New Technologies and the Public Interest
Ernest L. Boyer · Leonardo · 1996
the viewpoint of the fish, which pretty well sums up my assignment here today. Specifically, I've been asked to comment briefly on how the intellectual property rights debate relates to public interest, to the larger, educational social context. And the answer is, of course, that the two are inextricably interlocked, since nothing in a free society is of greater consequence than how is gathered and transmitted. A half century ago, MIT Professor Norbert Weiner observed that society can be understood through a study of the messages and the communication facilities that belong to it. And we are here today precisely because the new information age has, during the past 50 years, quite literally transformed the way we live and the way we work and even, perhaps, the way we think. In the spring of 1946, I made my first trip to New York City with my high school graduating class. And a highlight of that visit was a tour of the NBC Studios where I saw-for the very first time-blurred images on a ten-inch television screen. The guide who led the tour called TV a novelty, as I recall it. And my classmates and I agreed that television was-at best-a fascinating gimmick. As coincidence would have it, it was that very same year, 1946, when-just down the road-the nation's first elec-