Washington -- The power of information to move and influence people has changed fundamentally and even though it is altering the foundations of the world we are living in, the information revolution has only just begun, says John Gage, chief researcher and director of the science office at Sun Microsystems.

In an October 3 keynote address to the "NetDiplomacy 2000: Conference on the Internet and Diplomacy" at the U.S. Department of State, Gage paraphrased remarks by Evelyn Lieberman, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, saying power no longer rests with secret information.

"Today, in Paris," Gage told his audience, "the Secretary (of State) is bringing the Israeli and Palestinian parties together. Everything they say will affect whether people live and die on the streets in Israel and it will be reported."

Addressing his audience of public diplomacy specialists, Gage said, "The point of diplomacy and the point of what you do is to convey information to people, listen to people ... use your analytic capabilities and then ... convey the overall picture to others -- to arrive at consensus, (to) arrive at action. You are the synthesizers.

"If you are cut off, even a little bit from information, you can't do what you are supposed to do," he cautioned.

Turning to the information revolution in which public diplomacy functions, Gage reminded everyone that it is a "whole new world" in information technology.

On October 26, 2000, Gage noted, SONY will announce "Playstation Two," its $299 powerful general purpose computer built for Internet access.

"The numbers are simple," he told his audience. "The poor SONY people cannot make enough ...." of that reasonably priced product.

"They expected to sell five million by the end of December. They will now sell maybe a million or two million, because they cannot make them fast enough. They expected to make 20 million by March. They will have 10 million by March. Ten million times 30 gigabites, is 300,000 terabytes of online storage available to everyone with $300 .... Does that change the entire process of providing information to people?" he rhetorically asked.

An advantage of the SONY product, he said, is that it is relatively cheap, reliable and shockproof, having been ruggedly built for a user base of 10-year-old children.

"This is something new. We suddenly have a point of access," he said. Information loaded on disks for the "Playstation Two" can be used to convey, in the local language, important health information in some part of the developing world on how to rehydrate a child or help a village medically treat malaria.

"In the past with PCs (personal computers) it was too expensive and too fragile", but not anymore. "We are entering a new realm of small devices," he said.

Gage also pointed to the new low-cost DoKoMo cell phones first made in Japan 18 months ago.

"Today they have 11 million subscribers" and have sold 1.2 million inexpensive cell phone units "just in the last four weeks," he said. "When you pick the thing up your little cell phone not only gets your e-mail, it also lets you browse all of your Web pages."

"We are in a new world here," he repeated, while adding that leaders in the developing world know it. He cited remarks at the United Nations recently by Malian President Alpha Oumar Konare in which that leader stressed the importance information technology plays in socio-economic growth and the development of a nation's economy.

The G-77 group of developing countries agree, Gage said, that the "first ray of hope to alter the lives of those in the world's poorest countries comes with information technology."

Continuing his change theme, Gage said the entire lineup of the world's largest telephone companies has completely changed since June 1997 as the industry moves from fixed wire networks to cell networks. Presently, he added, "There are 30 countries in the world today with more cell than fixed because you do not have to put all of that money into" infrastructure.

Transmission speeds, he said, are also expected to increase by a factor of 10 in the next three years -- and then increase again at an even faster rate.

Information technology is changing at such a speed, he said, "that is hard to understand unless you do it."

The October 2-4 NetDiplomacy 2000 conference is an international forum to explore a broad range of policy issues associated with the Internet, information technologies, public diplomacy, and foreign affairs.