INFORMATION EXPLOSION, THE (1966)

Van has not only created vast amounts of new knowledge, he has also created the technology to make these new ideas widely available. To get answers to our questions, for example, we may pick up an inexpensive paperback book or refer to an encyclopedia. We can store the results of our thinking in many ways. in the library, on tape, on film, or in a computer. From a computerized library, for example, we can retrieve in a few seconds information that once took weeks to compile. We have machines that provide rapid language translation. And we have satellites that permit instantaneous worldwide communication. This technology is already being used for specific purposes by government, by industry, and by the professions. But we must remember that communication is a two-way process which requires free access to ideas and free exchange of ideas at every level from the personal to the international. afternoon. I want to uh take pleasure in welcoming the editor of his best year, Mrs. Azure to this presidential press conference. He is a as I said a editor of a paper which carried our interview last November and he's also a member of the central committee and therefore combines two hazardous professions of politics and journalism and also Mrs. Azure Bay who is the daughter of the chairman. We're glad to have them here to observe a ancient American custom. Secondly, I want to express the press conference. An ancient American custom. Freedom of communication. Freedom to listen, to speak, and to read and write. A bull work of the democratic society. In a time of information explosion, free and immediate access to information is a key factor in determining world events. Do these recent manifestations of cordiality between the United States and Russia. I'm speaking specifically of your hospitality to Mr. Aubet. Do these evidences equate in any way with an increase or improvement in the prospects for settlement of such basic issues such as Berlin. Well, of course, we would like to have a settlement of the basic issues which have divided the Soviet Union and the United States. We hope that as communications improve that uh problems which uh cause tension and danger to the world will lessen. I believe that any uh exchange of information, any exchange of views, any uh uh cooperation of any kind in these very uh hazardous times is very useful. So, we're glad to welcome you. This is Chicago briefing. Will all stations check in for this morning's operations briefing? Is Pittsburgh on? Pittsburgh is on. Thank you. Is Washington on? Washington's off. Thank you. Is Denver on? Denver's on. Thank you. Is San Francisco on? San Francisco is on. Thank you. We're showing approximately 5 minutes d briefing. At 10:00 a.m. each day, these airline executives meet to review operating conditions and accomplishments for the past 24 hours and to discuss the outlook for the current period. The briefing is held for the president and operating executives in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington, Denver, and San Francisco. The briefing is transmitted over a private line telephone system using two-way conference connections. We've finally had uh spring move into the upper Mississippi Valley with the passage northward during the night of a warm front uh associated with thunderstorms to the south and temperatures raising up into the high 50s during the night. Uh thunderstorm activity was heaviest uh during uh ahead of the cold front extending down in eastern Oklahoma. The the briefing room was designed around the concepts of visual presentation. Most of the visuals used are overhead transparencies, although the room is equipped for front projection of 35mm slides, 16 mm sound films, and 3 and a/4 by four lantern slides. Daily operating statistics displayed on edge lighted panels are posted each morning at 8:00 to provide management with the latest possible information. The briefing room is operated by the statistics department. Its job is to provide busy executives with a maximum amount of information in a minimum amount of time. It has accomplished this task by establishing one of the fastest statistical libraries in the world. Information on performance and economic accomplishment that once took 30 days to retrieve can now be retrieved in 30 minutes. May we have the Pittsburgh report, please. Morning. Yesterday in the Eastern Division, the performance was 98.1%. Following the weather briefing, customer service, line maintenance, engineering, and operations planning present status reports and discuss problem areas wherever they are located. In the Great Lakes region, the performance was excellent. There were only eight delays in the region, of which only two were charged to customer service, and they have nothing of significance to report. The only thing that I would say is significant is that all the managers have been in Pittsburgh for a meeting and maybe their assistants have been doing a better job. Flight 751 was delayed at Northwork for 36 minutes due to a stray mule on the field somewhere in the darkness. The trip returned to the blocks until the mule was caught. Passenger reaction was reported as good. That's all from Pittsburgh. Uh Buck, may we have the line maintenance report, please? Yesterday in line maintenance, we had an unusual number of uh of the unusual incident categories. Planning for efficiency and for profit is the key idea behind the executive briefing room. Daily contact between operating