Equipping Ourselves to Thrive in the Information Era
Michael Sherer, 11/12/97

It was about 1980 and I would have been about the age of most of you here. I was cleaning out a drawer in my bedroom and found a Time magazine from 1965. My parents had saved it because it had a picture of pianist Arthur Rubenstein on the cover, but what caught my attention as I flipped through the magazine was an article about the future. The best minds of 1965 had gotten together and come up with a bold vision of the future in the 1970's, and since I was in a position to know whether they were right or wrong, I read the article with great fascination. Frankly I don't remember much being right--I do remember that we were to all have personal helicopters, and increased productivity was going to give us 30 hour work weeks and increased leisure time. Last I checked I was still driving to work, and staying late. And so it is with great humility that I talk to you about the future and how we can equip ourselves to thrive in it.

What can we say with any surety about the future? Well, quite a bit it turns out. About that time that I was reading that Time magazine, John Naisbitt was writing his book Megatrends and later Megatrends 2000. These books were based on the premise that newspapers could be studied as closed systems to identify societal trends. In the process, Naisbitt demonstrated that there's quite a bit you can say about the future by looking at looking at the past, the present and projecting into the future. So that's where I'll begin.
It's a truism that we live in an era of accelerated change. The engine of that change is information technology and so that's a good place to start when we are thinking about the future. There's a maxim called Moore's law that states that the number of transistors that can fit on a chip will double every 18 months, effectively doubling processing power. Now one would think that a trend like that would be difficult to sustain, but this trend has been going on for a long time and remarkably, there are chips in the pipeline that continue that trend into the foreseeable future. To illustrate, in 1984, I bought the most powerful desktop computer on the planet--the Apple Lisa. It had 1 MB or RAM, an 8 Mhz processor, a 5 MB hard disk, 12" monochrome monitor and it cost over $4,000--1984 dollars I might add. The computer on my desk now has a 210 Mhz processor, 64 MB of RAM, a 2 gigabyte hard disk, a 17" color monitor and a CD-ROM drive. That's only 13 years ago folks and we've seen a 64-fold increase in memory, and a 400-fold increase in disk storage, and up to a thousand-fold increase in processing power. Don Blosser has a sign on his office door that says if cars had progressed like computers you could buy a Rolls Royce for 18 cents, it would go 600 miles per hour and every so often it would inexplicably crash killing all its occupants. On Monday, Apple Computer introduced a line of computers that, for the same money, is twice as as fast as the Macs I put into the lab this summer. If these trends continue over the next decade, your year 2007 PC will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 gigabytes of RAM, a 200 gigabyte hard drive, and have the processing power of 64 Pentium 200 chips in it! On the down side, Microsoft Office will still take up half your hard disk, will still run slowly and you will only use .02% of its features.

Seriously, all this would be very impressive by itself, but another trend which is accelerating is that the personal computer is increasingly becoming the inter-personal computer. Communications technology is interconnecting the computers of the world and services like e-mail and world-wide web are commonplace on campuses and workplaces around the globe. Right now, cable companies, phone companies, even power companies are in a mad scramble to bring high-speed network access to homes, schools and businesses across the globe. Modem access to the internet is lousy, but there are technologies in the pipeline today that are up to 1000 times faster than the fastest modems of today.

Wireless communications are going digital. Right now, you can go down to your local Radio Shack and buy a PCS digital phone and there's no particular reason you couldn't use the same technology in a portable computer. So, it's clear that in the next decade you will be able to talk or compute wherever you are--wireless.

Another initiative to mention is the Internet 2 project. There are about 100 large universities currently working with the telecommunications industry to bring about ultra-high speed research networks. The goal is to create a national data network with high-enough performance to enable applications which are currently not feasible--virtual reality, high quality, two-way internet video, wide-area sharing of specialized research tools, and the like. I saw a demo of working Internet 2 applications the other week at Educom in Minneapolis, and the leaders of the project promise that Internet 2 technology will migrate down to institutions like ours sooner than we think. When it does, I intend to see that our network infrastructure is ready for it.

So, a decade out we've got unfathomable computing power and ubiquitous, high speed networking. This technology will form the basis for a global information infrastructure that is going to be driving a lot of trends. I'll highlight a few of them:

First, The Rise of the Information Economy. It's fair to say this one is in full swing. Microsoft, which is capitalized at about $40 billion dollars, is basically comprised of intellectual property that could fit in a shoebox full of CD's. Expertise, business processes, even labor can be rolled into software, zipped around the globe and paid for with an electronic transaction. And, with the internet being a two-way medium, virtually anyone can participate in this information economy. A wonderful example of this is Terry Morse software. As far as I can tell, Terry Morse software is basically just Terry Morse. He's got one cool product called Myrmidon, which let's you print from any application to HTML, the language of the WWW, and he's got a web site, www.terrymorse.com. Microsoft's got a web site, Terry Morse has a web site. The web is a democratizing place.

The second trend I'll highlight is Globalization. The Information Economy is by nature global. Each night software programs called Bots index the world of information. International discussion groups and email lists cover every topic imaginable. Time and space vanish. The people who answer your questions are from New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden or Chicago and you barely notice. You download software from Japan faster than you can find a diskette in your drawer. You eventually come to believe and act as though this normal.

