The World of the Future

As forerunners of the change to come we have already seen the emergence of nuclear energy with all its problems, and of the commencement of space travel with all its implications. This is but the beginning. We are on the threshold of a world with quite new and far more effective materials for every sort of application. Our concepts of structure are due for radical changes. With forthcoming communications and data systems, we can foresee far more efficient organization and control of industrial processes. New forms of industrial complexes will arise which are as different from the present as the village workshop was from the nineteenth century factory. As an example I remind you that in the not so old technology, to generate electric power, our best approach was to adapt the ancient axle to rotate some copper conductors in a magnetic field. With such primitive methods -- and so they are in the light of twentieth century science -- the conversion efficiency of heat to electricity is perhaps 35%. With the technology emergent from our new science we foresee direct conversion of heat to electricity without moving parts and with far higher efficiency. Thus, the spreading efficiency of the new technology will rapidly replace older inefficient methods by new, more efficient, and more functional industrial methods. Just as the village methods of production were displaced in the industrial revolution, so our old practical technology of the past is destined to be replaced quickly by the new technological methods of today. This is the new and powerful force that has appeared upon our social horizon. To capture and control the potential of this new technology, to create new industry from it, to direct it for our benefit, we must have men who understand and can manipulate it intelligently. Obviously, the ideas underlying the technology of today are abstruse and highly mathematical in nature. So to comprehend these ideas, and to manipulate the technology borne of them intelligently we require men of very advanced education in substantial numbers. This does not mean a mere four-year college education, for the ideas involved are at the very boundaries of knowledge. The education required is really advanced. Command of the new technology and of the science from which it is derived requires post graduate education to the doctor's degree and beyond -- not less than eight years beyond the high school diploma. While men of lesser training can be usefully employed in its processes, the creation of new industry, new products and devices, new methods and applications from the new technology arises from the creative and imaginative insights of scientific and technological leaders who have access to the very limits of knowledge. So I believe we can identify graduate education at the doctoral level as the key to the command of the new technology. Those communities that can produce and - 5