruce
Springsteen, Mia
Hamm, and because all
politics is local, Ted
Williams and Tom Brady.
These are some of
the big names that I
have had the privilege of
encountering in my wanderings
around the world.
But in fact, the
most memorable people
that I have encountered, as a
citizen and as a journalist,
are those whose
names I never knew.
Brave, young, black and
white civil rights workers,
in my youth, who
went to the south,
determined to end
the moral hypocrisy
that all people in this
country are created equal,
by putting their
bodies and their hearts
and their minds in front of
racist, redneck law enforcement
officers who beat them and hosed
them and turned dogs upon them.
But they could not be
deterred because they
were led by the great courageous
leader, and the advocate
of nonviolence,
Dr. Martin Luther
King, who was
cruelly assassinated
40 years ago this week.
I remember as well, a
young man from Oklahoma,
a member of Doctors
Without Borders,
at the height of the
anarchy in Somalia.
Middle of the night, we
were under mortar fire,
he was in a surgical tent,
operating on a Somali child,
badly wounded by fragments.
And I said to him, "Aren't
you afraid of being here?"
And he said, "Of course
I am, Mr. Brokaw."
And I said, "Then
why are you here?"
And he said, "Well, God
gave me these abilities.
I got a mountain of medical
school debt back home.
But I thought I should
use these talents
as best I can during
these years to save
poor children like
this little girl who
is on my operating table now."
A young Chinese
student who stopped me
in the back alleys of Beijing
at the time of Tienanmen Square
and eloquently
described the hopes
of his generation
for human rights
and fundamental political
rights in that country.
A New York Fire captain
that I encountered
in the bowels of the World
Trade Center at Ground Zero,
just eight days after those
Twin Towers were brought down.
His face was etched with
fatigue and caked with clay.
He was looking for the man
who had worked for him, who
had given their lives that day.
And he'd been working ever since
the attack 18, 19 hours a day.
He stood in front of
me for a long time
without saying anything,
and finally, he
said, "I read your book,
The Greatest Generation."
I said, "Thank you, very much."
He said, "I didn't
really understand
my father or his generation
until I read that book.
And I'm eternally grateful
to you for doing that."
I said, "Thank you, very much."
And he said, "I learned
so much about my dad,
and I learned
something about you."
And I looked at him
and I said, "You
used to think I was
a communist, right?"
And he looked at me unblinkingly
and said, "No, just a liberal
scum."
And turned and walked away.
These are young and old,
men and women, representing
a wide range of
ethnicity and interest,
unhinged from the
comfort of their homes.
Willing to put their
boots on the ground
and put their hands on the
dirt and spend their nights
in scary places, to make
this precious planet
a better place for all of us.
Now, when I encounter those
unrecognized and modest heroes
around the world, as I
did last year in Rwanda,
and the year before that in the
earthquake-ravaged mountains
of Northern Pakistan, I do
find that they have new tools
to go with their quiet courage
and their personal commitment.
In Rwanda, where a program
of national reconciliation
is underway following the
devastating genocide of 1994
when neighbor set upon
neighbor and cruelly
hacked to death
children and old friends
over a three week
period, in which
the world simply stood by.
Radio in Rwanda remains the
primary means of communication
for the population.
But for the people who are
trying to put this country back
together again,
computers and databases
give them a common
roadmap to the next stage
in that mountainous country
of primitive communication
and transportation
infrastructure.
NGO workers in Africa can
now visit remote villages
and instantly transmit
their findings
to a central collection
center, so rapid response teams
can be dispatched to deal
with a health crisis at hand.
In Pakistan, I spent the
night in a cargo container
with a group of
American aid workers.
They had been spending six
months hiking to distant
and devastated mountain
villages to determine
health, sanitation,
housing, and other needs.
They were boots on the ground,
in the most fundamental sense
of that phrase.
But their fingers, when they
got to the end of the day,
were on a keyboard to speed the
process of rebuilding in a much
more efficient fashion.
And by the way, to make
a lasting impression
on those poor souls who believe
that the world has forgotten
them, especially
the Western World.
It is one of the intersections,
after all, of all that
we hold dear here in
the Western world.
And Muslim fundamentalism.