executives across the country, weather briefing, performance, and operating statistics are all part of a plan to contribute to hourly decisionmaking in this system. Two-way communication is essential. That damage has caused the cancellation of a transcontinental flight this morning. like to ask Ted a question concerning flight 103 yesterday that was reporting the unusual incidences concerning the buffet that uh that was not in the log book. We have didn't know about it until this morning and therefore haven't inspected the airplane but I wonder if you have any other information on it that would give give us a help on that one. did. No, I don't have anything more on it other than what's shown in the um in the uh unusual incident situation here and we'll take a little readout on it. Whatever I get, I'll pass on to you. And what else do you have on this aircraft damage at Los Angeles? Did we do it or whatever? No, we did it with a with a forklift as we were bringing up a brake disc to the airplane, planning to replace the brake and struck the airplane with the forklift. I see. And if we hit something on this uh uh buffet department, I'll let you know. Very good. That's all my minutes. Would you stand by, please, for the weekly performance review? For the week of March 28 through April 3, both traffic and performance improved from the previous. The most unique use of the executive briefing room is the transcontinental presentation of the weekly operations analysis. Each Monday, weekly summary statistics are transmitted by teletype to analysts in San Francisco, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Washington. Each analyst plots and brings up to date his set of transparencies. Tuesday following briefing, the briefing room analyst in Chicago presents the audio commentary on the charts. He talks over the conference phone circuit while the transparencies are simultaneously projected in all five cities increased by 4% to 3.5 million. The 1.7 million cargo liner ton miles were a 50% increase. Over and out at Chicago. The executive briefing room. One of industry's methods of controlling the information explosion. An example of the importance that industry places on rapid dissemination of information. Doctors and other professional groups are faced with an increasing need for rapid dissemination of new and often critical information. The problem in medicine, as in many other fields, is to put theory into practice, to get the latest information and research to medical students and to the practicing physician in the field. Gentlemen, if any of you have a question directed to Dr. Sabin in Cincinnati. Please write them on a 3x5 file card at your table and bring them forward to me and I will relay them back to Dr. Pace at WOSU. The Ohio State University Telecommunication Center now brings you a live two-way discussion of medical problems and research between members of the faculty of the Ohio State University College of Medicine and staffs of up to 12 hospitals in Ohio and West Virginia. Our host and moderator for today's program is Dr. William Pace, director of the Center for Continuing Medical Education. Dr. Pace. Our topic today is the viral ideology of malignancy. Our speaker, Dr. Albert B. Sabin, distinguished service professor of research pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and of cancer research at the Children's Hospital and Research Foundation, Cincinnati, Ohio. Each week during the academic year, the Ohio Medical Education Radio Network broadcast programs on subjects vital to continuing medical education. A pre-recorded half-hour statement by a leading specialist is repeated each day for one week. The tape statement is followed by a live question and answer period between the specialist and his audience. The question and answer period varies because the program is broadcast to a different group of hospitals each day. I've invited Dr. Samuel Sazzaw to join me here today at WOSU for the discussion period which will follow the presentation by Dr. Sabin. Dr. Saslaw, as you know, is professor of medicine in microbiology at the Ohio State University. I would like to introduce Dr. Sabin at this time. Thank you very much. Although no human cancer has as yet been proved to be caused by a virus, the search goes on because viruses have been proved to cause naturally occurring cancers. Each program is directed to only 12 hospitals at once to allow sufficient time for questions from each hospital during the discussion period. have by highly artificial methods produced experimental cancers in mice or hamsters. The broadcast from WOSU was sent out by network lines to FM stations near the participating hospitals. The availability of radio makes it uniquely suited for also reaching a widely scattered audience outside the medical centers. viral ideology of some human cancers may be investigated and hopefully ultimately answered. This is especially helpful to the practicing physician. His time is limited. He would find it difficult to leave his patients to continue his education at a teaching center, but he must continue to keep a breast of new developments in the medical field. The virus is responsible for the next network broadcasts give him access to teaching physicians and the results of their latest research. They offer the practicing physician an opportunity to keep up with the information explosion in medicine and the knowledge gained of the fascinating phenomena that I've just described to you obtaining in the cancers artificially produced uh by viologists. