Bill Gates smiles when he talks about
there being no shortage of frontiers, and smiles when he talks about all the neat new
things yet to emerge under his name. Lee Kuan Yew [former leader of Singapore] frowns when
he talks about family values being eroded, and frowns when he talks about a totally new
world emerging. Yehudi Menuhin [famous violinist] smiles when he talks of every child
having the opportunity to be an artist, and frowns when he talks about speed and noise
threatening our sense of balance.
The very different perspectives and priorities of three of the giants of the 20th century came together in a remarkable meeting of the world's movers and shakers at Davos in the Swiss Alps.
In a six-day live chatroom, 40 heads of state, 250 political leaders, 300 scientists, artists, academics and intellectuals, and 1,000 corporate chiefs (each with $1 billion in revenue) talked over what in the world is going on, and where the world might be going.
The annual World Economic Forum is committed to improving the state of the world. It seeks to bring leaders from various fields together to discuss key issues, away from the usual obstacles of bureaucracies, protocols, and media scrutiny.
It was up to 20 degrees below outside. Inside, the issue that everyone warmed to was globality, today's buzzword for issues relating to yesterday's buzzword of globalization.
Whichever word in whichever language, the world's elite has either fully embraced globalization, or fully accepted it as unstoppable: ready or not, the world is being plugged into one hot-wired, digitized, interactive marketplace, with normal definitions and understanding of time, distance, corporations, assets, value, consumers and government being challenged or transformed with astonishing speed.
There was comparatively little focus on the causes and lessons of the economic failures of the past two years; that's history, and there is little time for history lessons. Design new financial architecture and let's get on with tomorrow.
The world is getting smaller and faster as the march of science, technology and money reshape the landscape almost oblivious to government. The title of Bill Gates's forthcoming book says it all: Business at the Speed of Thought.
For older heads like Lee Kuan Yew and Yehudi Menuhin, the rapidity of change, life at the speed of thought, is challenging man's ability to cope.
Lee has masterminded the success of Singapore, a country whose technology, education and national unity is the envy of many a world leader. But even he is worried.
"The world is changing so fast I'm not sure Singapore can adjust fast enough to keep up and find a niche in the powerful knowledge-based economies," he said at Davos. "The speed with which societies are being interlinked to each other, the ease with which they can influence the other, will make for a totally new world. It may erode long-held values that have held our society together. I see signs of it already."
Yehudi Menuhin expressed disquiet about a world becoming faster and noisier in the push to get a nanosecond of attention. He decried the amplification, commercialization and multiplication of music and images to fill every vacant space and silence.