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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Lincoln, Massachusetts)
______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release June 5,
1998
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 1998 COMMENCEMENT
Killian Court
Campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts
11:55 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Dr. Vest. I think you're
the real thing. (Laughter.) Chairman d'Arbeloff, Dr. Gray,
members of the Corporation, the faculty, especially to the
members of the Class of 1998 and your families, the Class of 1948
and 1973, Mayor Duahay, members of the City Council. I thank the
Brass Ensemble for the wonderful music before.
Let me say I am profoundly honored to be here on the
same platform with Dr. David Ho, and grateful for the work he has
done for humanity. (Applause.)
When we met a few moments ago, in President Vest's
office, with a number of the students and other officials of the
university, I said you had a good representation of speakers
today -- the scientists and the scientifically challenged.
(Laughter.)
But my administration has been able to carry on in
no small measure because of contributions from MIT. Sixteen MIT
alumni and faculty members have served in important positions in
this administration, including at least two who are here today --
the former Secretary of the Air Force, Sheila Widnoll, and the
Deputy Secretary of Energy Ernie Monic. Four of your faculty
members and your President have done important work for us. I
thank them all.
And I come here today with good news and bad news
for the graduates. The good news is that this morning we had our
latest economic report: unemployment is 4.3 percent; there have
been 16 million new jobs in the last five years; there are
numerous job openings that pay well. The bad news is that you
now have no excuse to your parents if you don't go to work.
(Laughter.)
MIT is admired around the world as a crucible of
creative thought, a force for progress, a place where dreams of
generations become reality. The remarkable discoveries and
inventions of the MIT community have transformed America. Early
in your history, MIT was known for advances in geology and
mining. By mid-century, MIT pioneered X rays and radar. Today,
it's atomic lasers, artificial intelligence, biotechnology. MIT
has done much to make this the American century. And MIT will do
more to make America and the world a better place in the 21st
century, as we continue our astonishing journey through the
information revolution -- a revolution that began not as our own
did here in Massachusetts, with a single shot heard around the
world, but instead was sparked by many catalysts -- in labs and
libraries, start-ups and blue chips, homes and even dorm rooms
across America and around the world.
I come today not to talk about the new marvels of
science and engineering. You know far more about them than I do.
Instead I come to MIT, an epicenter of the seismic shifts in our
economy and society, to talk about how we can and must apply
enduring American values to this revolutionary time; about the
responsibilities we all have as citizens to include every
American in the promise of this new age.
From the start, our nation's greatest mission has
been the fulfillment of our founders' vision -- opportunity for
all, best secured by free people, working together toward better
tomorrows and what they called "a more perfect union."
Americans believe the spark of possibility burns
deep within every child, that ordinary people can do
extraordinary things. Our history can be understood as a
constant striving on foreign fields and factory floors, in town
halls and the corridors of Congress, to widen that circle of
opportunity, to deepen the meaning of our freedom, to perfect our
union to make real the promise of America. Every previous
generation has been called upon to meet this challenge. And as
we approach a new century and a new millennium, your generation
must answer the call.
You enter the world of your tomorrows at a
remarkable moment for America. Our country has the lowest crime
rates in 25 years, the smallest welfare rolls in 27 years, the
lowest unemployment in 28 years, the lowest inflation in 32
years, the smallest national government in 35 years, and the
highest rate of home ownership in our history. Such a remarkable
time, a period of renewal, comes along all too rarely in life, as
you will see. It gives us both the opportunity and the profound
responsibility to address the larger, longer-term challenges to
your future.
This spring I am speaking to graduates around the
country about three of those challenges. Last month I went to
the Naval Academy to talk about the new security challenges of
the 21st century -- terrorism, organized crime and drug
trafficking, global climate change, the spread of weapons of mass
destruction. Next week at Portland State in Oregon I will
discuss how our nation's third great wave of immigration can
either strengthen and unite America or weaken and divide it. And
I thank Dr. Ho for what he said about immigration and our
immigrants.
