Sir Christopher Meyer: Well, thank you Regent for that warm introduction. I know some of you are absolutely fascinated to know details of my sartorial taste today. I can exclusively reveal to you all that by sheer accident, I am wearing a pair of red socks.

I'm truly delighted to be here. If one stays in Washington, DC, too long, you run the risk of catching Potomac Fever, which I'm told is a terminal condition, and it's great to be here and breathe in the clean, fresh air of Michigan.

I'm very pleased that as a representative of the British government, I can, with the University of Michigan, co-sponsor this auspicious and what I know is going to be a fascinating and illuminating symposium today and tomorrow. I would like to extend very warm thanks to President Lee Bollinger and the University for playing host to this event.

University of Michigan is of course a university that has good links with British academic institutions. The president and I were talking about this over lunch today. We hope to make these links even tighter, even richer, and I hope that perhaps this symposium will, in its own way, contribute to that. And as an old Cambridge man - unfortunately, I read history, which is light years away from, I think, the kinds of subjects we're going to be discussing over the next 36 hours - it's particularly gratifying to know that tomorrow morning, the very distinguished Roger Needham, pro-vice chancellor of Cambridge University and a professor there of computer systems, is going to be addressing the symposium on, and I quote, "Computer Research: Thinking It Up and Trying It Out."

I must include, of course, in my few remarks, a reference to the Marshall Scholarship scheme, to which Regent Power referred just now, which is approaching its 50th anniversary in the year 2003. What some of you may not know is that it was a former British Ambassador in Washington, Sir Roger Makins, who later became Lord Sherfield, who thought up the scheme in the early 1950s, which I think goes to show that every now and again an ambassador can be of some use.

I'm afraid that I can't take any credit, however, for thinking up and organizing today's event, and I think that a couple more acknowledgments are due. Today's symposium is very much the brainchild of Jim Shapiro, professor of microbiology at the University of Chicago, and of course Regent Philip Power, who is wearing gray socks - two distinguished Marshall Scholars. Jim first had the idea of celebrating the Marshall Scholarship on the 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan in this novel and useful way. And Jim also came up with the idea of addressing the future of information technology. Philip made the whole thing possible, in many ways, by committing to it his vision, his enthusiasm, his energy and not least his talent for fund-raising.

Now, looking at the list of speakers and participants lined up for the weekend, I'm delighted that the Marshall Scholarships are being celebrated by such an assembly of intellectual firepower. That is entirely appropriate, because the Marshall Scholars themselves are an extraordinary, impressive group of people. And as has already been said, the scheme has brought over approximately 1,000 of America's best and brightest to study in Britain over the last four decades. From time to time I have the honor of sitting on the selection committee, and I'm humbled by the talent of the American students who come forward for undergraduate and post-graduate study in the United Kingdom. So it is something of which we are enormously proud.

Last year, we celebrated the Marshall Plan's 50th anniversary in Washington by bringing together three outstanding Marshall alumni - Supreme Court Justice Breyer; Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Congressman John Spratt - for a special seminar at the Smithsonian on the role of government.

Now, what we're going to do today and tomorrow will of course have a much more practical and immediate bent, and one of the things that I shall be interested in is how this symposium can illuminate the way in which the Foreign Service - embassies, diplomats - can do their business. Because I can tell you that we are as convulsed by the information revolution as any other institution in our societies. It's going to revolutionize the way we project the United Kingdom in the United States, the way we get our message over, the way we give support for our exporters, the way we try to encourage Americans to invest in the United Kingdom. For those of you who may not be aware of this, we are already making our first tentative steps on the World Wide Web, on the Internet, trying to harness the information revolution to our efforts in the United States. And I would encourage you to look at our Web site at - take careful note - www.Britain-info.org. Now the first thing you'll see when you call that up is my face. Don't be put off. There may even be a message attached to it as well; don't be put off by that either. Press on, because you will find it an extraordinarily rich treasure trove of information on the United Kingdom in all its facets.

So my thanks again to all those who have made this event happen, and I wish you all a very successful, happy and enjoyable weekend. Thank you very much.