Remarks by Vice President Al Gore 1994-01-11 (fwd)

[Mel Roseman <mrosema@EIS.CALSTATE.EDU>]

Forwarded by Gleason Sackman - InterNIC net-happenings moderator
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---------- Text of forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 14:46-0500
From: The White House <75300.3115@compuserve.com>
Subject: Remarks by Vice President Al Gore 1994-01-11

                            THE WHITE HOUSE

                      Office of the Vice President

________________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                   January 11, 1994


                   REMARKS BY VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE
                             (as prepared)

                            Royce Hall, UCLA
                         Los Angeles, California
                            January 11, 1994


     It's great to be here at the Television Academy today.  I feel I
have a lot in common with those of you who are members of the Academy.
I was on Letterman.  I wrote my own lines.

     I'm still waiting for residuals.

     At first, I thought this could lead to a whole new image.  And
maybe a new career.  No more Leno jokes about being stiffer than the
Secret Service.  Maybe an opportunity to do other shows.  I was elated
when "Star Trek: The Next Generation" wanted me to do a guest shot --
until I learned they wanted me to replace Lieutenant Commander Data.

     The historian Daniel Boorstin once wrote that for Americans
"nothing has happened unless it is on television."  This of course
leaves out a few major events in our history.  But this meeting today is
on television -- so apparently this event is actually occurring.

     I join you to outline not only this Administration's vision of the
National Information Infrastructure but our proposals for creating it.

     Last month in Washington, I set forth some of the principles behind
our vision. Today I'll talk about the legislative package necessary to
ensure the creation of that national infrastructure in a manner which
will connect and empower the citizens of this country through broadband,
interactive communication.

     We've all become used to stumbling over cliches in our efforts to
describe the enormity of change now underway and the incredible speed
with which it is taking place.  Often we call it a revolution -- the
digital revolution.

     Speaking of cliches, I often use the analogy to autos, saying that
if cars had advanced as rapidly as computer chips in recent years, a
Rolls Royce would go a million miles an hour and cost twenty-five cents.

     The last time I used it was at a meeting of computer experts and
one of them said, "Yeah -- but that Rolls Royce would be one millimeter
long."

     What we've seen in the last decade is amazing. But it's nothing
compared to what will happen in the decade ahead.  The word revolution
by no means overstates the case.

    But this revolution is based on traditions that go far back in our
history.

      Since the transcontinental telegraph that transmitted
Abraham Lincoln's election victory to California in real time,
our ability to communicate electronically has informed and shaped
America.

     It was only a year before that election that the Pony Express was
the talk of the nation, able to send a message cross country in seven
days.  The next year, it was out of business.

     Today's technology has made possible a global community united by
instantaneous information and analysis.  Protesters at the Berlin Wall
communicated with their followers through CNN news broadcasts.  The fax
machine connected us with demonstrators at Tiananmen Square.

     So it's worth remembering that while we talk about this digital
revolution as if it's about to happen, in many places it's already
underway.  Even in the White House.

     The day after Inauguration, I was astonished to see how relatively
primitive the White House communications system was.  President Clinton
and I took a tour and found operators actually having to pull cords for
each call and plug them into jacks.  It reminded me of the switchboard
used by Ernestine, the Lily Tomlin character.

     And there were actually phones like these all over the White House.
They're still there.  But we made progress. They're only in the press
room now.

     Those phones didn't meet our needs.  So now, especially on trips, I
use a cellular phone.

     Our new ways of communicating will entertain as well as inform.
More importantly, they will educate, promote democracy, and save lives.
And in the process they will also create a lot of new jobs.  In fact,
they're already doing it.

     The impact on America's businesses will not be limited just to
those who are in the information business, either.  Virtually every
business will find it possible to use these new tools to become more
competitive.  And by taking the lead in quickly employing these new
information technologies, America's businesses will gain enormous
advantages in the worldwide marketplace.  And that is important because
if America is to prosper, we must be able to manufacture goods within
our borders and sell them not just in Tennessee but Tokyo -- not just in
Los Angeles but Latin America.

     Last month, when I was in Central Asia, the President of Kyrgyzstan
told me his eight-year-old son came to him and said, "Father, I have to
learn English."

     "But why?" President Akayev asked.

     "Because, father, the computer speaks English."

