Good Morning,
Today we have been asked to comment on the question: Is science the salvation of society? Since I am not a scientist, but rather a technologist specializing in high-performance computing and communications, I will respond to a slightly different question: Is technology the salvation of society? Technologists tend to be optimists, filled with wonder at the miracles that new technologies can bring about. But like my favorite cartoon character Wily Coyote, who always exuberantly believes that the latest technology from the Acme Corporation will bring the Roadrunner down, technologists often become victims of their own devices. Every technology seems to introduce nearly as many problems as it solves.
In my role as co-chair of President Clinton's Advisory Committee on Information Technology, I am acutely aware of this phenomenon. The charge of our committee is to advise the President and Congress on the steps the Federal Government should be taking now to ensure that information technology in the twenty-first century meets the needs of our society. One of the most important of those needs is education. Accordingly, the President two years ago established the goal of networking every high school, middle school, and elementary school in the nation to the National Information Infrastructure. More recently he announced an initiative that would establish a Next Generation Internet (NGI), which would increase network bandwidth-the amount of information that can be transferred in a given period of time-by a factor of a hundred, right down to the desktop. In response, the Federal government is poised to spend $100 million per year over the next several years to make a qualitative change in the capacity of the Internet, to produce a truly new information resource. A major long-term goal of this initiative is to improve education.
What will increased Internet capacities mean for education? First, high bandwidth means the capability to download large files and display them as they are downloading. The principle applications of this capability are high resolution graphic and full-motion video. These capabilities-so crude on the current Web-will become an integral part of the Next Generation Internet. What all this means is access to multimedia materials over the NGI with no start-up delays. Electronic information resources will be able to integrate large screen high-definition video and high-resolution pictures with audio and text and make them available in an instant. The result will be information that comes alive in response to inquiries-information that helps the student more rapidly find the answers that he or she is seeking, and to see those answers in movies and graphics in ways that have never been possible before. As a simple illustration, if you want to know the weather in Rome, it will be possible to augment the usual statistics by looking through a video window in real time to see not only the sunshine and clouds but also how people on the streets are dressed in response.
Another technology that will flourish on the NGI is virtual reality -3d displays that the student can interactively explore. All personal computers currently support Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), which permits a compact representation of 3D scenes. With the NGI, these virtual models will be downloaded at lightning speed, making it possible to carry out collaborative design and exploration projects from schoolrooms around the nation and even the world. Virtual reality will also revolutionize the teaching of science, by making it possible to explore and observe scientific phenomena, like tornados and hurricanes, from within. It will even be possible to run these phenomena backwards or at slower speeds to observe them more carefully. Finally virtual environments will make it possible through 3D teleconferencing to interact with people across the world as if they were in the same room. The technology for this is here today-what is missing is the bandwidth to make it work. Imagine for example the ability to have French classes interactively with native speakers in France, learning their language while they in turn learn ours.
But will these capabilities really make a qualitative improvement in education, or will they simply provide amusing distractions without real educational value? To date, the record of computing and communications in schools has been only fair. A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly argues that the expansion of educational computer technology, achieved at the expense of traditional subjects, will result in an overall decline in the quality of education. And there is the dark side of the global information infrastructure-the access to information that is deceptive or just plain wrong. How will students of the future tell the difference between intellectual leaders and charlatans?
All this leads to my answer to the original question. While technology can open up marvelous new vistas, it cannot by itself be the salvation of society. The truth is that the society holds salvation in its own hands. Technology can be a useful tool, but it must be managed carefully to ensure that it does no harm.
What does this mean for you? Whether your career takes you toward technology or away from it, you should understand it well enough to see its implications. If you pursue a career in the humanities or social sciences, you should know enough about technology to help determine how it can be most effectively used. And if your career is in science and engineering, you must learn how to think critically so that you can assess the impact of your craft on society. Technology can help in the salvation of society only if society understands it well and, unlike Wily Coyote, knows when not to trust it.