We are only a fifth of the way into the digital revolution.

Jean-Francois Rischard: I think it boils down to two huge forces that are dramatically changing the world, and will do so even more over the next 20, 30 years. One force that’s a dark force is the population increase where we had three billion people in 1960, five billion people in 1990, and now we’re at six billion or a little more. And we’re headed straight to nine billion by 2050. So between 1960 and 2050 we will have tripled the world population on a planet that’s already extremely stressed in terms of the environment, arable land, and even social stresses. So that’s one huge force that is a massive force of change, and that clearly plays a role in my world view. The other force is this new world economy that is based on very inexpensive telecommunications and computer technologies, which is a real industrial revolution. But unlike the earlier industrial revolutions that had to do with transforming energy or raw materials, this one goes very deep because it transforms time and distance, and it makes knowledge the biggest factor of production. And that new economy produces wonderful new things, new markets, new ways of doing things. Just think of Bangalore in India producing $15 billion worth of software services from zero 10 years ago. Think of the iPods. Think of many of these wonderful new things. But it’s also a very tough new economy where you have to be agile. You have to be good at networking. You have to be good at constantly inventing new tricks, and you have to be very liable. And so some companies, and countries, and individuals do very well in that new economy. Some fall by the wayside. So it’s a very both positive and negative force, but it’s a huge force. And we’ve probably only seen 20 percent of it. This industrial revolution based on telecoms and computer technologies still has 80 percent to go. And these two big forces, I think, overwhelm the capacity of the human institutions we have to manage them. The human institutions being nation states, the governments, the ministries, the public agencies of various kinds, the international organizations. All that human system of management is overwhelmed by these two big forces. And so I think we are seeing the beginning of a government’s gap – sort of inability to manage the forces which we ourselves have unleashed. Recorded on: 7/2/07