     By now, we are becoming familiar with the ability of the new
communications technologies to transcend international boundaries and
bring our world closer together.  But many of you are now in the process
of transcending other old boundaries -- the boundary lines which have
long defined different sectors of the information industry.  The speed
with which these boundaries are eroding is quite dramatic.

      I'm reminded of an idea of Stephen Hawking, the British physicist.
Hawking has Lou Gehrig's disease.  But thanks to information technology
he can still communicate not only to his students and colleagues but to
millions around the world.  Incidentally, I read the other day that his
voice box has an American accent -- because it was developed here in
California.

     Anyway, in that American accent, Hawking has speculated about a
distant future when the universe stops expanding and begins to contract.
Eventually, all matter comes colliding together in a "Big Crunch," which
scientists say could then be followed by another "Big Bang" -- a
universe expanding outward once again.

     Our current information industries -- cable, local telephone, long
distance telephone, television, film, computers, and others -- seem
headed for a Big Crunch/Big Bang of their own.  The space between these
diverse functions is rapidly shrinking -- between computers and
televisions, for example, or inter-active communication and video.

     But after the next Big Bang, in the ensuing expansion of the
information business, the new marketplace will no longer be divided
along current sectoral lines.  There may not be cable companies or phone
companies or computer companies, as such.  Everyone will be in the bit
business. The functions provided will define the marketplace.  There
will be information conduits, information providers, information
appliances and information consumers.
     That's the future.  It's easy to see where we need to go.
It's hard to see how to get there.  When faced with the enormity
and complexity of the transition some retreat to the view best
enunciated by Yogi Berra when he said:  "What we have here is an
insurmountable opportunity."

     Not long ago this transition did indeed seem too formidable to
contemplate, but no longer.  Because a remarkable consensus has emerged
throughout our country -- in business, in public interest groups and in
government.  This consensus begins with agreement on the right, specific
questions we must answer together.

     How can government ensure that the information marketplace emerging
on the other side of the Big Crunch will permit everyone to be able to
compete with everyone else for the opportunity to provide any service to
all willing customers?  How can we ensure that this new marketplace
reaches the entire nation?  How can we ensure that it fulfills the
enormous promise of education, economic growth and job creation?

     Today I will provide the Administration's answers to those
questions.  But before I do let me state my firm belief that legislative
and regulatory action alone will not get us where we need to be.  This
Administration argued in our National Performance Review last year, that
government often acts best when it sets clear goals, acts as a catalyst
for the national teamwork required to achieve them, then lets the
private and non- profit sector, move the ball downfield.

     It was in this spirit that then-Governor Clinton and I, campaigning
for the White House in 1992, set as a vital national goal linking every
classroom in every school in the United States to the National
Information Infrastructure.

     It was in this same spirit that less than a month ago, I pointed
out that when it comes to telecommunications services, schools are the
most impoverished institutions in society.

     And so I was pleased to hear that some companies participating in
the communications revolution are now talking about voluntarily linking
every classroom in their service areas to the NII.

     Let me be clear.  I challenge you, the people in this room, to
connect all of our classrooms, all of our libraries, and all of our
hospitals and clinics by the year 2000.  We must do this to realize the
full potential of information to educate, to save lives, provide access
to health care and lower medical costs.

     Our nation can and must meet this challenge. The best way to do so
is by working together.  Just as communications industries are moving to
the unified information marketplace of the future, so must we move from
the traditional adversarial relationship between business and government
to a more productive relationship based on consensus.  We must build a
new model of public-private cooperation that, if properly pursued, can
obviate many governmental mandates.

     But make no mistake about it -- one way or another, we will meet
this goal.

     As I announced last month, we will soon introduce a legislative
package that aggressively confronts the most pressing telecommunications
issues, and is based on five principles.

     This Administration will:

          -- Encourage Private Investment

          -- Provide and Protect Competition

          -- Provide Open Access to the Network

          -- Take Action To Avoid Creating a Society of
             Information "Haves" and "Have Nots"

          -- Encourage Flexible and Responsive Governmental Action

     Many of you have our White Paper today, outlining the bill in
detail.  If you didn't get your copy, it's available on the Internet,
right now.

     Let me run through the highlights with you -- and talk about how
they grow out of our five principles.

     We begin with two of our basic principles -- the need for private
investment and fair competition.  The nation needs private investment to
complete the construction of the National Information Infrastructure.
And competition is the single most critical means of encouraging that
private investment.