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Sabin. Dr. Sabin is at a microphone in his office in Cincinnati along with Dr. Schwikart, our director of communications. Uh if you have any questions or any comments, if you will signal in the usual manner, I'll refer your questions to Dr. Sabin in his office. I would like to check some of our lights now and uh refer to some of our participating hospitals. I see that there is a signal light at Grant. Uh Dr. Stevens. Dr. Pace, we have one question for Dr. Sabin from Grand Hospital, Columbus, Ohio. Our question is, has there been any evidence of the transmission of cancer from one human being to another either by experimental or other means? Yes. There have been experimental attempts to transmit uh cancer to human beings but the results were negative. There are situations however and which it may be desirable to isolate patients with certain through the medium of radio the medical profession is bringing under control a part of the tremendous expansion of knowledge in the medical field. This student has direct access to the wisdom and skill of distinguished teaching physicians. And at the turn of a radio knob, the latest results of laboratory research are disseminated to the practicing physician in the field. We want to keep them alive because as long as they're they are alive, there is a chance that maybe next month, next year, they can be saved for good. Following a network broadcast, program materials such as magnetic tapes, slides, outlines, and related materials are stored, cataloged, and made available to doctors and students through the Ohio State University Autodidactic Laboratory. Although no human cancer has yet been proved to be caused by a virus, the search goes on because viruses In government, in industry, and in the professions, we find many examples of ways in which information may be organized, stored, retrieved, and widely disseminated for special purposes. But what about the individual? How can he learn to control the vast flood of information surrounding him? How does a child make sense out of the multitude of contradictory, competing, and often persuasive experiences brought about by the information explosion? Today, the child is overwhelmed with experiences, impressions, and attitudes even before he goes to school. Formal education will continue to add new ideas, but it must also bring order and perspective and selectivity to what is already present. The school and college must help the individual learn how to sort out the flood of information pouring in from the mass media to separate the true from the false, the important from the trivial. We get out 3:00 and when I come home, usually read the funnies first and then I read the sports section first. I like to see who's in first place. And then I look at what the games, who lost, and um who won and by how many points they won. My other geography teacher, she'll say that there was an article in in the paper last night and what it was about and we should have read it. The influence of the teacher on the child's out of school media experiences can be significant. The influence of the parent is essential and powerful. When there's good movies showing, like if there's a good war picture, I usually go to my mom tells me what movies are good to see and and so I'll go to the movies. I read Trusters last stand and read profiles and courage and I really like to read. When you don't have anything to do, it's good to do. Want to watch Flipo and and I watch Walt Disney. One of my favorite shows is Man from Uncle. All media permit a certain amount of choice and the child must learn to choose wisely, become more discriminating, learn to live in a multiple image world. I think it's neat. You get three channels and you can watch whatever you want. During the night we go to bed, we have a built-in divider and there's little hole in it and we set a big old radio in there and so we just listen to it every night, my my brother and I. My dad always wants to know the news, so we listen to the news and the weather. The individual, parent, child, or teacher, is the final judge and critic in a time of information explosion. Well, my teacher made me do outside reading. I She hadn't made me. I I probably would have I I mean, I would have started, but not the type of books that she wanted me to read. Not the real real good type of books. So, she told me um read it or else she's going to get a grade. I was really miserable. I was in the seventh grade and she wanted me to read classics. And I sat there and she said, "Well, after the first 50 pages, you'll be all right." And I found out she was right. And from then on I read and I read and I read and I think if she hadn't threatened me I never would have read you know really good first class books and uh so I'm grateful to her for that. I read all the time now and it helps me with all my other lessons. I learn a whole lot of things from my outside reading that are related to all my other subjects and it helps me understand them more and it helps me understand myself more. I think that the more you read, the more points of views you get about one subject, the more you really know on that subject. You have to be able to read between the lines though. You know, you have to be able to choose what is the truth and what is u not, you know, a lie, but what is an exaggeration. The more you learn how to pick out things, the more points of