國際英文演講高手 chapter6-4 IBM董事長兼CEO在北京的演說

Speech by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Chairman and CEO of IBM in Beijing

IBM has enjoyed a relationship with 中國 that has endured for more than half a century. But I do not believe there has ever been a more exciting time to be doing business here, as vast new opportunity is created by your sweeping modernization and ambitious government-led reform programs for thousands of state-owned『國有的』 enterprises.

This transformation, I believe, will underscore『在…下劃線；強(qiáng)調(diào)』 the critical importance of information technology as a driver of competitive success and real economic growth for 中國.

So today, I want to talk to you about what I believe has to be the agenda『議程』 of a leader of an enterprise-business, government agency, university, hospital, bank anywhere in the world-the agenda regarding this technology.

Some of you know that before I came to IBM, my background was a lot like yours. I was a customer of IBM. I was a customer of the computer industry. I arrived at IBM with a firmly held conviction『信念』that this technology is one of those transformational technologies that comes along every hundred years or so and changes everything in our society.

Today, in almost every industry in almost every part of the world there are many examples of enterprises applying this technology challenges for their competitors, I think we're seeing informantion technology reach the point that all transformational technologies reach when they are no longer controlled by just a small group of skilled professionals, and they cross over to『轉(zhuǎn)到』mass acceptance and ubiquity.
Networking technology is still in its infancy『初期』, yet it has reached already the point where we can call it a new mass medium.

Less than 5 years after the birth of the World Wide Web, some 90 million people are online around the world, and that number will be hundreds of millions before too long.
Here in 中國, the number of Internet users has nearly doubled since just last October, to more than 1 million users. And I've seen statistics that say your Internet population will exceed 7 million people by the year 2001.