Me and Eddy Third, I'd like to tell you how Eddy and I work together. We're partners. As in any partnership, there is a division of labor. As in any division of labor, it is based on what each of us can do best. What can Eddy do best? He can memorize. He'll soon know the Encyclopedia Britannica. He'll some day have the Library of Congress at his (sorry my) fingertips - quite literally. I'll never ever even know a millionth of what he knows already. (One computer he knows in Santa Monica, California contains the Psychological Abstracts, ERIC, Social Science Citation Index and about 50 other bibliographical sources.) Nor would I ever want to know everything he knows. I don't want to clutter up my very personal home computer (that is, my brain) with all that content. What can I do best? Eddy is, as I said, short for electronic data terminal. Note his middle name. Data is a very low level form of content. Data must be put in context to yield information, which must in turn be put in context to yield knowledge, which must be put in context to yield understanding, which must be put in context to yield wisdom. What Eddy can do best is provide content; what I can do best is put this content into context to move up this hierarchy. Or, to put it in my earlier terms, Eddy can concentrate on the outside-in information providing and I can be freed for the inside-out inspiration creating. I hope, in this presentation, to help you some small step up that hierarchy, within the limited domain of the social impact of computerization, the topic of this conference. |
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