tion resulted from the energies of man and beast. Today in the United States only a fraction of one percent of our productive power results from the physical energy of human beings or animals. Almost all of our products and services result from other energy sources converted to heat and mechanical power. And the amount of power produced per person annually in the United States has risen remarkably. In 1850, 440 horsepower hours per person were produced. In 1900 that figure more than doubled to 1,030. By 1950 it increased almost another five-fold to 4,470. And today it is approaching 10,000.

Springing from our Scientific Revolution of recent decades is what is being called our "Cybernetic Revolution." This revolution which, comparatively speaking, is only in its infancy today amplifies (and will to a large extent replace) man's nervous system. Actually, this is an understatement because computers amplify the collective intelligence of men-the intelligence of society-and while the effect of the sum of men's physical energies may be calculated, a totally different and compounded effect results from combining facts and ideas-the knowledge generated within a society or civilization. Add this effect to the productive capacity of the machine driven by an almost limitless energy source like the nucleus of the atom and the resulting system can perform feats almost staggering to our imagination. This is why I refer to cybernation as a quantum jump in our growth.

With the fullest development of cybernation we could be faced with prospects which challenge our very relationships to such basic concepts as freedom and the nature of work and leisure.

Let me project a few random scenes from the coming Cybernetic Age which contain some significant implications. I will not vouch for the accuracy of these forecasts or try to predict the year they might occur, but perhaps you can imagine yourself in one of these three situations:

Situation one: You have flown out of town on a business trip and upon arrival at your destination have a few spare hours to visit an old friend. At the airport you rent a car, or some other type of ground vehicle. The procedure for putting you in the driver's seat is simple and efficient. You place an identifying card containing your bank account number and microformed photo of fingerprints in a slot and the fingers of your free hand over a flat innocent-looking plate. In a matter of seconds you have been identified as the owner of the card and your credit rating checked. The keys to your rented car are released to you and you are on your way. (Those keys, by the way, record your mileage and the time you use the car.)

Driving through town the traffic lights are controlled by computers which regulate their flow so that you encounter a minimum of delay at the busiest hour. But anxious to see your old friend, you step up your speed once you are on the outskirts of town, and without realizing it you exceed the speed limit by a few miles an hour. You remain unaware of this violation until you return home, at which time you receive a notice of it and learn that the violation calls for a fine which, you also learn, has already been charged to your bank account. How did this happen? It was almost as simple as renting the car. An inconspicuous device clocked your speed and recorded your auto tags. It reported the violation to the owner of the vehicle whose own computer had your records at hand and instantly "turned you in." The computer operated by the long arm of the law had no difficulty in tracking down both you and your bank account, so justice was swift and complete. (To add insult to injury, you had difficulty explaining to your wife why you needed to rent the car because she would not have believed your story about visiting "an old friend.")

You are fairly well-conditioned to this sort of situation by now, but sometimes you have moments of doubt and anxiety about what happened. If someone, or something, was watching you that closely on the road, where else might they be watching you? What if the system was in error-if someone, somewhere, was "adjusting" it so as to create more violators and bring in a little more revenue? But paying the fine was far easier than trying to investigate that possibility so you give up what you once considered a legitimate right. Furthermore, you've heard that next year they're installing systems which will automatically regulate your speed on those roads, so you won't have to worry about exceeding the limit. You won't have that worry-or choice.

I will not belabor the implications in this situation. I believe they speak for themselves. Let me move on to situation number two:

For several days you have not been feeling well and you call your local health center for an appointment. You can remember when you used to call your doctor,

but it's been many years since he's bothered with initial diagnosis and he would be the first to admit he could not be as thorough or accurate as the health center. At the center you give all the necessary information to a medical secretary whose typewriter feeds it into a computer system. First comes your identification number which automatically supplies the system with your previous medical history, then all your new complaints and symptoms. On the basis of the information given so far and a comparison with your previous history the computer may venture an immediate diagnosis, but if it has any doubts-and it is a highly conservative computer-it recommends one or several diagnostic tests. The tests are conducted simply and efficiently with the aid of one or two capable medical technicians and a battery of equipment. The technicians would be capable of conducting routine eye, ear, nose and throat examinations. Tests beyond that might involve rapid chemical analysis of body fluids, accurate electronic tests of various reflexes, the heart or metabolism. The functions of several organs might be checked out with the use of radioisotope tracers and scanning and counting equipment. The digestive system might be examined by the swallowing of a tiny capsule containing a radiotransmitter which, as it travels the length of your digestive tract, broadcasts its "inside information" to an attentive analyzer.

