It was quite an experience to be invited to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland (January 22-28, 2003), a meeting with so many world leaders from business, government, not-for-profit social organizations and academia. The organized program was interesting and the people in attendance were even more interesting. It was an opportunity for me to find out a lot of things about topics I know little about, and don't have time to pursue in my daily activities, but things that mean a lot to many people on this planet.
The theme of this year's forum was "Trust". There was a lot of talk about trust, but in the end people felt that there had been a big erosion of trust in the past year on almost every front; political leaders, business leaders and between developed and developing nations. The USA took a big beating in almost every area, but the biggest problem that people attending the Forum had was the US militarism regarding Iraq. Also of great concern was the world economy and when/how it would recover. I was told in conversation in the hallways that this was the most gloomy Forum meeting that people can remember. So it was good to hear from notables such as Shimon Peres of Israel, King Abdullah of Jordan and Queen Rania of Jordan giving hopeful messages for peace, and the final words of the Conference given by Elie Wiesel about the importance of hope, and the need for people and nations to want to go on even when things look bad.
Some of the other people who were exhuberent and gave messages of hope was President Lula of Brazil and the President of Argentina. Lula gave a talk emphasizing the importance of development in Brazil and he said that free trade was more important than aid. His talk was inspiring and was well received, but there weren't many specifics. Likewise the President of Argentina gave a similar message, also without specifics. The president of Argentina in a breakfast meeting that I attended spoke to the great economic problems that his country had been experiencing, but tried hard to paint a picture of hope that the worst was over and that their economy was on the road to recovery. It was hard for me to judge how valid these comments were, but the economic ministers involved in the discussion made presentations that seemed convincing to me. I heard many times in Davos the plea for free trade rather than for more aid from countries in the developing world.
My impressions from discussions at Davos on the economic situation in the Far East point to serious problems in Japan in the next few years. While day by day living in Japan seems to proceed normally, the economic national leadership was strongly criticized by many speakers, including Japanese economists in academia, particularly younger people. It seemed that many people agreed on the symptoms of malaise and even on solutions with a high probability of being effective technically, but these proposals did not seem politically or socially acceptable. The economic progress of China was frequently mentioned.
The role of science and technology at the World Form is small overall and largely concerns, information technology, environmental issues, some biotechnology and biomedical research. There was quite a lot of interest/attendance in the nanotechnology session, and I felt very positive about my attendance and contribution to these sessions. However, the level of discussion was at a very elementary level, even though the audience contained several highly knowledgeable people. A significant amount of time was spent in acquainting the audience with the small size of nano objects and giving the audience a feel for what this length scale really meant.
Other topics for comment: Impressive Women CEOs and leaders of nations. Progress is being made in Africa. Science has a role to play in developing nations, but this could be done better.