These are new tools that
require a human face, as we
attempt to diminish and
lower the temperature
of Islamic rage.
A physician that I know in New
York, a specialist in new forms
of restoring hearing
to the profoundly deaf,
will soon program
the cochlear implant
of a child in East Africa
from a computer at New York
University.
A farmer friend of mine
in the Great Plains
now calibrates his
annual planting program
by tracking world
market conditions
on a daily basis
on his computer,
and by eliminating so
much of the guesswork
that he is now one
of the many helping
revive the agricultural
economy in that central part
of the United States.
Those people that
I have encountered
are not found on page six of
the tabloids or on the evening
entertainment shows.
However, they are the defining
generation of our time,
because they have
learned how to twin
the uses of this technology with
their own personal commitment.
They are, in many ways, the
same as their grandparents,
and in some cases
their parents, who
came of age in this country
in the Great Depression,
and then went off to save
the world in World War II.
They were the defining
generation of their time.
As their offspring,
the baby boomers
became the vanguard of
liberators of people of color
and women in our society,
and the inventors
of this astonishing
new technology.
In their use of it, and in
their vision for the future,
they also recognize
a fundamental truth.
It takes a guiding hand,
an imaginative approach,
and most of all a good heart.
Think of another time, when
the frontier of technology
was advancing at warp speed.
The turn of the 20th century,
when manned flight was now
a possibility.
When the first vehicles began
to replace horse-drawn buggies.
When the telephone changed
communication in America.
When medicine began to do more
good than harm to the patients.
My god, the possibilities
of that era,
when everyone was proclaiming
the 20th Century the American
Century.
The age of technology
and industrial power
and political goodness,
as represented
by the American way of life.
My god, the possibilities
and the horrors
of that century, which
gave us the two greatest
wars in the history of mankind.
The introduction
of the nuclear age.
Genocide on an unspeakable
scale in the heart
of Western civilization,
but also in Africa and Asia.
The rise of communism in the
cruelest and most oppressive
form.
New plagues and old feuds
along ancient sectarian lines.
Now we do live on a smaller
planet, with many more people.
We have been witness to the
limits of military power
and we worry about the widening
and potentially volatile gap
between the haves
and the have-nots.
We see temperatures going
up, ice caps and rain forests
disappearing, and
energy becoming
more scarce and more expensive.
We have the technology to deal
with all these life altering
developments, but we can
never forget that we also
need the will, and the people
who will use that greater
technology for the common good.
Moreover, these challenges
require an attention span
and a patience longer than the
conventional post on YouTube.
A commitment that goes beyond
a quick date on match.com.
It is not just the content
of the post and the blogs
that require our
attention, it is also
the source and the
integrity of that which
shows up on the small screen.
As a journalist, with roots
deep in traditional media,
but with a realistic
understanding
of the seismic
changes now underway
and the manner in which
we get our daily news,
how it's gathered,
distributed and consumed,
I am an outrider for the masses
who rely on mass communication.
My message is this, beware
of the unidentified matter
that emerges from the outer
reaches of the blogosphere.
It may have the weight and
shape of reliable and useful
information.
But how do we know?
As an extension of the second
big bang that I described
a few moments ago,
the air these days
is filled with small meteorites,
cascading through the skies
and onto the air and screens
of personal computer users
everywhere.
By midday, much of the here
to for, unheard of matter,
takes on the characteristics
of time-tested material.
But it could be nothing
more than the product
of a rich imagination.
It could be simply
mischievous, or more ominously,
it could be malevolent.
The means of how we receive
the oxygen of a free people,
credible information
about their government,
their culture, and
their commerce,
it is undergoing a
historic transformation.
What has not changed is
the requirement of society,
anywhere in this world, to be
best served by information that
is gathered and
assembled by trained
professionals with a keen
eye and a skeptical mind,
who go out the door and into the
streets, and into the records,
and into war zones, and
into impoverished areas,
to report first-hand
what they are witnessing.
Personally, I, of course
welcome the small d democratic
characteristics of the
internet and the blogosphere.
It has vastly expanded
the range of opinion,
insight, analysis, available
to even the most casual user.