The battery of diagnostic equipment programs its findings into the central computer which already has your previous medical history and your current complaints. In a matter of seconds, after the tests are completed, the system presents its full diagnosis. At the same time it also makes recommendation for treatment, perhaps printing out a prescription which can be filled before you leave the center.

Fortunately, in your case only medication was recommended, and you go home not only with the proper medication but confident that your case was given the best medical attention, even though you never saw a doctor during the entire visit. The health center efficiently adds the day's information to your medical history and sends your doctor a copy just for the record. By the way, you de get to see your doctor-on the weekend when you play bridge with him.

Does your doctor ever see any patients? The computer recommends a few cases to him because of their unusual interest. The high level of medicine he practices now enables him to help these patients. Their cases also help him in his work with engineers to design newer and better diagnostic and treatment systems and to train the many medical technicians who are needed to handle the increased population.

As in the first situation, there are a multitude of implications in this projection which I cannot go into now. Some of them I will return to later, but for the moment let me proceed to situation number three:

You are a key man in a company that produces certain home products. You feel quite fortunate because you have a creative job in a highly automated plant. Market surveys analyzed by computers tell the company of the need for a new product. You sit at a desk containing a large fluorescent screen and with an electronic "lightpen" draw your conception of the new product. As you design the product you "tell" the computerized screen the materials you want the product to be made of. The system coordinates the information you fed it from the lightpen and your other instructions. As you work, it guides you in your design by making recommendations, by showing you on command the stress and strain in various points of your design, by correcting your errors, by recommending alternatives and improvements.

When both you and the system are satisfied with your handiwork, you release the design for manufacture. The system has theoretically tested the product so that no initial sample or test model is necessary. It turns the design over to another department-probably other computers-which calculates and orders the materials necessary to produce it, sets up the required manufacturing equipment and prepares the production schedule. You never see the product, but you know it has been turned out just the way you envisioned it. Furthermore, you know it will never become a glut on the market because the extent of the demand for it has been very accurately predicted. You once did have a yearning to see and handle what you created, so you went out and bought one. As you examined it, you remembered just what parts of it were really yours and what parts the computer had recommended, and you had an uneasy feeling. Could you have made it so well, so quickly, and so cheaply, without the computer? And how long will it be before the computer will make it without you?

To some people these three examples sound like science fiction. Others will refer to them as "windy futurism." But they are far from being either. Some of the devices and methods mentioned are already in existence and in practical use. Others are in the development stages. And many more are not only technically feasible but may someday become economically and socially acceptable. Now what are some of the implications in these examples and what bearing will they have on our future? Running through all three examples were many common features: depersonalization, a separation of man and product, a collapse of time, a further reduction of human work and a shift of needs and skills. All of these offer both threats and promises. I believe that the promises will eventually override the threats but not before they have made us face and solve a great many problems we have not had to face before. This in itself is going to account for a great deal of human growth. For the next few minutes let's not think of the computer and the individual, let's think big-about science and technology in general and the world at large. And if at times I project a viewpoint too futuristic or utopian for many of you, I do so because I think it is worthwhile for us to extend our thinking into many areas we often hesitate to explore in depth.

As Lancelot Law Whyte has stated in his book The Next Development in Man, "Thought is born of failure." To a great extent we have always been propelled by a series of crises which we have had to face and overcome. Today the rapid growth of science and technology has created some crises of monumental proportions through the power it has given us over destructive and constructive forces, through our influence on nature and through the control of human life. But that same science and technology is placing at our disposal the knowledge and the tools to change impending disaster into triumph. What is lacking now, but hopefully will not be lacking for long, is the fuller understanding of these forces and the social will necessary to shape them into the kind of life and world we want. We must control the complex and interacting forces we have created rather than letting them propel us from crisis to crisis as we slavishly go about the business of the day tending to what we blindly call "our own affairs."

