Bulletin Spring‧Summer 1978

travel by telegraph or telephone or radio or television or satellites— at the speed of light. Now we are so accustomed to having our messages travel that fast, that we grouse at the postal service, and complain when it takes a fewminutes to connect along distance call.… last summer, when a group of my colleagues and I sat around a table and calculated for fun how long it would take to move the entire content of the Bibliotheque Nationale from Paris to London. If one could put them on computer and obtain sufficient circuits to another computer across the Channel, it would take between 7 and 17 minutes, depending on conditions. How Much More Along with this order of increase in speed, con sider the increase in flow-----Consider what has happened to the size of libraries. In 1338, the Sorbonne Library, believed to be the largest in Western Europe at that time, contained 1,722 volumes. In all of Europe in 1450 there were believed to be no more than 30,000 books. That was in 1450. The most common estimate for fifty years later is that there were about 8 million. Now half a dozen libraries in the world have more than 8 million each. The average large library in this century has been doubling in size about every 14 years. This is a growth rate of about 13,000 per cent every century___And literally thou­ sands of small town libraries offered their readers more than the Sorbonne's precious 1,722 volumes. Five Predictions If we are indeed entering upon an Age of Infor mation, we can make a few predictions concerning it: 1. Vastly more information is going to be avail able— enough to create a serious overload unless we can develop a number of devices and organizational patterns to take care of it. You students had better finish your degrees in a hurry; if you wait ten years you will have twice as much waiting for you to absorb. 2. A large proportion of this information will come from farther away. Distance will cease to be very important in exchanging information. If we can use a satellite it is just about as cheap to send a message 10,000 miles as 100. And therefore all men's focus of attention is bound to widen beyond com munity and country. "One world" is not yet at hand, but it is nearer. 3. Information will come faster— so fast that in many cases the general public will know what is happening almost as soon as their leaders do, and the traditional lead time of diplomacy will disappear. Consequently all responses will have to come faster, including explanations from a government to its own people. People are going to be able to play a larger part in government. Perhaps at long last that dream of Karl Marx may be within sight, although it has shown no signs of coming true anywhere— I mean his dream that the people might do more and more, and the state might gradually "wither away". 4. This information theoretically can be deli­ vered almost a n y w h e r e -home, school, library, office, factory, village, or igloo. The stage is set for lifelong education and other profound changes in opportunities to learn. 5. Most of what we know about our distant environment will come through the electronic eyes and ears and digital codes of the media and telecom­ munications. Consequently whoever controls these major channels will control our windows on the world. It is entirely possible that in the century to come, the ability to control information, gain access to it, sort it out, process it, store it, retrieve it when necessary, and disseminate it, may become a national resource equal in power to economic and military resources as we know them today. These Changes Will Have an Effect Even if the changes are less spectacular than I have suggested, they are going to make a difference. They will have an effect upon us, and our children, and their children. For if there is one thing we know about human communication it is that whenever the methods of communication change, profound changes also appear in human life and society. The Effect of Print When Western man in the 15th century redis covered some of the things about printing Asia had known for a long time, adapted them, and developed them in his own way under this specially favourable circumstances, then for the first time, literacy, schooling, the knowledge necessary to participate in public affairs, became readily available to the common man. Revolutions occurred. Kingdoms became nations. Science awakened in that part of the world after a sleep of centuries. Society rediscovered mobility. There was a powerful stirring of art, litera­ ture, ideas. And with print man learned a new code 34