Today, I ask you to focus on the challenges of the
Information Age. The dimensions of the Information Revolution
and its limitless possibilities are widely accepted and generally
understood, even by lay people. But to make the most of it we
must also acknowledge that there are challenges, and we must make
important choices. We can extend opportunity to all Americans or
leave many behind. We can erase lines of inequity or etch them
indelibly. We can accelerate the most powerful engine of growth
and prosperity the world has ever known, or allow the engine to
stall.
History has taught us that choices cannot be
deferred; they are made by action or inaction. There is no such
thing as virtual opportunity. We cannot point and click our way
to a better future. If we are to fulfill the complete promise of
this new age, we must do more.
Already the Information Age is transforming the way
we work. The high-tech industry employs more people today than
the auto industry did at its height in the 1950s. Auto and steel
industries in turn have been revived by new technologies. Among
those making the most use of technology R&D are traditional
American enterprises such as construction, transportation, and
retail stores.
It's transforming the way we live. The typical
American home now has much more -- as much computing power as all
of MIT did in the year most of the seniors here were born. It is
transforming the way we communicate. On any business day, more
than 30 times as many messages are delivered by e-mail as by the
postal service. And today, this ceremony is being carried live
on the Internet so that people all over the world can join in.
It is transforming the way we learn. With the DVD
technology available today, we can store more reference material
in a 3-inch stack of disks than in all the stacks of Hayden
Library. It is transforming the way our society works, giving
millions of Americans the opportunity to join in the enterprise
of building our nation as they fulfill their dreams.
The tools we develop today are bringing down
barriers of race and gender, of income and age. The disabled are
opening long closed doors of school, work, and human possibility.
Small businesses are competing in worldwide markets once reserved
only for powerful corporations. Before too long, our children
will be able to stretch a hand across a keyboard and reach every
book ever written, every painting every painted, every symphony
ever controlled.
For the very first time in our history,it is now
possible for a child in the most isolated inner-city neighborhood
or rural community to have access to the same world of knowledge
at the same instant as the child in the most affluent suburb.
Imagine the revolutionary democratizing potential this can bring.
Imagine the enormous benefits to our economy, our society, if not
just a fraction, but all young people can master this set of 21st
century skills.
Just a few miles of here is the working class
community of East Sommerville. It has sometimes struggled to
meet the needs of population that is growing more diverse by the
day. But at East Sommerville Community School, well-trained
technology teachers with equipment and support from Time Warner
Cable have begun to give 1st to 8th-graders and early and
enormous boost in life. First graders are producing small books
on computers. Sixth graders are producing documentaries. The
technology has so motivated them that almost all the 6th graders
showed up at school to work on their computer projects over
winter break.
That small miracle can be replicated in every
school, rich and poor, across America. Yet, today, affluent
schools are almost three times as likely to have Internet access
in the classroom; white students more than twice as likely as
black students to have computers in their homes.
We know from hard experience that unequal education
hardens into unequal prospects. We know the Information Age will
accelerate this trend. The three fastest growing careers in
America are all in computer related fields, offering far more
than average pay. Happily, the digital divide has begun to
narrow, but it will not disappear of its own accord. History
teaches us that even as new technologies create growth and new
opportunity, they can heighten economic inequalities and sharpen
social divisions. That is, after all, exactly what happened with
the mechanization of agriculture and in the Industrial
Revolution.
As we move into the Information Age we have it
within our power to avoid these developments. We can reap the
growth that comes from revolutionary technologies and use them to
eliminate, not to widen, the disparities that exist. But until
every child has a computer in the classroom and a teacher
well-trained to help, until every student has the skills to tap
the enormous resources of the Internet, until every high-tech
company can find skilled workers to fill its high-wage jobs,
America will miss the full promise of the Information Age.
