Tech's inroads to a “global society” will influence its governance, Mr Brown said
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford
Technology means that foreign policy will never be the same again, the prime minister said at a meeting of leading thinkers in Oxford.
The power of technology – such as blogs – meant that the world could no longer be run by “elites”, Mr Brown said.
Policies must instead be formed by listening to the opinions of people “who are blogging and communicating with people around the world”, he said.
Mr Brown's comments came during a surprise appearance at TED Global.
“That in my view gives us the first opportunity as a community to fundamentally change the world,” he told the TED Global (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference.
“Foreign policy can never be the same again.”
Global change
The prime minister talked about the power of technology to unite the world and offer ways to solve some of its most pressing problems.
He said that issues such as climate change could not be solved alone, adding that digital technology offered a way to create a “global society”.
Gordon Brown
“Massive changes in technology have allowed the possibility of people linking up around the world,” he said.
In particular, he said, digital communications offered the possibility of finding common ground “with people we will never meet”.
“We have the means to take collective action and take collective action together.”
He talked about recent events in Iran and Burma and how the global community – using blogs and technologies such as Twitter – was able to bring events to widespread attention.
He also highlighted the role of technology in recent elections in Zimbabwe.
“Because people were able to take mobile phone photographs of what was happening at polling stations, it was impossible for [Robert Mugabe] to fix that election in the way that he wanted to do.”
But Mr Brown also stressed the need to create new organisations to tackle environmental, financial, development and security problems.
“We are the first generation to be able to do this,” he told the conference. “We shouldn't lose the chance.”
He said that older institutions founded after the Second World War, such as the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund, were now “out of date”.
“You can't deal with environmental problems through the existing institutions,” he told the conference.
