HONOLULU -- Contrast the hellish visions of the Mideast, where different peoples seem only to want to kill each other, or South Asia, where Indians and Pakistanis seem rooted in a festering horrid past, with the real-world achievement of a multicultural society like Hawaii.

"Hawaii is not just multicultural," explains University of Hawaii Professor Arthur Richardson. "It's intercultural." People don't simply coexist grudgingly; they have tried to obviate the dreaded downside of the American melting-pot dream (violent ethnic tension and racial clashes) to make diversity work as a powerful economic and humanitarian force. Hawaii, in a sense, is the future -- or, at least, a sane model for the world.

For all its achievements, though, Hawaii is currently undergoing an identity crisis. A recent conference organized by the Pacific Asian Management Institute, an important branch of the University of Hawaii's College of Business, focused on how to better secure Hawaii's place in the brave new world of globality. Tourism, conferees agreed, will always be an economic constant for Hawaiians, but they understand that tourism isn't going to be enough to fuel the islands' full potential. They want to enlarge their own "knowledge economy" -- and fully promote it internationally -- to diminish their economic dependence on tourism and enhance their attractiveness as a place to establish a new business.