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The Future in Review: James Burke To Keynote GTC `95

Worried about electronic surveillance? You share a concern with 19th century citizens who revolted when their government proposed painting numbers on their houses. Think literacy is the mark of a good education? You may be in for a surprise! James Burke - who will keynote GTC `95 Feb 15th - links future and past in an exclusive interview.

According to James Burke, we're not the first human society to undergo an "information revolution." Burke - in his popular PBS television series "Connections" - uses the past to help illuminate our current society's challenges and help us see ourselves in the broad context of history. But the fact that humans have passed this way before may not be as comforting as it initially sounds.

Some of our cultural values and icons may soon fall by the wayside. Burke - who is a best-selling author - feels that literacy for example, may soon become irrelevant. And he admits that there is a price to pay in order to gain the benefits of an electronically connected society.

According to Burke, increased innovation follows increased communication and access to information. "Massive surges of innovation" followed the alphabet and printing press, he said.

But historically, not everyone approved. "When Gutenberg's book came out," Burke said, "there were people going around smashing printing presses." Why? They felt that having information easily available in books would denigrate the value of a good memory, and that in turn could lead to a deterioration of the human mind. Society could fall apart.

Luckily, in 1995 we're more enlightened - or are we? Do we scoff at students using calculators instead of memorized times tables? Are we ready to drop literacy as a cultural necessity? "We've used literacy as a measure of intelligence since 1500 B.C.," said Burke, "when the alphabet came out." Literacy was the only path to information stored in books. But today, information can be stored and accessed as sounds, pictures, and video. More and more information is available electronically. Perhaps one day, libraries will become electronic databases accessed by computer from anywhere in the world. Information will be accessible without the necessity of mentally decoding written symbols.

"When I was a kid," he said, "they were just about to drop mandatory Latin from the curriculum, there was almost a revolution. They said 'Children's brains will turn to porridge, Latin is necessary to have an orderly mind.' Well, that turned out not to be true. And I think literacy will turn out not to be necessary as well."

And what about those people working in fast-food restaurants punching pictures of menu items on a keyboard so there's no necessity to read or add or remember prices?

"I don't see any harm in icons replacing words," said Burke, "since words replaced sounds initially. [The written word is a] transitional phase. The key is access."

ACCESS

So how long before computers, modems or some more modern forms of electronic access become as prevalent as the telephone? While the telephone took 70 years to reach saturation in America, Burke said computer access should become available to nearly everyone in about 15 years.

"Bill Gates said bandwidth would be unlimited in 10 years time," said Burke. "That means it will probably be unlimited in 8 years time. When bandwidth is unlimited, costs drop like a stone, and when costs drop like a stone, people jump on board. That's what happened with telephones. I'd say 15 years maximum."

HOUSE NUMBERS AND WIRETAPS

There's a price, however, for access. We'll pay for it with a loss of privacy, said Burke. "As the means to conceal crime become more sophisticated, there will be more inroads into what we call the right to privacy," he explained. "If we choose to have a society in which we are more and more interlinked, it is easier to communicate and intrude upon [people].

"Of course people complain about this." Burke, however, offered an historical precedent.

"In the Austro-Hungarian empire, in the early 19th century, when it was suggested that people have numbers on their houses, there was almost a revolution. People said `if there are numbers on the houses, then people will know where to find me.'"

Burke said that law enforcement must be allowed to conduct electronic surveillance, with the stipulation that the public must have reciprocal access to the institutions policing society.

OTHER COSTS

"In this interactive networked society in which we already live," said Burke, "there are so many easy ways to find out who I am, what I buy, where I go on holiday. We are already exposed, to use an old-fashioned term. Everybody has a number of some kind. The horse has already bolted, we're shutting the stable door too late."

Burke, however, is philosophical about loss of privacy. "You either want the benefits of a networked society, or you don't," he said. "If you want to be a networked society, then you must accept the costs."

Burke drew on the Industrial revolution for a comparison. "The penitentiary system began because the industrial revolution created so much property lying around that crime became a serious matter," he said. "So many people got robbed that we invented a thing called a policeman, and then you had to invent a place to put the people when he caught them. So the penitentiaries were set up. This is one of the costs of having a rich society."

Our own rich society may soon lose another ancient icon of wealth - money itself. Burke said that electronic commerce will replace the use of currency and coins. It's just another part of an historic progression, he said. Coins replaced tokens in Mesopotamia around 5,000 years ago. "Those tokens represented real things," he said. "A solid oval represented a sheep, for example." The system presented a problem, however, if the Mesopotamian buyer wanted to buy less than a "sheep's worth" of something. So coins replaced tokens of larger value. The purchaser could buy smaller amounts and get change besides. Electronic commerce is the next step, because, as Burke said, "Money is the technologically available means of exchange at the time."

SARAN WRAP, NUCLEAR FISSION AND GOVERNMENT

If the prospects of illiterate children, electronic surveillance and collection of data on citizens don't particularly bother Burke, what does? Losing access to information, or through neglect, information itself. "The thing is with information, you don't know how commercially or socially valuable something is [at first]," he said, citing examples of obscure discoveries that evolved into Saran Wrap and nuclear fission. "That's the real concern," he said, "you don't know in advance what to choose."

Burke is concerned that when the Internet is privatized, commercial interests could be the deciding factor as to which information is broadly available.

"If there's one single rallying call for the next 50 years, it's got to be access," he said. "If I were a politician or a government person, I'd make that my credo. Whatever else happens, we must keep the access open."

And who can do that? State and local government. "The rate of change of technology is so extraordinarily high that I think it is in danger of outstripping the ability of citizens to deal with it, live with it, handle it. State and local institutions are the only ones that can hold society together like cement through this turbulent period. Private institutions are driving the change, because that's their job. It seems to me that state and local people have to manage the change.

"The more complex the technology and the more complex the society it produces, the more important the task of state and local people is. Because there is no one else to hold us together through this transition period."

GALLOPING TECHNOLOGIES

Our age, said Burke, will be remembered as the era in which it was finally recognized that information is the most important commodity. It always has been the most important commodity, he said, but now there's enough of it being disseminated widely that it is recognized as such.

Other galloping technologies, however, may soon overtake our Information Age. "I don't think it will expand much beyond the next 20 or 30 years," said Burke, "because it will be overtaken by the era of genetic manipulation and then neurophysiology - how the brain works."

James Burke will bring his unique blend of controversy and illumination to GTC `95 as he delivers the opening keynote in Austin, Texas, on February 15.


Wayne E. Hanson served as a writer and editor with e.Republic from 1989 to 2013, having worked for several business units including Government Technology magazine, the Center for Digital Government, Governing, and Digital Communities. Hanson was a juror from 1999 to 2004 with the Stockholm Challenge and Global Junior Challenge competitions in information technology and education.