GLOBAL TREND-SETTERS AND DECISION-MAKERS

IN KNOWDLEDGE TECHNOLOGIES

Prioritisation: Where Should Turkey Focus Its Energies?

STACY J. SMITH

CIO, Intel Corporation

I should start this off by saying if I could accurately predict technology in 2023, I wouldn’t need to work for a living anymore. The best way I think to look at this is if you go back in time to mid 80’s which is what we are talking about and you project forward, you can kind of see the trends, computers then were very expensive and current dollars to buy computer back then would have been the equivalent between 13 & 15 thousand dollars so only the very wealthy had access to this kind of technology. The computers you had didn’t connect to anything , they would stand alone with apology to my friend from Microsoft here, you are user experience consisted of looking at blinking cursor and typing in some words to make it do something, typically there were no hard drive in this computer, you would be swapping out floppy disk to get it to do anything, if you look at the phone business back then, there were few cell phones or we called it mobile phones back then, they probably weighed about 7 pounds would have virtually no battery life and it wouldn’t be uncommon that you’d get …..for using these phones that were in a multiple thousand dollars for a monthly use if you were using it a lot. If you then project that forward what’s happened today computers are connected all over the place we have over billion computers connected to the Internet, the cost of communication has dropped something that almost approaching free, the amount of power that we can put into people’s hands to allow them to collaborate and communicate access information was something that we couldn’t even vision back in the late 80’s. I have to say another big change in late 80’s when I joined Intel, I had totally brown hair back then so if I put that forward I am little scared to think in 18 more years. The technology will continue to evolve and will continue to get cheaper and it will continue to enable us to do things that w can’t really imagine, I think the thing that resonated with me the most today was the Prime Minister’s comments on, it is not getting the exact vision right, it is in setting up the process such that we’re following a road map towards success and I think when I look at the things around the world and the things I see starting in Turkey that contribute to that it is really creating an environment where the educational system is teaching people to be capable and competent in using technology and I think the key thing that has to happen there is really getting the teachers comfortable in integrating technology into classroom, it is often the case now that 10-11 year old students are much more comfortable with the technology then the teachers are because they grew up with it so we have to train the teachers to integrate technology. I applaud Turkey’s efforts here in terms of teach to the future programs and training teachers I think over 25.000 teachers were trained with our help and we have goals to do several thousand teachers in the future. The next thing is investment in infrastructure that is fundamental in terms of enabling this knowledge economy and the last thing is having a proactive government policy that helps get technology out there again I applaud Turkey’s efforts here in terms of what you are doing, in terms of trying to get affordable computers into the hands of teachers, we seen affords around the world in Thailand, they are making similar program available to every citizen of Thailand, they’re selling hundreds of thousands inexpensive computers to residents, we see things like that in UK now so I think those 3 things; It is education, it is infrastructure and it is the government policy that encourages the use of technology. That’s what really puts you on the road for whatever the technology looks out in 2023.

Question (Ethem Sancak): Forum İstanbul’un Başkan Yardımcısıyım ve işadamıyım. Sorum diğer konuklara. Önümüzdeki yıllarda muhassır medeniyeti yakalama çabamıza destek verip, önemli bir üs haline getirecekler mi kendi şirketleri açısından ülkemizi? Bu çabamıza katkı yapacaklar mı? Üretimlerini Türkiye’de odaklamak, dünyanın başka coğrafyalarına buradan hizmet vermek. Çünkü yetkinliğimizi gördüler.

At Intel we have been run by our chairman and his statement is “only the paranoids survive” so I am going to tell you the good news and I am going to tell you why you should be paranoid. The good news is that we are absolutely making investments here I think you see it across the panel that there is attractive climate here and there are many things going for Turkey in terms of very young and vibrant work force an entrepreneurial society, at the cross roads between the West and East and also into the Middle East and I think that all plays in Turkey’s favor. At Intel we’ve set up Turkey as our head quarters for the Middle East and Africa region including Turkey of course, we are making investments in various places and discussing others. The reason I think you need to be paranoid is something fundamental has happened in the last 10 years in the world which is China and India and Russia has joined the world economy. 10 years ago that was not the case, if you look across those economies it is about 3 billion people so it is about half of the economy of the world now and internet connects everything together, it allows knowledge jobs go anywhere. Across those three countries it is hard to get the exact number but there is at least 100’s millions of engineers and technical graduates, you look at a country like China, they put out 6 times mathematical engineering graduates then the US is. It is an incredible investment opportunity and it is a huge market so I think the path that you are on in Turkey of setting a vision and then creating the road map that is making the improvements in education and improvement in infrastructure, the government policy that attracts investment is how you compete in this hyper competitive world of future.

Soru (Özkan Yurdakul): ISEC Eskişehir. Microsoft ve Intel gibi iki büyük global firmanın yetkililerine soru sormak istiyorum. Bu büyük 18 yıllık teknolojik ve büyük değişimi yönetecek olan bugünün gençlerine dair bu tip global firmaların ve devletlerin ne gibi stratejileri ve politikaları olmak zorunda? Çünkü bu büyük bir değişim ve bizler ben kendim açıkçası 18 sene sonra sizlerin yerinde olmayı hayal eden biri olarak bu tip stratejilerinizi ve politikalarınızı merak ediyorum. Teşekkürler.