Address to the 150th Anniversary AAAS Meeting (1998)
President William J. Clinton
"We've come a long way in the last half of the 20th century. Fifty years ago, when President Truman addressed AAAS's 100th anniversary meeting, Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley had just created the first transistor; Mauchly and Eckert had recently powered up the seminal ENIAC computer. Pauling and Franklin were developing techniques that would help unravel the mystery of our DNA.
Things are moving much more quickly now. Today, the store of human knowledge doubles every five years. Soon, every child will be able to stretch a hand across a computer keyboard and reach every book ever written, every painting ever painted, every symphony ever composed. We'll be able to carry all the phone calls on Mother's Day on a single strand of fiber the width of a human hair."
Update: I just found out that President Clinto repeated this statement in the State of the Union Address of 1998. Still trying to find out what the basis is...
How true is this? I can easily believe that the amount of data we collect and store doubles every five years. But knowledge? If human knowledge has doubled since April 7, 2002, should we, like, be seeing larger effects of this?
I want to find out. I want to find out if there has been a huge or small increase in knowledge. I want to find out if knowledge is becoming more widely available. I want to find out if any increases in knowledge are confined to certain sectors or spread widely across the range of human experience. I want to find out if the amount of false information is decreasing, thereby making more resources available for more useful enquiries.
But that's just me-- I want, I want, I want.
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