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Following is the speech delivered by the Financial Secretary, Mr John C Tsang, at the opening ceremony of IEEE Technology Time Machine Symposium this morning (June 1):
Dr Gordon Day, professors, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
Good morning.
A warm welcome to you all, especially to our friends who have travelled long distances to be here.
I am honoured to have the opportunity of addressing this meeting of distinguished engineers.
It has been said that, when it comes to the future, there are three kinds of people. Those who let it happen, those who make it happen and those who wonder what happened!
Over the next few days, you will be grappling with the challenging and intriguing question - what is going to happen next?
The challenge of the IEEE Technology Time Machine Symposium is to focus on where key technologies will be 10, 15, and 20 years from now.
Let us reverse the time machine, and suppose that we were attending this conference 10, 15, 20 years ago. What predictions would we have made about the key technologies that we are using today?
Consider how communication technology has changed in just a matter of months or years, let alone decades.
Twenty years ago, the world wide web was just emerging from a memorandum written by a young contract employee at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee.
Would we have predicted the far-reaching effects the web has had on all our lives, as government officials, as business people, as researchers, as consumers, as correspondents, and as engineers?
Fifteen years ago, mobile phones - as we know them today - were still in their relative infancy. They were heavy and they had serious battery-life problems - could we have imagined how pervasive and universal mobile phone usage would be today?
Ten years ago, could we have imagined the impact of social media? These are developments with huge implications that we are only just beginning to explore.
Prediction is difficult, but in some sense the future is already here. As the futurologist, Alan Kay, once said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
Your organising committee has made a thought-provoking selection of topics for discussion on inventing the future.
One topic which particularly caught my attention is e-health. The next 20 years will see substantial demographic changes. An ageing population will place new demands on the healthcare system globally.
A question in the brochure for this symposium raises key issues about e-health. The question is this: "When will health-care providers be able to have world-wide instant authorised access to our complete medical history?"
This raises technological issues, including issues concerning the organisation and compatibility of data, which many countries and healthcare organisations are grappling with.
It also raises privacy issues associated with the term, "authorised access".
And there is the possibility of tele-health, which provides convenience for patients and economic savings for nations.
This conference provides an opportunity to consider competing visions of the future. I am sure that these will provoke stimulating discussions, and I look forward to reading the proceedings of the symposium.
There is an old proverb, which says: "Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today".
This symposium will help us all to better prepare for the future and the challenges and opportunities it will undoubtedly bring.
I wish everyone involved in this event a stimulating and productive symposium and a happy stay in Hong Kong. I hope that you will shop a lot as well.
Thank you.
Ends/Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Issued at HKT 12:08
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