演讲视频:英国首相谈下一代的政府_演讲

演讲视频:英国首相谈下一代的政府

Next part of the cod history lesson, the lovely picture of the British Industrial Revolution. Suddenly, all sorts of transport, travel, information were possible, and this gave birth to, what I like to call, the bureaucratic age. And hopefully this slide is going to morph beautifully. There we are. Suddenly, you have the big, strong, central state. It was able, but only it was able, to organize health care, education, policing, justice. And it was the world of, as I say, not local power, but now central power. It had sucked all that power up from the localities. It was able to do that itself.

The next great stage, which all of you are so familiar with, the massive information revolution. Just consider this one fact. 100 years ago, sending these 10 words cost 50 dollars. Right now, here we are linked up to Long Beach and everywhere else, and all these secret locations for a fraction of that cost, and we can send and receive huge quantities of information without it costing anything. So we're now living in a post-bureaucratic age, where genuine people power is possible.

Now, what does this mean for our politics, for our public services, for our government? Well I can't, in the time I've got, give huge numbers of examples, but let me just give a few of the ways life can change. And this is so obvious, in a way, because you think about how all of you have changed the way we shop, the way we travel, the way that business is done. That is already happened; the information and internet revolution has actually gone all the way through our societies in so many different ways, but it hasn't in every way, yet touched our government.