[photopress:IT_HowardCharney_1.jpg,full,alignright]Senior Vice President Howard Charney of Cisco Systems is a well-educated cove. He believes that a major wave of innovation is due and said, ‘No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.’
It is generally believed he was quoting Victor Hugo. Well, not exactly. It is in the quotation books and, as is often the case, the quotation books are wrong.
Victor Marie Hugo was writing in French and the exact quotation is: ‘On resiste a l’invasion des armees; on ne resiste pas a l’invasion des idees.’ Which can be translated as: ‘A stand can be made against invasion by an army; no stand can be made against invasion by an idea.’
So close, but no cigar.
However, the mistranslation is so widely used that Howard Charney should be forgiven. He was speaking in Australia and thus could be reassured that none of the IT journalists there would have the foggiest idea what the correct quotation should be. Or, indeed, have heard of Victor Hugo.
Howard Charney said that the world was now split into ‘information-rich’ developed countries and ‘information-poor’ developing countries. And that it is on the precipice of a major wave of innovation.
His argument is that greater access to information will improve living standards by removing isolation, which will, in turn, stem the growing disparity between productivity growth rates of information-poor and -rich nations — a gap that, according to an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development report, has doubled in the last decade.
So where does Cisco come in? Glad you asked that. For developing nations to improve life, they will need networks — Cisco’s networks, he hopes — regardless of whether the networks are based on fiber-optic lines or wireless technology.
Then the whole world, like Howard Charney, will be able to misquote Victor Hugo and sound intellectual.
Source: C/Net news.com