When I was a young
man growing up
in a small town
in South Dakota, I
would get up in the morning with
my mother, who was an avid news
watcher, and before she went
to work and I went to school,
we would watch the Today Show.
And I would come home
at night and there
would be a family appointment
around Huntley-Brinkley.
Walter Cronkite in
some households,
but we were a Huntley-Brinkley,
Household, on NBC.
And we would get a not very
good daily newspaper delivered
at the end of the day.
Now, if I were a young man
in that same community,
and I still have friends there.
They get up in the morning
and they log on to the BBC
and they have a wide
range of cable offerings
on their television set.
They exchange messages
with their friends,
not just in their community,
but around the world.
And during their
school hours, they
can stay abreast of what
is going on by going
onto their computer as well.
And when they get
home at night, they
can read the New York
Times if they so choose,
or the London
newspapers or they can
read specialty publications.
They can go onto the
MIT website and find out
what you're doing with
the Energy Initiative
or with cancer research
in this great institution.
Times have changed.
The possibilities are
limitless for good,
but they are equally
great, we must always
remember, for distortion,
fraud, and anarchy.
At the end of the day in this
breathtakingly exciting time
in which we're
living, most of all,
what is required
of those of us who
live in this privileged
society, is a recognition
that we have a moral and
intellectual commitment
to leave this precious
planet a better place
than we found it, by putting our
boots on the ground, our hands
in the dirt, and spending
our nights in scary places,
on behalf of our fellow citizens
around the world, who are not
as privileged as we are.
We can all have
cell phones, PDAs.
We can all be wired,
or go wireless.
But these tools, after
all, should always
be an extension of our
hearts, as well as our minds.
And they should be an
extension of a legacy
that we want to leave.
We serve our time and our
fellow citizens around the world
best by loving our
mother, Mother Earth.
Thank you all, very much.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
Thank you.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
Thank you.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
Thank you.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
Now, I never again will
have the opportunity
to stand in the well
of an MIT space,
looking out on these young
people whose SAT scores were
probably twice, and maybe even
three times what mine were
and attempting to
answer questions.
We have some microphones set up.
I ask only that you speak up
and state your question clearly.
Or if it's a statement,
try to put a question mark
at the end of your statement,
if you would do that, please.
Yes, ma'am.
If you'd go to the microphone,
that would be helpful.
It's right there, I think.
It's great to meet you.
Pull it right down.
To be this close to you.
Can you hear me?
You have to pull it down.
What?
I can just stand
up if that's OK.
Somebody--
That's all right.
I just wanted to ask
you if you've thought
about running for president?
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
No, I have two answers to that.
One is that I'm
running for cover,
I'm not running for office.
The other is, it's
been flattering.
I'm happy to report
that I've had inquiries
from both parties, from
time to time, as well
as from several
deranged friends,
suggesting that I ought
to think about running
for public office.
And my answer to the
first serious response
is that I chose this profession,
journalism because I think
it's honorable and important,
and I have worked hard
at doing what I hope
is an acceptable job,
and I think it's
important that I
stay on that side of the fence.
And the second
answer is, I'm not
going to run for office
because I don't want my family
to move to Canada.
Which they would do if I
were to run for office.
Yes, ma'am.
Back there.
Hi.
I just came back
from Rwanda, I'm
doing my thesis work over there.
Pull the microphone right up
so everybody can hear you.
I just spent a month
this past January,
and a month last
January, in Rwanda,
doing work on water
and sanitation
in developing countries.
And I was wondering what your
impressions of the people
were over there?
I don't know what
year you were there,
and how close it
was to the genocide,
but your impressions of the
people, and how you felt.
Not the higher ups, not
Kagame, but the local people.
OK.
I'm having a little hard
time understanding that.
Your impressions of
the people of Rwanda.
Oh.
Have you been there?
Yes.
Sorry.
I just spent two
months over there.
Yeah.
It's one of the most
remarkable places
I've ever been, in
terms of how they're
trying to come to grips
with the enormous challenges
before them.
And to do that within the
confines of their country.
You know the
unspeakable horrors.
And then when you go into a
small village in a remote area,
and you find the genociders
as they call the people who
committed these unspeakable
acts, sitting in their prison
uniforms at a table across from
someone who they completely
eliminated their
family, and they're
having this dialogue about
how they can work out
their common future.
