WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says pessimists forecasting that the economy will not reap sizable benefits from the computer revolution are likely to be proven wrong.
Bernanke told a college graduating class Saturday that the long-range practical consequences of innovations such as faster computers and the Internet are hard to predict. But he said inventors have only scratched the surface of the commercial applications that can be obtained in such fields as medicine and clean energy.
Bernanke's remarks came in a commencement address at Bard College at Simon's Rock, a small liberal arts college in Great Barrington, Mass. Bernanke's son Joel graduated from the school in 2006.
The Fed chairman did not make any comments about interest rates in his speech, saying he wanted to use his address to focus not on short-range economic problems but to speak about economic growth measured in decades.
