Nobel winner: Internet might have stopped Hitler

KARL RITTER
Associated Press
December 8, 2008

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) – The spread of information on the Internet has given the world a new tool to forestall conflicts, Nobel literature prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio said Sunday.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

In his Nobel lecture to the Swedish Academy, the 68-year-old Frenchman said an earlier introduction of information technology could even have prevented World War II.

“Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler’s criminal plot would not have succeeded – ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day,” he said.

Still, the globe-trotting writer noted that access to computers remains a luxury to many in the developing world and said eradicating hunger and illiteracy remain the “two great urgent tasks” of humankind.

“Literacy and the struggle against hunger are connected, closely interdependent,” he said. “One cannot succeed without the other. Both of them require, indeed urge, us to act.”

Le Clezio was praised by the Nobel jury at the Swedish Academy for his “poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy” in such works as “Terra Amata,”"The Book of Flights” and “Desert.”

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