It's at once inspiring and
slightly disorienting, frankly.
I work with something called
the International Rescue
Committee, big
refugee organization,
and we did a lot of the
database stuff of collecting
what attitudes were.
And I came back kind of
transformed, frankly.
I've been at this a long time.
I'm pretty hard-shelled,
but I was deeply
moved by what I saw there.
And my wife was with
me at that time.
And our family's involved in
a lot of humanitarian efforts.
And our youngest
daughter, we thought
was a natural to go to Rwanda.
So we told her
that she should go.
And she went on a
woman to woman program.
She's going back again shortly.
And it has had the same
impact on her life.
My concern about Rwanda is,
to take it a little deeper
into the story, my
concern about Rwanda,
it's a landlocked country.
It doesn't have a lot
of natural resources.
So the economy and economic
revival there is a big task.
They don't have
the kind of tourism
that other African
countries have.
They have gorillas in the
north, but not a lot of them.
They have coffee and they're
working hard at improving that,
as some kind of an economic
growth engine for them.
The president is very
impressive, Kagame.
And he has been coming to
New York and Seattle a lot,
in hopes that he can make Rwanda
into a kind of Switzerland
of Africa.
A financial center,
because they're trustworthy
and their institutions
are not corrupt.
So I hope that it will work out.
I also think it probably
will be an object
lesson for NGOs in the world.
Certainly, we have
looked at this at IRC.
We can't just deal
with the effects
of these cataclysmic
events that happen,
like genocide, or terrible
storms for that matter, or war.
We really have to start dealing
with the symptoms of it.
And we got behind in Darfur.
I say that in a
collective sense.
That went on too
long and now it's
very hard to put that
one back together again.
And the other thing that's
happened in this country, quite
honestly?
There's Africa fatigue.
People are kind of
worn out about hearing
about it because
the problems are
so monumental at the moment.
And there's enormous
work being done.
It's productive and
it's making progress,
but there's a lot
more to be done.
And in this country,
we're distracted
by our presidential
election, by the economy,
and what's going
on, so that's going
to be on the agenda
for a long time.
Anyhow, thanks for
asking about that.
Thank you.
Thank you.
No other questions?
Are there any answers, actually?
I think we have one coming here.
And then won't you come in
and stand right behind him,
right now.
Hi, Tom.
My name is Martin
Holmes, I'm a senior
in aerospace engineering.
And I wanted to ask
a quick question.
Science and technology
play an integral role
in society and world affairs,
and yet a lot of society
seems to take
technology for granted
and the government seems to
put less funding into science
and basic research than
it did in the past.
So I'm wondering what you
think MIT, as a university,
can do to help
improve the situation?
And what you as a
member of the media
can do to shed
light on this issue?
Well, we actually talked about
that to some degree earlier
today in a session that
I had with some students
and then with
faculty members who
were working on
the cancer project
and also on the energy project.
I think we're going
to have to think
across the spectrum
in institutions
like this, and in
our government,
in a more stateless way.
And the problems that
we are now all here
thinking about
and talking about,
don't stop at the water's edge.
And we cannot live in the
Western Industrial World with
a sense of security, I think, if
we don't begin to do something
about the undeveloped world and
help them become a rising tide.
And so I would hope
that there would
be a greater effort
across borders,
in a stateless fashion, to
deal with a lot of these.
You can't deal
with global warming
by just developing United
States policy, that's
a small example of it.
And the same thing with a lot
of the global health issues.
We're already seeing
that with AIDS.
So I think the new
administration, politically,
whoever it is, whether it's
a Republican or a Democrat,
institutions like MIT
and the role the media,
will have to rethink
how we approach
a lot of these
intractable problems
and get the technology that is
available, available out there.
We're doing a much
better job, but in a lot
of these countries, they are
happy when a light bulb turns
on, much less being able
to have what we take
for granted on a daily basis.
And it's happened quite
swiftly in this country.
It was not that many years ago
that the personal computer--
in our family, when
our kids were small,
we had one of the little
early Macs upstairs.
It was pretty primitive
and they were playing pong.
And I remember
thinking, "God, this
is going to change the
world in some ways."