     I referred earlier to the use of the telegraph in 1860, linking the
nation together.  Congress funded Samuel Morse's first demonstration of
the telegraph in 1844.  Morse then suggested that a national system be
built with federal funding.  But Congress said no, that private
investment should build the information infrastructure.  And that's what
happened -- to the great and continuing competitive advantage of this
country.

     Today, we must choose competition again and protect it against both
suffocating regulation on the one hand and unfettered monopolies on the
other.

     To understand why competition is so important, let's recall what
has happened since the breakup of AT&T ten years ago this month.

     As recently as 1987, AT&T was still projecting that it would take
until the year 2010 to convert 95% of its long distance network to
digital technology.

     Then it became pressed by the competition. The result?  AT&T made
its network virtually 100% digital by the end of 1991.  Meanwhile, over
the last decade the price of interstate long distance service for the
average residential customer declined over 50%.

     Now it is time to take the next step.  We must open the local
telephone exchanges, those wires and switches that link homes and
offices to the local telephone companies.

     The pressure of competition will be great -- and it will drive
continuing advancements in technology, quality and cost.  One
businessman told me recently that he was accelerating his investment in
new technology to avoid ending up as "roadkill" on the information
superhighway.

     To take one example of what competition means, cable companies,
long distance companies, and electric utilities must be free to offer
two-way communications and local telephone service. To accomplish this
goal, our legislative package will establish a federal standard that
permits entry to the local telephone markets.  Moreover, the FCC will be
authorized to reduce regulation for telecommunications carriers that
lack market power.

     We expect open competition to bring lower prices and better
services. But let me be clear:  We insist upon safeguards to ensure that
new corporate freedoms will not be translated into sudden and
unjustified rate increases for telephone consumers.

     The advancement of competition will necessarily require more
opportunity, as well, for the Regional Bell Operating Companies.
Current restrictions on their operations are themselves the legacy of
the break-up of AT&T and must be re-examined.

     This Administration endorses the basic principles of the
Brooks-Dingell bill, which proposes a framework for allowing
long-distance and local telephone companies to compete against each
other.

     Regulation and review of this framework should be transferred from
the courts to the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications
Commission.

     This process of change must be carefully calibrated.  We must make
sure that the Regional Bells will not be able to use their present
monopoly positions as unfair leverage into new lines of business.  That
is why the Administration supports the approach of the Brooks-Dingell
provision that requires the approval of the Department of Justice and
the Federal Communications Commission before the Regional Bells may
provide interexchange services -- most notably long distance.

     In working with Congress, the Administration will explore the
creation of incentives for the Regional Bells.  We want to increase the
transparency of those facility-based local services that raise concerns
associated with cross-subsidization and abuses of monopoly power.

     Our view of the entry of local telephone companies into cable
television also balances the advantages of competition against the
possibility of competitive abuse.  We will continue to bar the
acquisition of existing cable companies by telephone companies within
their local service areas.  We need this limitation to ensure that no
single giant entity controls access to homes and offices.  But to
increase diversity and benefit consumers, we will permit telephone
companies to provide video programming over new, open access systems.

     Even these measures, however, may not eliminate all scarcity in the
local loop -- those information byways that provide the last electronic
connection with homes and offices.  For some time, in many places, there
are likely to be only one or two broadband, interactive wires, probably
owned by cable or telephone companies.  In the long run, the local loop
may contain a wider set of competitors offering a broad range of
interactive services, including wireless, microwave and direct broadcast
satellite.

     But, for now, we cannot assume that competition in the local loop
will end all of the accrued market power of past regulatory advantage
and market domination.

     We cannot permit the creation of information bottlenecks that
adversely affect information providers who use the highways as a means
of supplying their customers.

     Nor can we can permit bottlenecks for information consumers who
desire programming that may not be available through the wires that
enter their homes or offices.

     Preserving the free flow of information requires open access, our
third basic principle.

     How can you sell your ideas, your information, your programs, if an
intermediary who is also your competitor has the means to unfairly block
your access to customers?  We can't subject the free flow of content to
artificial constraints at the hands of either government regulators or
would-be monopolists.

     We must also guard against unreasonable technical obstacles.  We
know how to do this; we've seen this problem in our past.  For example,
when railroad tracks were different sizes, a passenger could not travel
easily from a town served by one railroad to a town served by another.
But the use of standardized tracks permitted the creation of a national
system of rail transport.

