Who Created the Internet?
I believe the time has come to stake another claim in the name of all the people, stake a claim based upon the combined resources of communications. I believe the time has come to enlist the computer and the satellite, as well as television and radio, and to enlist them in the cause of education... So I think we must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge-not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and of storing information that the individual can rise.Think of the lives that this would change:
--the student in a small college could tap the resources of a great university...
--the country doctor getting help from a distant laboratory or a teaching hospital;
--a scholar in Atlanta might draw instantly on a library in New York;
--a famous teacher could reach with ideas and inspirations into some far-off classroom, so that no child need be neglected. Eventually, I think this electronic knowledge bank could be as valuable as the Federal Reserve Bank.
And such a system could involve other nations, too--it could involve them in a partnership to share knowledge and to thus enrich all mankind.
A wild and visionary idea? Not at all. Yesterday's strangest dreams are today's headlines and change is getting swifter every moment.
I have already asked my advisers to begin to explore the possibility of a network for knowledge--and then to draw up a suggested blueprint for it.
In 1844, when Henry Thoreau heard about Mr. Morse's telegraph, he made his sour comment about the race for faster communication. "Perchance," he warned, "the first news which will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."
We do have skeptic comments on occasions. But I don't want you to be that skeptic. I do believe that we have important things to say to one another--and we have the wisdom to match our technical genius.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, Nov. 7, 1967
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