'The Man who dared to dream'

by Nalaka GUNAWARDENE

In his 1992 book 'How the World Was One', Sir Arthur C Clarke described a dream: one day in the near future, CNN founder (and then owner) Ted Turner is offered the post of World President, but he politely turns it down - because he doesn't want to give up power!

That was typical of the wit and humour of Sir Arthur, who thus summed up the profound social, cultural and political implications of satellite communication that he first proposed in 1945.

Of course, the trouble with Sir Arthur's dreams was that many kept coming true, sometimes faster than his own vivid imagination envisaged. Like Albert Einstein, Sir Arthur believed that imagination was more important than knowledge - he liked to call himself an extrapolator, one who expanded from current knowledge to what was scientifically plausible.

When he conceived the idea of the geosynchronous communications satellite (comsat for short) in 'Wireless World' in October 1945, nobody took any notice - and even he didn't expect it to happen during his life time. But the Space Age lay only a dozen years in the future, and in 1965, the first commercial comsat, Early Bird, was launched. Within a short time, comsats became a multi-billion dollar global industry.

Take another example. In his 1964 short story, "Dial F for Frankenstein", Sir Arthur imagined the world's inter-connected telephone system becoming a conscious entity that quickly takes control of the world. Years later, British computer scientist and inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, acknowledged how this story had left a deep impression on him in his younger days. When Sir Arthur heard this reported in the media, he exclaimed: "Oh dear, what have I done?"

He told an interviewer: "If I were to write that story today, I'd have the Internet instead of the phone network... When will the internet assume that power?"

In some ways, Sir Arthur suggested that the Internet has 'already' taken over our modern lives: "Fortunately, the internet is not yet very intelligent - but then, neither are most people who use it!"

March of ICTs

Sir Arthur didn't just sit in his comfortable Colombo home dreaming up technologically-enabled future for humanity. He also played a part in creating the future by mentoring professionals, advising United Nations agencies and governments, and critiquing the progress of information and communication technologies (ICTs).

Although he hobnobbed with those in power - and was equally admired in Washington DC, Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi and other world capitals - he remained an armchair subversive to the very end. He cheered when ICTs empowered social activists and ordinary people to join forces in various campaigns for the free flow of information, better governments or human rights.

He advocated turning digital communication tools to work for the poor and disadvantaged. As he said, "the time has come to move our focus from the geeks to the meek".

He watched with unconcealed glee how government censors were undermined first by comsats and then by the global Internet. Addressing the UN General Assembly in the World Telecommunications Year 1983, he predicted: "The debate about the free flow of information...will soon be settled - by engineers, not politicians. (Just as physicists, not generals, have now determined the nature of war.)" During the last decades of the 20th Century, Sir Arthur watched how satellite television networks proliferated and covered the entire globe. He was especially intrigued by the 'CNN Effect'.

The growing influence that CNN and other global news channels now have on how states conduct their foreign policies and relations.

It was for triggering this new dimension of diplomacy and peace-making that an American legal scholar nominated Sir Arthur for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. The following year, the then Secretary General of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, even suggested that CNN should be made the 16th member of the Security Council.

The CNN effect no doubt played a part in inspiring massive global donations to the Indian Ocean rim countries that were devastated by the tsunami of nearly five years ago, on Boxing Day 2004. In the days and weeks that followed, Sir Arthur - whose own diving facilities in Hikkaduwa were destroyed in the mega-disaster - freely offered free advice to governments, relief agencies and the media.

"ICTs can play an integral part in Asia's recovery from the tsunami," he said at the time. "Journalists must return to Asia's battered coasts, armed with video and digital cameras... the real stories of survival and heroism have only just begun.

Let network TV move on to the next big story. Cyber activists and committed journalists can keep these stories alive."

It was these words that inspired the ambitious Asian media project called Children of Tsunami. In this, local TV journalists in India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand tracked the recovery stories of eight tsunami survivor families for most of 2005. We were much encouraged when Sir Arthur endorsed our effort. (Details and products archived online at: www.childrenoftsunami.info )

Rise of search

Towards the end of his life, Sir Arthur was fascinated by the phenomenal rise of search engines, whose basic concept he had outlined decades earlier. Reviewing a book on the rise of Google, he wrote in 2005: "If comsats are an integral part of the nervous system of humankind, Google must provide part of its brain. Of course, it's still in early stages of evolution under the watchful eye of its founders. But the future can hold any number of different scenarios."

Sir Arthur believed that search engines could accelerate the quest for Artificial Intelligence (AI). He wondered if this could one day lead to the creation of HAL 9000, the intelligent and ultimately malevolent computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or produce an almost human-like android similar to Mister Data in Star Trek? Or, in the worst case scenario, usher in more sinister possibilities as in the Matrix film trilogy?

"Even with my modest crystal ball, there is no way of telling where the road from Alexandria, via the Silicon Valley, will eventually take us," he admitted.

Sir Arthur watched with bemusement how billion dollar information-media-entertainment industries evolved from his technical writing or imaginary stories. While he never regretted not patenting the comsat idea, he once told Ted Turner, only half jokingly: "You owe me 10 per cent of your income".

At the same time, he was quick to acknowledge that there was more to human communications than just gadgets and gizmos.

"Communication technologies are necessary, but not sufficient, for us humans to get along with each other," he noted in his 90th birthday reflections video released online in December 2007 (which turned out to be his public farewell). "This is why we still have many disputes and conflicts in the world. Technology tools help us to gather and disseminate information, but we also need qualities like tolerance and compassion to achieve greater understanding between peoples and nations."

Despite misgivings about the many misuses of technology, Sir Arthur remained an optimist to the end, "if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy". As 'The Guardian' (UK) noted in an obituary, "It was never evident that...reality soured the dreams that had driven Clarke for eight decades, for he never lost either his smile or his enthusiasm."

He was gifted with one of the best dream machines east of Suez. Our world is richer because, in his writing, public talks and television appearances, he often shared his dreams of grand, bold - and sometimes even scary - futures. Arthur C. Clarke's prolific career might be summed up by the words of another British writer, T. E. Lawrence: "All men dream, but not equally...the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."

Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s 92nd birth anniversary fell on December 16,