Everyone now and then I get a bit of a rush from this global aspect of the web. At the Ethnic Fair I spent the day giving internet world tours. (more)

The third trend I'll highlight is Ubiquitous computing. You're going to see is computing power migrating down into every imaginable appliance and device. To illustrate this, Sun Microsystems has a programming language called Java. The neat thing about Java is that it runs on anything--write a program in Java and it can run on anything that has a Java Virtual Machine (VM) on it--from a super computer on down to a toaster or a credit card. I heard from a Sun employee that the California Driver's license has a Java VM embedded on it. Computer technology turns up in surprising places. I recently talked with Neil Miller, an 82 GC grad who works as an Ag extension agent, and he was telling me that there are now combines that, as you are harvesting, monitor the yield and moisture content of the grain and combine that information with GPS satellite data to spit out a map telling you exactly how much fertilizer you'll need to put in each part of your field to improve yields next year. Computers are destined to be embedded into almost everything.

Now, I could go on for a long time speculating about all the whizzy things that these and other advances in technology will enable--the end of cancer and the common cold, sticking a disk containing the corpus of western music into my stereo, sleeping as my electric car drives me and the family to my inlaws' house in Pennsylvania, intelligent agents whizzing around the internet doing comparison shopping and information gathering for me, having conversations with my household appliances, and on and on--but I promised to talk about equipping ourselves to live and thrive in this brave new world, so let's move on.

The good news about all this change we're about to be confronted with is that it won't happen all at once and most of it we will only be peripherally aware of. We'll all get to adjust to it one day at a time. But our ability to learn and grow and change will be critical to our success in making that daily adjustment. At the risk of sounding preachy, I've put together a series of admonitions using a modern idiom--the Letterman top 10 list. So, here we go:

10. Learn to Enjoy Learning. I don't suppose it was ever true, but there used to be some notion that your education stopped when you graduated from some institution of higher learning and entered the workforce. That hasn't been true for me and it most certainly will not be true for you--you can expect to be learning new things the rest of your life. To quote sociologist Jennifer James: "You'll be 95 years old, in a nursing home, three days from death and someone will make you learn a new phone system." Lifelong learning will be your lot, so you might as well start enjoying it now. Find role models in this area and emulate them. One that comes to mind for me is Shinichi Suzuki, the famous Japanese violin pedagog, who I studied with in 1979. He was 80 at the time and his morning ritual was reputed to include getting up at the crack of dawn painting a picture of this one particular mountain and during the process, dreaming up some new pedagogical concept for teaching the violin. By 9 a.m. he'd be in his studio surrounded by students and he'd begin by saying "This is my idea." Then he'd proceed to give everyone pretty much the same lesson using that idea. I've often thought that if I could come up with one good idea each day, I too could change the world.

9. Learn to Think. Today's workplace requires that you be able to solve problems creatively. Nothing prepares you to do this like a liberal arts education. So congratulations--you made a good choice. Vocational training has its place, but if you can think like writer, think like a mathematician, a musician, an artist, a scientist, an athlete--you can visualize things others can't and you'll be more effective in whatever you do.

8. Learn to Collaborate. Traditional educational institutions have done a dismal job in this area. What was collaboration called in high school? Cheating. Today's employers want people who can work together in teams to do projects and solve problems, people who can synergize with co-workers to create breakthroughs in the tasks they are assigned. Three years ago when I was working at Notre Dame, the college of business there totally revamped the entire curriculum to foster collaborative skills among the students. They did it because businesses asked them to do it.

7. Learn to Communicate. Do yourself a favor--don't leave this place without learning to write well and speak articulately. I've been a computer consultant for seven years and the administrator of a technology department for the last eight months--what do I do? I read, write and speak all day long. I tell anyone who will listen that if I could write twice as fast and twice as well, I'd be twice as effective in my job.

6. Learn the Tools. Computers are making professional quality tools in every discipline available to anyone at relatively low cost. This is an utterly amazing trend. The software that is in our labs is the same stuff used to publish the New York Times, design office buildings and shopping malls, create commercials for the Super Bowl, compose the great symphonies and rock songs of today, graph the latest discoveries and on and on. While you are here, you should be sure to become competent in the tools that pertain to your field. You should be facile with general productivity tools like spreadsheets, word processors, databases, graphics and publishing tools, and with communications tools like web browsers and email clients. There's a generation of workers retiring right now who are not comfortable with these tools. Employers want to replace them with people who are. My own personal bias is that everyone should leave this place with a BIS minor or a multimedia minor, or spend a couple of years working for us in computing services--can you say resume booster?