     Accordingly, our legislative package will contain provisions
designed to ensure that each telephone carrier's networks will be
readily accessible to other users.  We will create an affirmative
obligation to interconnect and to afford nondiscriminatory access to
network facilities, services, functions and information.  We must also
explore the future of non-commercial broadcasting; there must be public
access to the information superhighway.

     These measures will preserve the future within the context of our
present regulatory structures.  But that is not enough.  We must move
towards a regulatory approach that encourages investment, promotes
competition and secures open access.  And one that is not just a
patch-work quilt of old approaches, but an approach necessary to promote
fair competition in the future.

     We begin with a simple idea: Similar entities must be treated
similarly.  But let's be clear:  our quest for equal treatment of
competing entities will not blind us to the economic realities of the
new information marketplace, where apparent similarities may mask
important differences.

     This idea is best expressed in the story about the man who went
into a restaurant and ordered the rabbit stew.

     It came, he took a few bites, then called the manager over.  "This
doesn't taste like rabbit stew!" he said.  "It tastes ...  well, it
tastes like horsemeat!"

     The manager was embarrassed. "I actually ran out of rabbit
this morning and I -- well, I put some horsemeat in."

     "How much horsemeat?"

     "Well -- it's equally divided."

     "What's that mean?"

     "One horse, one rabbit."

     The lesson is obvious.  A start-up local telephone company isn't
the same as a Baby Bell.

     What we favor is genuine regulatory symmetry.  That means
regulation must be based on the services that are offered and the
ability to compete -- and not on corporate identity, regulatory history
or technological process.

     For example, our legislative package will grant the Federal
Communications Commission the future authority, under appropriate
conditions, to impose non-discriminatory access requirements on cable
companies.  As cable and telephone service become harder and harder to
distinguish, this provision will help to ensure that labels derived from
past regulatory structures are not translated into inadvertent,unfair
competitive advantages.

     As different services are grouped within a single corporate
structure, we must ensure that these new, combined entities are not
caught in a cross-fire of conflicting and duplicative regulatory burdens
and standards.  This Administration will not let existing regulatory
structures impede or distort the evolution of the communications
industry.

     In the information marketplace of the future, we will obtain our
goals of investment, competition and open access only if regulation
matches the marketplace.  That requires a flexible, adaptable regulatory
regime that encourages the widespread provision of broadband,
interactive digital services.

     That is why the Administration proposes the creation of an
alternative regulatory regime that is unified, as well as symmetrical.
Our new regime would not be mandatory, but it would be available to
providers of broadband, interactive services.  Such companies could
elect to be regulated under the current provisions of the Communications
Act or under a new title, Title VII, that would harmonize those
provisions in order to provide a single system of regulation.  These
"Title VII" companies would be able to avoid the danger of conflicting
or duplicative regulatory burdens.  But in return, they would provide
their services and access to their facilities to others on a
nondiscriminatory basis.  The nation would thus be assured that these
companies would provide open access to information providers and
consumers and the benefits of competition, including lower prices and
higher-quality services, to their customers.

     This new method itself illustrates one of our five principles --
that government itself must be flexible.  Our proposals for symmetrical,
and ultimately unified, regulation demonstrate how we will initiate
governmental action that furthers our substantive principles but that
adapts, and disappears, as the need for governmental intervention
changes -- or ends.  They demonstrate, as well, the new relationship of
which I spoke earlier -- the private and public sectors working together
to fulfill our common goals.

     The principles that I have described thus far will build an open
and free information marketplace.  They will lower prices, stimulate
demand and expand access to the National Information Infrastructure.

     They will, in other words, help to attain our final basic principle
-- avoiding a society of information "haves" separate from a society of
information "have nots".

     There was a Washington Post headline last month: "Will the
`Information Superhighway' Detour the Poor?"

     Not if I have anything to do about it.  After all, governmental
action to ensure universal service has been part of American history
since the days of Ben Franklin's Post Office.  We will have in our
legislative package a strong mandate to ensure universal service in the
future -- and I want to explain why.

     We have become an information-rich society.  Almost 100% of
households have radio and television, and about 94% have telephone
service.  Three-quarters of households contain a VCR, about 60% have
cable, and roughly 30% of households have personal computers.

