Good evening! It is a great honor for me to share this stage with the Lord Mayor, chief executive of Hannover, with Mr. Yang, and in a few minutes with Chancellor Kohl.
各位晚上好!非常榮幸能夠與漢諾威市市長、Yang 先生共同出席今晚的會議,非常榮幸能與科爾總理共同度過這個美好的夜晚。
I have been looking forward to this evening for a long time, because I have known for many years how important CeBIT is to the global Information Technology industry.
我一直在盼望今晚的到來,因為很多年以前我就知道 CeBIT 對全球信息技術(shù)產(chǎn)業(yè)有多么重要。
So before I go any further I want to thank you very much for inviting me to participate in this important forum.
因此在演講之前我首先要對你們邀請我參加這個重要的會議表示衷心的感謝。
Now I have given a lot of thought as to what I would say to you this evening. On the one hand, I am here as a representative of the Information Technology industry on the event that is bigger by orders of magnitude than any other technology exhibit.
對于今晚要說的內(nèi)容我想過很多。一方面,我是作為信息技術(shù)產(chǎn)業(yè)界的代表出席這次比其它任何技術(shù)展覽會的規(guī)模都大的會議的。
That is quite a statement in a industry that is good at many things, especially celebrating its own creations.
我們的工業(yè)是一個對很多事情都很拿手 的工業(yè),尤其善于慶祝其自己的創(chuàng)造發(fā)明。
On the other hand, like most of you, I have spent most of my professional life as a customer of this industry.
另一方面,和你們大多數(shù)人一樣,我的絕大部分職業(yè)生涯也是作為這個產(chǎn)業(yè)的消費者渡過的。
So I know that after the splash and promises comes the harsh light of morning and often the customer is left standing alone wondering what happened, or as the head of one of our most important German customers put it, "Yours is an industry that is very good at weddings and not so good at marriages."
因此,我知道一通承諾之后必將是黎明眩目的陽光。消費者常常被撇在一邊,琢磨著發(fā)生了什么事,或者象我們一個非常重要的德國客戶的首腦所說的那樣,“你們的產(chǎn)業(yè)好象對結(jié)婚典禮非常在行,但對婚姻卻不太懂。”
So tonight, while I will talk about the power and potential of Information Technology, I hope the temper of my remarks with the perspective I had when I came to IBM five years ago, the perspective of a customer.
因此,雖然今晚我要談?wù)勑畔⒓夹g(shù)的力量和潛力,但是我希望我能夠象五年前剛到 IBM 時一樣,站在消費者的立場上表達(dá)我的觀點。
Now it is certainly easy to see why raw technology dominates these events. It is adoptive; it is breathtaking; and it is penetrating every aspect of our lives.
純技術(shù)主宰這次展覽會的原因是很簡單的,因為現(xiàn)在的純技術(shù)是可以被接受的,是令人驚奇的,而且它已經(jīng)滲透到了我們生活的各個方面。
Today there are more PCs sold annually in the world than TVs or cars. The typical luxury automobile today has 20 to 30 microprocessors in it, more computing power by far than was inside the landing-craft that took the first astronauts to the moon.
現(xiàn)在全世界每年銷售的 PC 數(shù)量比電視機(jī)和汽車多。今天典型的豪華汽車中有 20 到 30 個微處理器,比那個把第一批宇航員送上月球的登月飛船的計算能力還強(qiáng)。
Last year there were five times more E-mail messages sent than the number of pieces of paper mail delivered worldwide, 2.7 trillion E-mails.
去年全球發(fā)送的電子郵件數(shù)量比傳統(tǒng)的紙郵件數(shù)量多五倍,達(dá)到 27000 億封。我的信箱容量就總是不夠用。我們還可以從另外一個角度看看現(xiàn)在都發(fā)生了些什么事。
And I got more than my share. There is another way to look at what is going on. In the mid-1970s, the first super computers appeared.
七十年代中期出現(xiàn)了最初的超級計算機(jī),計算能力是大約每秒一億次,價格大約是一百萬美元。
They were capable of about 100 million calculations per second. And they cost about one million dollars. Today the laptop computer that college students carry in their bags, packs, is twice as fast as that first super computer, and it costs less than 3000 dollars.
而如今大學(xué)生的書包里裝著的膝上型計算機(jī)的計算能力是那種超級計算機(jī)的兩倍,價格卻只有不到 3000 美元。數(shù)據(jù)存儲技術(shù)的發(fā)展趨勢更是令人瞠目。
The trend in data storage is even more impressive. In the early 80s, the standard unit of computer storage, one mega-byte, or one million bytes of information, cost about 100 dollars. Today, it is 10 cents. In two years, it will cost 2 cents. T
八十年代初期,一個標(biāo)準(zhǔn)單位的計算機(jī)存儲能力,即 1MB,或者說 1 百萬字節(jié),售價是 100 美元,而現(xiàn)在卻只要 10 美分,兩年內(nèi)還將降到 2 美分。
hese gains are driven by continuous advances in how we pack information into smaller and smaller spaces.
這種結(jié)果是在技術(shù)不斷進(jìn)步的推動下產(chǎn)生的,我們可以把信息存儲到越來越小的空間。
If the US Library of Congress could shrink its collections of 17 million books by the same factor we just discussed, it could replace 800 kilometers of shelf space with less than 40 meters of space.
如果把這種技術(shù)用到美國國會圖書館的 1700 百萬冊存書上,其書架長度將由 800 公里變成不到 40 米。
These advances are going to continue and accelerate the rate microprocessors, storage, communications, memory, and all the other engines that are propelling this industry or continue to lead to the products of the faster, smaller, and less expensive, just as they have for 30 years.
這種進(jìn)步將繼續(xù)下去,并且會加速微處理器、存儲設(shè)備、通信、內(nèi)存以及所有其它正在推動信息產(chǎn)業(yè)前進(jìn)的“發(fā)動機(jī)”式的產(chǎn)品的發(fā)展,或者會繼續(xù)創(chuàng)造出更快、更小、更便宜的產(chǎn)品。
But as we stand here today, the opening of CeBIT, we are on the threshold of a very important change and the evolution of this industry.
過去 30 年的情況就是如此。然而當(dāng)我們今天站在這里,出席 CeBIT 的開幕式的時候,我們面對的是一場業(yè)界非常重要的變化和革命。
In many ways, this industry, a very emitory industry, is about to play out in its most important dimension. That is because the technology has become so powerful and so pervasive that its future impact on people and governments and all institutions will dwarf what has happened today.
在很多方面,信息產(chǎn)業(yè)將成為最重要的產(chǎn)業(yè)。這是因為信息技術(shù)已經(jīng)變得如此強(qiáng)大、如此普遍,以致于未來它對人們、政府和各個機(jī)構(gòu)的影響將使目前發(fā)生的事相形見絀。