5. Seek Knowledge, Not Credentials. Your college diploma will keep your resume out of the circular file, but increasingly employers will be able to test you to assess your knowledge and preparedness for the job. I'm not particularly pleased about this development because it strikes me as having great potential for abuse, but I expect it to happen anyway. This will further drive the trend towards de-professionalization. I'm living example of this trend. People ask me, "Michael, how did you get to be Director of Computing?" and the conversation goes a little like this...(finish story). I got this job because 13 years ago I bought a computer and I believed that it would change the way we worked and the way we learned. I set up a computer lab at Locust Grove Mennonite School and used it as medium for exploring giftedness, I taught my family and friends how to use computers and I fixed their computers when they got messed up. In seminary, I did word processing in Greek and Hebrew when my profs were struggling to write memos. I did multimedia projects instead of papers.
Along the way I learned enough to land a job at Notre Dame, which I suppose was my equivalent of a graduate degree. .......I suppose I should tell the end of the story which is that I almost didn't get the job here. I remember vividly Randy Gunden calling me and saying, "Michael, your resume is very interesting, but you didn't make our short list. I was in shock. I had spent the last two months brainstorming what I would do if I took the job and trying to decide whether I wanted it when it was offered to me--and I hadn't made the short list. That night, I couldn't sleep, so I went downstairs, knocked out four pages of brainstorming on what I would do as director of computing services and emailed them to Randy with a note at the bottom saying please feel free to use these ideas to help evaluate your top candidates. The next day I got another call from Randy saying that they would like to interview me, and the rest, as they say, is history. I suspect there's a lesson here, but I'm hesitant to recommend it as an interview technique.

4. Seek Balance. This culture rewards and glamorizes people who lead skewed lives. Don't fall into the trap. This can be devilishly difficult. At Notre Dame I had a co-worker who routinely put in 60-70 hour work weeks. I couldn't compete. There was no telling me I had to put in those long hours, but I felt the pressure. In the end, I resolved to work a 40 hour week, but to do my utmost to move the institution forward during those hours. It worked. So work hard, but get your exercise, get your sleep, spend time with your family and friends, attend to your spiritual life, go to church, volunteer, and cultivate outside interests. Start here. It's only going to get harder when you graduate and enter the workforce.

3. Seek Maturity. Maturity means different things to different people. The maturity I'm referring to has many facets: self-understanding that acknowledges strengths without pride, that acknowledges weaknesses without shame and self-hatred, a sense of self that allows you to be with others without being subsumed by them, and to accept others without compromising your own identity, a sense of worth that comes from within--not shaped by outside forces, a spirit that is not threatened by excellence in others or by truth that challenges current understanding. Maturity is spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social, and it is everso hard to pin down. And yet I'm quite certain you all know people who embody maturity--at least some facets of it. Seek out those people and learn from them. Maturity is such a rare and precious commodity that if you can gain it and embody it, you will be a blessing to every one you come in contact with.

2. Seek Wisdom and Morality. Each technical advance demands a parallel advance in wisdom and morality. Wouldn't it be nice if there were a Moore's law for morality? Can't you see it. "Humanity 6.0. Twice as good as humanity 5.0" Not gonna happen. Technology imparts freedom and power. The computing power we have placed in your hands is greater than any king has ever known. You have access to more wisdom than Solomon and I suppose more folly than his court jester. You have the freedom to go anywhere, read or see anything, write and publish anything. Therein lies the risk. You have the power to do amazing and wonderful things, but you also have the power to destroy yourself and others. If you doubt it, consider the case of three Cornell students--they passed along some misogynistic piece about women that one of them had found on the internet. It fell into the hands of some women, who found it very offensive. When it became known that these three were the source of the piece, there was such an uproar on campus that it made the front page of the NY Times. Two of them ultimately left Cornell, their lives and reputations essentially wrecked. Think of that the next time you get the urge to put something juvenile on your web page.

With such huge potential for good or evil, the world is crying for people with the character and the wisdom to use the technology effectively, morally and ethically.

And finally:
1. Deepen your Faith. I may have the distinction of being the first technology guy on the planet to stand at the podium and tell his audience to deepen their faith in God. But I believe it is true that when world around you is a swirling vortex of change, the people who will survive and thrive are the ones who are rooted in an unchanging God. Consider this: Every day you encounter people and circumstances any one of which could change your life radically... for better or worse. It takes spiritual sensitivity to even realize that you've had one of these encounters, and an even greater amount of spiritual discernment to determine which of these opportunities you should pursue, and finally it takes spiritual strength to pursue those opportunities to their conclusion. The Dutch Calvinists held a very broad view of vocation. You were called by God to be a baker, called by God to be a farmer, or a weaver or whatever. I believe in that and much more. I am on a mission from God ....President Showalter is on a mission from God....everybody here in this room is on a mission from God. You may not know what it is yet, but it's your job to find out so you can get on with it. And if you are listening, along the way you will find that you have little side missions, and dead-end missions, and in the process of carrying out these missions great and small, you will find a sense of purpose that those without faith can never understand.

This is an incredible time to be alive. But the very things that make it exciting are the ones that will make it a time of great uncertainty, dislocation, pain and alienation for some. The world will desperately need you to be whole persons, spiritual persons, visionary, caring, effective, honorable persons. It is my hope and my prayer that on your journey to becoming such people, not only will you thrive in the information era, but so will your families, your churches, your communities and the world. Go in peace.