Information science and liberal education

The scale of activity in Information Science and Retrieval, unique in the twentieth century, is plotted by surveying three areas of impingement between professional people and information systems. The first testimony cites the momentum in a major scientific society with respect to the reorganization and automation of publication and retrieval. The second projects the state of the art in the time‐sharing of computer programs and files to the degree that the exchange of information is becoming a completely economic and critical tool for education, with man‐machine interfaces provided for students and professors alike. The third deals with the rapid progress in the realization of man‐interface conversation in nearly natural English format, made possible by sophisticated programs and hardware. The prognostication of the impact of these increasing capabilities on the deepest concerns and activities of mankind is sketched. The immediate availability throughout the world of all information files will engender continual review and evaluation in the scientific spirit that welcomes reexamination of any data without fear. In liberal education, there must be a responsibility to prepare minds for this regimen in the world of scholarship of the 1970's, but there must be a concomitant exhilaration of the young human spirit in the seeking of the total view and of a value system for the individuality in the universe.