And the head of IBM at the
time came to visit NBC.
And I said, "What do you think
the personal computer's future
is?
And he said, "Ah, my wife writes
her invitations to parties
and so on, but I don't
see much of a use for it."
And that's the reason
that Bill Gates
is one of the richest men in
the world today, by the way.
So that's what I think.
We do have to think in a
new way and a new form.
Let's take her and
then take you, OK?
Hi, I'm Shiva Asma, a recent
graduate and braining cog.
But I'm kind of curious
about your comments
on how the internet will
affect TV journalism.
I know there was a shift
from radio journalism
to TV journalism
a long time ago,
and I was wondering
if you could comment
on how you think the
internet will be affecting
what our existing TV--
I need help with that
again because I'm
losing it up here on the--
The effect of the
internet on journalism.
Oh.
[CROWD LAUGHING]
We'd like the internet
to go away so--
[CROWD LAUGHING]
--so we can go back to being
a monopoly again (LAUGHING).
[CROWD LAUGHING]
Listen, it's just hard for me,
and for most of us who grew up
on traditional media, and I
think even for new users of it,
to understand the impact
of it and where it's going.
it's limitless, in my judgment.
And we're racing
as fast as we can
to try to keep pace with
changes that are going on.
Trying to deal with,
something I touched
on here earlier, where does this
stuff come from and how useful
it?
And how much can we trust it?
The quick answer
is in television,
in broadcast journalism,
we hope that we
can take the smaller screen,
the computer or the PDA,
and marry it to the slightly
larger screen, television.
And out of that,
we'll have something
that will work for
you and work for us.
Newspapers have a larger
problem, at the moment.
There's a story today
about the New York Times,
and they're under assault again.
They're losing revenue
at an alarming rate
because people are going onto
the internet to buy things
and to advertise things.
It's expensive to
gather this information
from around the world.
Which brings me
to my last point.
The internet has grown
up with an audience that
thinks that everything is free.
You know, one of the early
pioneers, Stewart Rand,
who founded the
Whole Earth Catalog,
said information should be free.
Well, that's fine,
except it costs a lot
to have a bureau in Baghdad, and
to run the satellites that come
out of the political campaign
that we should all know about,
and to have people staffing
them on a 24/7 basis.
And so we all have to have a
think about that new model.
I like the small d
democratic part of it.
I like hearing these new
voices that are out there.
And there are some brilliant
new analysts and commentators
from all over the country
that we wouldn't have heard
from without the internet.
I like the speed of it
and the reach of it.
But what I do worry about,
is how we can, at some point,
always be able to
rely on people who
are trained to gather
this information,
and put it in a usable, engaging
form, to vet it, if you will,
so that when you get
it, however you get it,
it's reliable and useful to you.
That's the test.
And by the way, you
have a part in that.
It's not just up to us.
You're the consumers,
and you have
to apply the same
principles to that,
that you would to anything else
that you're using that plays
a critical part of your life.
And so we're all on
this one together.
Thank you.
Yes, sir.
Hi, Tom.
My name's Alan.
I'm curious, you
mentioned, the honor
of the profession of journalism.
Do you feel that it
has remained generally,
an honorable profession?
Or what needs to happen,
if it has slipped,
to regain some of that honor?
That's a many part question.
And I get it a lot,
with good reason.
What has happened is the
spectrum has widened so much.
There are so many
more parts to it.
And typically, it's like,
as I often describe it,
you go on a 300-mile road
trip, and everything goes fine.
And it goes splendidly.
Then you see a
three car pile up,
and that's what you
want to talk about when
you get to the destination.
And when people look at
the 24/7 cable coverage,
they are more inclined
to settle on that part
of the day, or that moment,
when the wheels came off
in some fashion,
one way or another,
when which there
was something that
was irresponsible or outrageous
that was said on the air.
I actually like the idea that
we have expanded the spectrum.
And I think, as
consumers, you have
to be a little more aggressive
about what you look for
and how you find it.
I, personally, have found that
we have a lot of good people
that still want to
come into journalism.
I was just at Columbia last
week at the journalism school,
and Nick Lemann,
who's running it now,
has really changed the model.
So he has them working
a lot harder in areas
like the economy and
sciences and liberal arts
and making sure that they get a
very broadly based background.