This crisis-to-crisis approach in handling our affairs springs from a problem which has always plagued man-the gap between knowledge and action. These days, as in the past, we either act on the basis of too little knowledge or understanding, or having the scientific and technical knowledge to accomplish something worthwhile, are hamstrung by outmoded cultural, social or political thinking. Today this double-edged disparity is more threatening than ever because knowledge, and hence power, is so much greater-as are our needs for it-that every miscalculation in the type or scope of actions brings wider disruption in our society. Our civilization is now such a complex and organically interdependent system that almost every change reverberates through it causing displacement and further change, sometimes where we least expect it.

But today science and technology have given us a tool which, in addition to its added power, should help us to better understand and work with the many complex forces we have created and put to work. That tool, of course, is the computer. And many believe that, while it will create many new problems we will have to cope with, it is going to give us the fuller understanding we need to shape a new and better world-one which we have been trying to build but in a random, rather than organized, way. Cybernation now promises to give us the giant brain to go with the mighty muscles that evolved from our Industrial and Scientific Revolutions. In doing so it is going to help plan our progress around social goals. And it is going to force us to do more than pay lip service to these goals. To explain why this is so, let me return to some specific areas of concern about the computer.

Perhaps we should begin with the greatest area of concern involving computers today-employment and production.

Much has been written, and many studies have been made, about the effects of automation on employment. The consensus of conclusions is that, to date, while many jobs have been eliminated by automation it has not affected total employment. It has helped expand the economy, more new jobs have been created, and therefore employment remains relatively high. But the shift to new jobs. the required upgrading of skills, probably cannot be continued indefinitely to maintain a high level of fulltime employment. And those who look a little deeper and a little further see that the automation of today and of the past decade. on which most studies are based, cannot be compared with the cybernation

beginning to take place now and projected for the future. A few statistics will bear this out:

The first commercial computer (the UNIVAC) was delivered to the U.S. Bureau of Census in 1950. Today there are some 27,000 computers at work in the U.S. and about another 10,000 around the world, most of these having been installed and operated only in recent years. (Before that computer was used by the Census Bureau, by the way, they required over 400 statisticians to do one job now handled by less than a dozen people.) International sales of computers today are growing at a rate of about 20 percent per year, substantially greater than the next most booming worldwide business, the sale of autos, growing at 7 percent. It has been estimated that in the U.S. alone there will be over 50,000 computers installed by 1970, and, on the basis of present trends, possibly 150,000 to 200,000 by 1985.

In addition to their growth in number, these computers are being greatly improved. They are faster, more compact, more flexible and becoming cheaper. Where organizations still cannot afford to buy or rent them, they can now share many of their services. With such computers coming into use, capable of fully automating industries from steel mills to bakeries, operating services from traffic control to banking, it is both shortsighted and foolish to believe that radical changes, not only in employment and productivity but in the very nature of work and the goals of society, will not take place within the coming decades. The changes which have been taking place in the shifting nature of human work since the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions will soon begin to multiply tremendously. Just as power machinery replaced backbreaking human toil on the farm and moved men from the craft shop into the factory assembly line, so cybernation reduces the monotonous repetitious jobs and forces men toward work of higher levels requiring more and more training. This means that the ranks of the lesser educated labor pool, which traditionally have been tapped last by the labor market, will probably grow in the coming years. In addition, cybernation will increasingly reach up into the ranks of the educated and specially trained to replace them, reduce their working hours, force earlier retirement or retraining in another field.

The effects of this displacement will be many, but foremost among them will be tremendous demands on education, increased leisure, and perhaps some remarkable changes in economic and social values. Let me comment briefly on these, starting with the last two.

Today in the Western World, and particularly in the U.S., we are living in an Affluent Society, in an era of abundance. Our productivity in this country has reached the point where, in some areas of the economy, creating needs is more of a job than filling them. Yet while we build up a glut of goods for private consumption and create new markets to create more sales, more profits and more production, we do not keep the same pace in fulfilling social needs-in the building of schools and hospitals, better housing and cities, and in the building of better lives and more opportunities for those who for a number of reasons still live only on the fringes of the Affluent Society.