We cannot allow this age of opportunity to be
remembered also for the opportunities that were missed. Every
day, we wake up and know that we have a challenge; now we must
decide how to meet it. Let me suggest three things.
First, we must help you to ensure that America
continues to lead the revolution in science and technology.
Growth is a prerequisite for opportunity, and scientific research
is a basic prerequisite for growth. Just yesterday in Japan,
physicists announced a discovery that tiny neutrinos have mass.
Now, that may not mean much to most Americans, but it may change
our most fundamental theories -- from the nature of the smallest
subatomic particles to how the universe itself works, and indeed
how it expands.
This discovery was made, in Japan, yes, but it had
the support of the investment of the U.S. Department of Energy.
This discovery calls into question the decision made in
Washington a couple of years ago to disband the super-conducting
supercollider, and it reaffirms the importance of the work now
being done at the Fermi National Acceleration Facility in
Illinois.
The larger issue is that these kinds of findings
have implications that are not limited to the laboratory. They
affect the whole of society -- not only our economy, but our very
view of life, our understanding of our relations with others, and
our place in time.
In just the past four years, information technology
has been responsible for more than a third of our economic
expansion. Without government-funded research, computers, the
Internet, communications satellites wouldn't have gotten started.
When I became President, the Internet was the province of
physicists, funded by a government research project. There were
only 50 sites in the world. Now, as all of you know, we are
adding pages to the Worldwide Web at the rate of over 100,000 an
hour, and 100 million new users will come on this year. It all
started with research, and we must do more.
In the budget I submit to Congress for the year 2000
I will call for significant increases in computing and
communications research. I have directed Dr. Neal Lane, my new
Advisor for Science and Technology, to work with our nation's
research community to prepare a detailed plan for my review.
Over the past 50 years our commitment to science has
strengthen this country in countless ways. Scientific research
has created vast new industries, millions of jobs, allowed
America to produce the world's most bountiful food supplies and
remarkable tools for fighting disease. Think of what today's
investments will yield. Dr. Ho will unravel the agonizing
riddles of AIDS. There will be a cure for cancer; a flourishing
economy that will produce much less pollution and move back from
the brink of potentially devastating global warming. High-speed
wireless networks that bring distance learning, tele-medicine and
economic opportunity to every rural community in America.
That is why, even as we balanced our budget for the
first time in 29 years, we have increased our investments in
science. This year I asked Congress for the largest increase in
research funding in history -- not just for a year, but sustained
over five years. It is a core commitment that must be part of
how every American, regardless of political party or personal
endeavor, thinks about our nation and its mission. (Applause.)
Thank you -- those are the people who received the research
grants over there. (Laughter.)
I want you to know that we are also working to
address the threat to our prosperity posed by the Year 2000 Bug.
I tried and tried to find out what the class hack project was for
the Class of '98 and I failed. But I did learn that in the year
2000, the graduating class is proposing to roll all of our
computers back by 100 years. And I am determined to thwart you.
I will do my best. (Laughter.)
The second thing we have to do is to make sure that
the opportunities of the Information Age belong to all our
children. Every young American must have access to these
technologies. Two years ago in my State of the Union address, I
challenged our nation to connect every classroom to the Internet
by the year 2000. Thanks to unprecedented cooperation at
national, state, and local levels, an outpouring of support from
active citizens, and the decreasing costs of computers, we're on
track to meet this goal.
Four years ago when you came to MIT, barely three
percent of America's classrooms were connected. By this time
next year, we will have connected well over half our classrooms
including 100 percent of the classrooms in the nation's 50
largest urban school districts. (Applause.)
But it is not enough to connect the classrooms. The
services have to be accessed. You may have heard recently about
something called the e-rate. It's the most crucial initiative
we've launched to help connect our schools, our libraries, and
our rural health centers to the Internet. Now some businesses
have called on Congress to repeal the initiative. They say our
nation cannot afford to provide discounts to these institutions
of learning and health by raising a billion dollars or so a year
from service charges on telecommunications companies -- something
that was agreed to in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that
passed with overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both Houses.
