More Intelligence Needed

An international businessman joined two renowned mathematicians and one of the nation's leading social scientists yesterday to discuss how massive improvements in technology will influence the development of the world's nations.

The discussion came during "Information Technology and Society," a symposium held in the Science Center. Ford Professor of Social Sciences Daniel Bell, former IBM Executive Lewis M. Branscomb, MIT Professor Michael L. Dertouzos and McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics Anthony G. Ottinger '51 participated.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz contended at yesterday's Tercentenary Theater convocation that oppressive monitoring of Soviet citizens hamstrings that nation's attempts to develop new technology.

Each panelist mentioned that statement and all called inaccurate.

"Soviet science will not be backward because it is under controlled systems," Oettinger said. He said the Soviet Union's increasing emphasis on technology development could foster democracy because "it will enlarge the sphere of those people who will be consulted in making decisions."

The panel devoted a large portion of its remarks to the implications of "compunication," the process that, in effect, allows computers to talk with one another.

Bell spoke at length about the challenges computers present to national governments.

Many national governments, he said, lack the expertise necessary to use computer technology. Such nations could suffer unless they can protect themselves from more advanced ones which could use technology to exploit them, Bell said.

"No country can completely control its own currency," Bell said, noting that brokers can purchase the currencies of all nations from a computer in one central office. He said what control nations do have will erode as traders make greater use of technology that is now available.

Dertouzous, an expert on technological change, described innovations being made in information processing.

He said he doubted that by the year 2000 truly revolutionary advances would be brought about because today's computers "need to be more intelligent."