But I did look at these
bright young students
and wonder where they're
going to work, at some point.
So I think, it's still
by and large honorable,
but there are some
egregious examples
of people who abuse
the privilege of being
a journalist.
That's always been
the consequence
of having a free press.
Look, the early pamphleteers
of the 18th century
were pretty wildly
irresponsible.
And if you want to look at
some political coverage,
you ought to go back and look
at 19th-century political
coverage, when the papers
were extremely partisan,
and they would print
or say anything
to advance the cause of
their particular candidate.
When I first started in
the business in the 1950s,
here in Boston, New
York, Los Angeles,
most major metropolitan
areas, had news racks filled
with tabloids all day long.
They were simply
the print version
of what you see on a lot
of cable television now.
So again, it's up to
each of us to develop
a filter of some kind and
say that person is worth
listening to, that one is not.
The outrageous stuff that
you see is on the air in part
because people are drawn to it.
It's kind of a
commercial compact.
It doesn't make me very happy.
We had an amusing, but
unsettling experience
in Los Angeles.
We sent out a new news director
to our Los Angeles station,
a very wise woman,
who was determined
to do only the right
thing in Los Angeles,
and cover city hall and cover
state politics, and so on.
And not cover those mindless
car chases on the freeways
that we've all seen.
So she'd been there
about two weeks,
a big car chase
develops on the 405,
right at the height
of the news hour.
Every station in town
switches to the car chase.
She said, "Not us.
We're going to stay
with the news."
The ratings dropped to zero.
I mean they plummeted
all the way down.
And it was a big
object lesson for us,
about how you're going
to have to manage that.
So we all have a part in it.
Over here.
Can we make this the last one?
Is that OK?
I'm impressed by your poise
in dealing with these bigger
picture issues.
And it's very inspiring.
I think it was Al
Gore, who said,
in reference to dealing with
the environmental stuff,
that it's very easy to
move from denial straight
into essentially
a place of fear.
Right.
I wonder if you can
comment because it's clear
that you've spent so much time
in front of so many big, scary
things.
How do people of lesser strength
and lesser sort of perspective,
the common people, how do
we deal with these issues?
Do you have any sort
of insight for that?
Because I find that I'm
often in either a place
of denial or fear around
some of the bigger
issues in our culture.
Well, to begin with, a
very personal perspective,
part of my role, which was
unanticipated when I stepped
down from Nightly News
as the organization
now is, I am what they call
the designated hall monitor.
I go up and down the
hallways and say,
"Now children, let's start
paying attention to this.
And Chris Matthews, did you
have to say what you just said?"
[CROWD LAUGHING]
"Can we just run that
by everybody again?"
Yeah, it's a concern.
Because everything now has a
breathless urgency about it.
And part of that is
driven by the need
to fill up all this time.
We've got 24/7 cable, we've got
to fill it up with something.
I commented earlier that I
spent a lot of last year looking
at this model, and I
was told by everyone
that it would simply not work.
And that would be a
premium news channel.
An HBO of news, in which you'd
have a consortium of the New
York Times, NBC, maybe the
Financial Times, a couple
of other traditional outlets.
We put together this
consortium and we charge you.
You have a dedicated website
and a dedicated news channel,
and it would cost
you a few bucks.
But you're probably
spending that money now
on newspapers that are delivered
to your door and magazines
that you get on a regular basis.
And everybody that I talked
to, including Ted Turner, who
is an enormous
advocate of getting
more information out there--
I mean CNN was not just a
business proposition for him.
It grew out of his strong
sense of a public citizen
that we needed to
have more information.
--he said it won't work
because the cable systems won't
carry it.
They don't want to take a
chance on that kind of expense.
And you have all come to believe
it's yours for the taking.
We're in our family in two
diminishing businesses.
I have a daughter in
the music business
and I'm in the news business.
And it's a lot harder for her.
She's got a very senior
position at Warner Records
and all day, every
day, she gets migraines
trying to figure out how
they're going to make a buck out
of these artists, and
what they're going to do.
So it's tough.
I really have enjoyed this.
I hope I can come back sometime
and see you in smaller groups.
Thank you all, very much.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
