The author foresaw the influence of increasingly dominant technologies on innovation and progress, predicted a time when the process of complex problem solving would become dependent on the researchers’ ability to find and link in to new information sources. The researchers would accomplish this through intuitive leaps by developing various “webs of trails” which would lead to improvement, or at the very least better understanding, of the problem. The author realized available information sources were multiplying and moving far faster in history, while at the same time scientific fields were becoming more specialized; a combination that would make processes leading to discovery and innovation more dynamic, but also potentially more confusing and frustrating. Retreating from the coming information revolution in the face of frustration would be the opposite of productive. The lasting theme of this article is the need to find strategies and processes in the preparation of navigating the (exponentially) expanding information universe. Well, his charge has come to partial realization decades later as the World Wide Web.
The Internet has spawned an extension of readable and writeable applications (e.g. blogs, wikis, social media sites) that not only interlinks data sources from and to anywhere in the world, but offers the capacity to simultaneously balance difference perspectives as of equal value on a single site or network of sites. These applications have a growing influence on the way we communicate, problem-solve and explain across populations and cultures with varying perspectives.
In terms of education, extending the classroom beyond the traditional “four walls” becomes possible when integrating the web in to the classroom. In this new classroom, the student is the point in the network where learning pathways intersect, connecting with other student in a larger network of activity. Horizontal and vertical knowledge expands as students create working groups that seek out new knowledge while simultaneously applying already mastered material. Through this process, the classroom is extended as collective knowledge is created, explored and shared.
The author sought to reshape the relationship between science and human society. Instead of science being used for war, scientific advances could lead the way in helping human beings gain knowledge to the end of gaining wisdom in order to satisfy their “needs and desires” without destroying themselves. Of course, all governments should ignore these reflections.