     As the information infrastructure expands in breadth and depth, so
too will our understanding of the services that are deemed essential.
This is not a matter of guaranteeing the right to play video-games.  It
is a matter of guaranteeing access to essential services.

     We cannot tolerate -- nor in the long run can this nation afford --
a society in which some children become fully educated and others do
not; in which some adults have access to training and lifetime
education, and others do not.

     Nor can we permit geographic location to determine whether the
information highway passes by your door.  I've often spoken about my
vision of a schoolchild in my home town of Carthage, Tennessee being
able to come home, turn on her computer and plug into the Library of
Congress.  Carthage is a small town.  Its population is only about
2,000.  So let me emphasize the point:  We must work to ensure that no
geographic region of the United States, rural or urban, is left without
access to broadband, interactive service.  Yes, we support opening the
local telephone exchange to competition. But we will not permit the
dismantling of our present national networks.

     All this won't be easy.  It is critically important, therefore,
that all carriers must be obliged to contribute, on an equitable and
competitively neutral basis, to the preservation and advancement of
universal service.

     The responsibility to design specific measures to achieve these
aims will be delegated to the Federal Communications Commission.  But
they will be required to do so.  Our basic goal is simple:  There will
be universal service; that definition will evolve as technology and the
infrastructure advance; and the FCC will get the job done.

     Reforming our communications laws is only one element of the
Administration's NII agenda.  We'll be working hard to invest in
critical NII technologies.  We'll promote applications of the NII in
areas such as scientific research, energy efficiency and advanced
manufacturing.  We'll work to deliver government services more
efficiently. We'll also update our policies to make sure that privacy
and copyright are protected in the networked world.

     We'll help law enforcement agencies thwart criminals and terrorists
who might use advanced telecommunications to commit crimes.

     The Administration is working with industry to develop the new
technologies needed for the National Information Infrastructure
Initiative.

     I have been working with the First Lady's Health Care Task Force,
former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, and others to develop ways we
can use networks to improve the quality of health care.

     Beginning this month, we are concentrating first on the legislative
package I outlined earlier.  We haven't invented all of the ideas it
contains ourselves.  Representatives Dingell and Brooks, Markey and
Fields--and Senators Hollings, Inouye, and Danforth have all focused on
these issues.

     In many ways our legislative goals reflect or complement that work.
We expect to introduce our legislative package shortly, and to work with
Congress to ensure speedy passage this year of a bill that will stand
the test of time.

     Our efforts are not, of course, confined only to government.  The
people in this room, and the private sector in general, symbolize
private enterprise.

     Our economic future will depend, in a real sense, on your
ability to grasp opportunity and turn it into concrete
achievement.

     As we move into the new era, we must never lose sight of our
heritage of innovation and entrepreneurship.

     In some ways, we appreciate that heritage more when we see
countries without it.  Last month, in Russia, I had a chance to see
close up a country that tried to hold back the information age -- a
country that used to put armed guards in front of copiers.  In a way we
should be grateful it did; that helped strengthen the desire of the
Russian people to end Communism.

     My hope is that now Central and Eastern Europe can use technology
and the free market to build democracy -- not thwart it.

     And my hope is that America, born in revolution, can lead the way
in this new, peaceful world revolution.

     Let's work on it together.

     A few months ago, Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
It was a proud -- and signal -- moment for this country: recognition of
an African-American woman who has communicated her insight and narrative
power to readers all over the world.

     In her acceptance speech, Tony Morrison used one version of an old
story -- a parable, really -- to make an interesting point. It's of a
blind, old woman renowned for her wisdom, and a boy who decides to play
a trick on her. He captures a bird, brings it to her cupped in his
hands, and says "Old woman, is this bird alive or dead?"

     If she says "Dead," he can set it free.  If she says "Alive," the
boy will crush the bird.

     She thinks, and says, "The answer is in your hands."

     Toni Morrison's point is that the future of language is in our
hands.

     As we enter this new millennium, we are learning a new language.
It will be the lingua franca of the new age. It is made up of ones and
zeros and bits and bytes.  But as we master it ... as we bring the
digital revolution into our homes and schools ...  we will be able to
communicate ideas, and information -- in fact, entire Toni Morrison
novels -- with an ease never before thought possible.

     We meet today on common ground, not to predict the future but to
make firm the arrangements for its arrival. Let us master and develop
this new language together.

     The future really is in our hands.

     Thank you.