view you get, the closer to the truth about the matter you're going to get. you're surrounded by um information that means things that are really worth knowing and then things that it wouldn't make any difference if you knew them or not. I like to listen to uh modern jazz and uh sometimes when my friends come over I listen to rock and roll. We dance with it. I then I really like classical music. I love Shopan and uh the record that I really like is Beethoven's son Petique. In a time of information explosion, we must know how media really influence the child's behavior. What does he reject as false or trivial and what does he remember and why? During the time I look at television, it's sort of strange because I don't really look at television. I listen to it and I read. There aren't very many good programs on television anymore. You know, I just watch television for something to do. I bet I couldn't tell you what some of the programs are about that I watch. They just don't stick. They're just there. Then some of the programs I do remember like that Judgment at Nuremberg thing. I'll never forget that as long as I live. I got started watching uh Issues and Answers and um Meet the Press because my mother watched them. I didn't like them at first, but uh now I like them. Sometimes she'd ask me some questions about it. She said, "Well, what do you think that means?" or something like that. And um every time she asked me a question, I'd have to sit there and think about it. It'd just be a casual conversation between my mother and me. And um at our house, just like I have a girlfriend and she says the reason she likes to come up and spend a night with me because no one at her house talks about anything intelligently, she says. And she says, "When I come to your house, I learn more things and even when I go to school." That made me feel real good because I think this is one thing my mother's trying to do. When we were real young, she started helping us read. She always told us that we should be aware of what's happening around us to be aware of what's happening around us. Today, our children learn much of what they know through experiences outside the formal school system. They learn through a variety of media and in a variety of settings. Unless teachers understand this, they will not be able to help their students make full use of these rich out of school experiences. Immature dependent learners should be taught how to become mature independent thinkers. They should learn to organize and to make sense out of what they see, hear, and read. But will they learn to cope independently and critically with the world's assault on their senses? We need teachers who are sensitively aware of the nature and impact of the communications revolution. We need teachers who are deeply concerned about how the modern media of communication are changing education. Teachers who share a concern with the communication specialist, the philosopher and the critic. Time I think to bring up a point that when any new form comes into the uh foreground of things, we naturally look at it through the old uh stereos. We can't help that. this is normal and we're still trying to see how will our previous political and educational patterns persist under television. Uh in we're we're just trying to fit the old things into the new form instead of asking what is the new form going to do to all the assumptions we had before. uh this is this is not necessarily good and we we are all I think all of us here learn to read and we therefore protect books but in the books we can read that when the book came in it was denounced because people study from books and they said well how can you study from books without the authority of the teacher there now we say how can you have television in the school room without the authority of the book I see that but I'm not sure that there doesn't come a point when the the the the en enormity I was going to say The vast amount of what we can get from our new media doesn't really uh to an extent make it unnecessary to think deeply and maybe difficult to think. I'm dubious. There's another point too here. It seems to me that with television or with film, it's moving along at a continuous speed. In other words, you you haven't any way of checking it. Now, with a book, you can check it. You can go back. You've got a kind of record. And we can't assume that a person is going to get a video tape or is going to arrange to have this film rerun in the theater. So you don't get a chance to check certain of these new media. You will just have to take it as it comes along. The um on the other hand, the degree to which when reading that you are in the hands of an author, the degree to which he merely carries you along for a ride passively has always been uh uh bypassed and not discussed by book readers. they have the illusion of being engaged in great private intellectual discovery. Actually, they're going for a ride. I begin to see that we're talking about the importance of whoever the individual is who's uh in front of these media, he's got to be active in his response, which suggests something that Seldis likes to point out that we ought to be doing something in classrooms at all levels to make uh let's say more discriminating consumers out of people so that they don't just look at this uh instrument, but they react positively to it. I want a race of critics. At at what age they should begin, I don't know. But I think you can't begin too early. [Music]