"A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength," according
to the Biblical proverb, a perception that Renaissance Englishmen found
appealing. "Ignorance is the curse of God," Shakespeare wrote, "Knowledge
the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." And Francis Bacon, the philosopher
and courtier, reduced the essentials to "knowledge itself is power," an
epigram which became in time the common saying "knowledge is power."1
Whether knowledge has concerned techniques of farming or fighting, or the
knowledge of events great or small, or the possession of holy information,
we have generally recognized that people "in the know" command powers
that the ignorant lack. For centuries history has demonstrated the wisdom
expressed in Bacon's aphorism. Perhaps this is why over the last few centuries,
certainly from the printing press onward, Western society has been
caught up in an information and communication revolution that now, at the
end of the 20th century, appears to have entered a more dynamic, accelerating
phase than ever before.2
Bouncing words and images off satellites in
space, storing and manipulating undreamed of quantities of information in
the twinkling of an eye, we have been creating an awesome communications
technology that is leading society into many dimensions of unknown territory.
Since we cannot peer into the future, the meaning and significance of
this movement are clouded and uncertain. To find our bearings we can only
search the past.