Today we are witnessing an increasing awareness of the discrepancies in our society and the broad social needs of our country. Such things as growing crime pollution, and other stresses and strains of modern life are making us realize more and more that "the pursuit of happiness" must involve far more than just the growth of our Gross National Product.

With the coming Cybernetic Revolution we will probably be forced to a more rational approach in setting up national goals and promoting the welfare of the individual within the total framework of society. Part of this will come about because of what many people now fear-a large increase in productivity by fewer and fewer workers.

The time may someday come when the computer will enable the production of enough consumer products and the peformance of enough individual services so quickly and efficiently that it may require little if any sacrifice to perform the additional work necessary to achieve most of our desired social goals. Cybernation will, of course, also be effective in this area, and enhance its productivity as well.

It is difficult to believe that with these possibilities at hand we in the United States would not pursue an economic and social program designed to provide all citizens of our country with the benefits of an abundant society. I would hope that similar action would take place on an international scale-action through which the wealthier and more technologically advanced nations would make a

great concerted effort to raise the living standard of the developing countries and see them on the road to a self-sustaining growth. Such action is almost essential to true world peace. As P. M. Blackett, President of the Royal Society, pointed out at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the gap between the rich and poor nations of the world is ever-widening and an intolerable situation will arise if we do not begin to close this gap.

Eventually, in the era of abundance we are seeking, many new economic and social phenomena will take place. No one will be deprived of the means to an adequate income and, above this, there will be many incentives for creativity and productivity on numerous scales. Probably the highest status and rewards will not come from money or material possessions. Their value will some day become almost meaningless. In this regard, it is interesting to recall what the great economist, John Maynard Keynes, wrote in his 1932 "Essays in Persuasion." Keynes said this: "When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of highest values."

During the transition to a social millenium, which I do not claim to be just around the corner, a radical change in man's relationship to work would take place and the growth of leisure time would pose new problems to be solved. Let us take a brief look into these ideas next.

Work has always been central to mankind's existence. It is so much a part of most cultures that its virtue has been written into the religious scriptures, extolled in the folklore and become a psychological necessity as well as a physical one. In the past, work has naturally been tied directly to productivity and for centuries the majority of men could see, feel, wear, use or eat the products of their labor. The growth of the industrial society soon began to change that until a great many of us can no longer directly equate our labor with real products, and fewer and fewer of us are concerned with the production of the baisc necessities of life. In addition, the concept of "the dignity of work" today is related mainly to the necessity of earning a living. It has been said that if we were to poll people at work today we could easily verify that many derive very little satisfaction from their job, that most of them would prefer doing something else. It is also apparent from the activities and attitudes of many of our young people that we cannot supply them with work which is meaningful enough to satisfy their sense of worth and successfully employ their physical and emotional energy. Yet we still extoll work as it exists today and strongly hold to a notion of a man's worth being related primarily to his work output. This is an idea that cybernation is bound to alter-perhaps slowly at first but eventually drastically. Our ideas on leisure will also change. Most people today do not recognize the true value of leisure. Some of them are so conditioned to their daily work routine that they refer to their free time as "time to kill." But leisure can and should be a treasured commodity, and throughout history there are many examples of it as a highly creative force. Many of our greatest inventions and scientific concepts were arrived at during moments of leisure, some springing actually from playthings. A little leisure has always been treasured and there have been societies in which certain men and women lived in almost complete leisure, though at the expense of others' labor. But the idea of almost an entire civilization living in even relative leisure is beyond the comprehension of many of us, and still frowned upon by most others.

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop" we are told by those who see only disaster in mass leisure. That is because they see leisure only as idleness, unemployment, vegetative loafing or a prelude to restlessness leading in turn to a venting of energies in aggression and destruction. I do not doubt that if today we were to have sudden massive leisure-let's still call it "unemployment”that all the horrors these people envision would come true. As A. R. Martin, Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association Committee on Leisure Time and Its Use, has stated, "We must face the fact that the great majority of our people are not emotionally or psychologically ready for free time." I might add that we are not educated for it either, and I will return to that point later. But it is a failure of imagination to believe that a transition to the Cybernetic Age cannot be made in which leisure can become central to man's existence and his greatest blessing. And we are going to have to prepare eventually, and perhans sooner than we think, to handle in a meaningful, creative way, the growing leisure that is bound to evolve.