I say we cannot afford not to have an e-rate.
Thousands of poor schools and libraries and rural health centers
are in desperate need of discounts. If we really believed that
we all belong in the Information Age, then, at this sunlit moment
of prosperity, we can't leave anyone behind in the dark.
Every one of you who understands this I urge to
support the e-rate. Every one of you here who came from a poor
inner-city neighborhood, who came from a small rural school
district, who came perhaps from another country where this was
just a distant dream, you know that there are poor children now
who may never have a chance to go to MIT unless someone reaches
out and gives them this kind of opportunity. Every child in
America deserves the chance to participate in the information
revolution. (Applause.)
The third thing we have to do is to make sure that
all the computers and the connections in the world don't go to
waste because our children actually have 21st century skills.
For five years now I've done my best to make education our number
one domestic priority, creating HOPE Scholarships, expanding Pell
Grants, to make the 13th and 14th years of education as universal
as the first 12 are today. We've passed tax credits, reformed
the student loan program, expanded work-study, created AmeriCorps
to open the doors of college to every young person who is willing
to work for it.
We're working to make our public schools the best in
the world, with smaller classes, better facilities, more master
teachers and charter schools, higher standards, and end to social
promotion. But the new economy also demands that our nation
commit to technology literacy for every child. We shouldn't let
a child graduate from middle school anymore without knowing how
to use new technologies to learn.
Already, 10 states with an eye to the future have
made technology literacy a requirement of graduation from high
school. I believe we should meet this goal in the middle school
years. I believe every child in every state should leave middle
school able to use the most current tools for learning, research,
communication, and collaboration. And we will help every state
to meet this goal.
If a state commits to adopt a technology literacy
requirement, then we will help to provide the training that the
teachers need. I propose to create a team of trained technology
experts for every American middle school in every one of these
states, and to create competitions over the next three years to
encourage the development of high-quality educational software
and educational web sites by students and professors in
commercial software companies.
All students should feel as comfortable with a
keyboard as a chalkboard; as comfortable with a laptop as a
textbook. It is critical to ensuring that they all have
opportunity in the world of the 21st century.
Today I pledge the resources and unrelenting efforts
of our nation to renew our enduring values in the Information
Age. But the challenges that we face cannot be met by government
alone. We can only fulfill the promise of this revolution if we
work together in the same way it was launched together, with
creativity, resolve, a restless spirit of innovation.
While this mission requires the efforts of every
citizen, those who fuel and enjoy the unparalleled prosperity of
this moment have special responsibilities. The thriving new
companies that line Route 128 in Silicon Valley -- I challenge
them to use their power to empower others, to invest in a school,
embrace a community in need, endow an eager young mind with
opportunity; not to rest until every one of our children is
technology literate. Many of you are doing such work already and
many of them are; but America needs all such companies to
participate.
And, finally, to the graduates of the class of 1998,
I, too, offer my congratulations and, as your President, my
gratitude for your commitment, for challenges conquered, for
projects completed, for goals reached and even surpassed. You,
your parents and your friends should be very proud today, and
very hopeful, for all the possibilities of this new age are open
to you. You are at the peak of your powers and the world will
rightly reward you for the work you do.
But to make the very most of your life and the
opportunities you have been given, you, too, must rise to your
responsibility to give something back to America of what you have
been given. As the years pass your generation will be judged and
you will begin to judge yourselves not only on what you do for
yourself and your family, but on the contributions you make to
others -- to your country, your communities, your generation of
children. When you turn your good fortune into a chance for
others, you then will not only be leaders in science and
industry, you will become the leaders of America. Twenty-first
century America belongs to you -- take good care of it.
Thank you and God bless you. (Applause.)
END 12:21 P.M. EDT
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