Certainty of progess

[Joe Laferriere]

> Date:    Mon, 11 Mar 1996 17:08:38 -0500
> From:    "James H. Beach" <jbeach at NSF.GOV>
> Subject: Re: Electronic publishing (fwd)
>
> It seems pointless to allude to scripture, ICBN or Judeo-Christian, throw
> up our arms say let's wait 'till it all settles out.  It will never settle
> out!  Technology will change more quickly every year from now until
> eternity.  It will never congeal.  We'll never catch up.

With all due respect, my good friend, how in the name of Hades do you know
this? You say this as if you have some crystal ball telling you what the
future will be like. A brief perusal of human history will show you that
nothing is inevitable, that progress can take unexpected directions,
sometimes moving several notches backwards. The Fall of Rome set
civilization back several centuries, and if you think a similar phenomenon
today is impossible, you're sadly mistaken. Even on a smaller scale,
things can move in totally unexpected directions. In the 1950's and '60's,
futurists were predicting huge computers several km across.  They had no
inkling of the miniturization we have seen, and something like the WWW was
totally undreamed of. We can take educated guesses as to what the future
will be like, but we must remember that a sizable percentage of what we
predict will be dead wrong. Your statement "technology will change more
rapidly every year from now until eternity" is, with all due respect,
totally illogical and completely impossible. The sun will die long before
the end of eternity.

> The more relevant
> perspective is whether taxonomic professional societies, academic criteria
> for professional evaluation, and our personal valuation and use of the
> electronic infrastructure will take good advantage of the ways in which
> technology is changing the way science is done and communicated.
>
> There are hundreds of problems or opportunities to take on in this area.
> Let's take some on and move forward.
>
> If you want to limit your formal taxonomic communications to pulp-based
> print media, fine!  But the rest of the world is moving on, we'll see ya
> later, ahhh, well maybe.

I agree that we need to take advantage of newer technologies as they
arise. But we should not put all our eggs in one basket. Let us hedge our
bets and not become too dependent on technologies which might quickly become
outdated. Let's be careful before jumping in too quickly.