THE PURPOSE OF THE FORUM
B. C. Brookes

By the end of the NATO Advanced Study Institute at
Aberystwyth (19 73) it seemed to at least one of its members thatat information science was beginning to emerge.

The main pur-pose of this Forum is to reconsider that emergence.

We there-fore invited a limited number of those who are known to havecontributed to research in information to discuss related problems and included a higher proportion of Europeans than the NATOmeeting attracted.
In its present state, information science is almost whollya field of application.
There is great activity in the extension of information networks and the establishment of new kindsof service.
More and more governments are modernizing anddiversifying their economies and feel it necessary to adopt
information services, both for industrial and social purposes,
similar to those which have already been established in the mostadvanced industrial countries.
Networks spread around theEarth.
The industrial revolution;
The industrial

an analogy

revolution was founded on the intimate inter-action of three technologies - of coal, iron and steam.
The
first steam-engines were pumps for clearing mines of water (1699).
Then followed steam-engines as sources of rotary power to supersede mills drawn by wind or water.
The new rotary engines wereapplied to new types of machine for boring and machining ironso that steam-engines of higher power and efficiency could besteadily developed.
By the year 1800, after 100 years ofdevelopment, the trend towards larger machines was also being
accompanied by a search for steam engines of a higher power/
weight ratio, to drive carriages and ships.
These steamengines needed to be compact, economical and reliable so thatthe vehicles they powered could also carry a pay-load overlong distances away from their maintenance bases.

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Development steadily continued so that by 1850 steam
engines were pulling trains along the embryo railway networksof Europe and North America and steam-powered ships werecrossing the Atlantic.
One remarkable aspect of this immense technologicalachievement over the period 1700-1850 was that it had needed
no application of scientific theory whatever.

All the main

contributors had been men of practical skills who were able
to translate their insights directly into working hardware,though only the successful machines are now remembered.

The

second remarkable aspect was that these intensely practicalengineers and craftsmen, wholly devoted to the task of 'harnessing the forces of Nature for the benefit of mankind1,
unwittingly precipitated a social

revolution which transformed

mainly agrarian into mainly industrial economies.

The social

impact of the new technology was enormous.
The first theoreticalcontribution to the development ofengines which converted heat into power was published by Sadi
Carnot in 1824.
It was ignored because of its abstractness.
The missing quantification did not emerge until the 1840's
when the exact relationship between heat and mechanical work
was experimentally determined by Joule et al.
Fairly quickly
thereafter, thermodynamics, the theory of the 'heat-engine1,
was developed and its laws were formulated.
By 1880 it wasat last possible to design heat-engines on scientific principles with due regard to efficiency and economy.
The firstof these engines was the Diesel, named after its inventor.
The new theory was general,ie it applied to all machines whichconverted fuel into power.
The new theory also indicated howmachines of still higher performance might be achieved and so
led to new lines of theoretical and applied research in engineering, metallurgy and many other fields.
The information revolution
The impending information

revolution is also based on

three technologies - of computers, telecommunications and (inits widest sense) reprography.

These three well-establishedtechnologies already attract much scientificially-based

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research so that we can expect continued developments ofpossible application to information systems to be derived
from them.

I have no doubt that information science canride comfortably on the products of these other technologies
for years to come.
The main scientific problem of the industrial

revolu-tion was to understand exactly how heat can be transformed
into mechanical work, a problem which took about 80 years
to solve even though it is a purely physical and familiar
process.

The main scientific problem of theinformation

revolution is to understand the information process inhumans, a problem which is much more complex and which ispartly physical but mainly biological and social.
significant as was the industrial
the impact of the informationAnd,

revolution on society,revolution is likely to beeven greater.
The industrial
revolution gave man control overmechanical power on a wholly new scale.
The information
revolution offers man control over a social
power on a wholly
new scale.
Even though we do not fully understand them, present
information systems seem to work well enough for most purposes.
There seems to be no reason why development should
not continue, indefinitely, much as the development of thesteam-engine did, without a theory.
So why call a Forum
to discuss the theoreticalaspects of information science?
Responsibilities
Any attempt to understand information 'needs1 and users
in any fundamental sense brings us up against one of the major
areas of enquiry which have so far resisted scientific analysis - the human mind in all its variety, complexity and stagesof development.
So any fundamental theory will take many
years to generate.
Yet the design of more effective, efficient and economic systems will increasingly depend on a more
fundamental analysis of user needs than purely statisticalstudies can ever hope to give us.

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There are also social
responsibilities to consider.
Those who are aware of the possible social implications ofuniversal information systems need to begin thinking.
Whoshould control inputs to the systems and access to them?
And how can this control best be exercised?
What is it allfor?
Some of us have academic
responsibilities also.
We
need to make the study of information science more attractive to young people of high intelligence.
For some years
the professional needs of information services have been met
by training young people as practitioners for work in a
relatively stable environment.
But there is likely to bea growing concern with social, technological and scientificissues which will become increasingly interdependent andcomplex.
It is time we began to consider what we as academics should prepare for.
The main objective
The long-term task is to begin the search for a fundamental theory of information analogous to the theory of thermodynamics in the industrial revolution.
What short-term
tasks
would it be reasonable to set ourselves?
Looking around the information scene I see few who havealready contributed some of the theoretical elements which
offer hope of synthesis into a coherent body of knowledge.
But at present they cling rather desperately to their individual bits of flotsam, splashing about in all directions in
the dark waters.
Perhaps, though we are very widely scattered about the world, some of us might work in closer cooperation towards one or more of the short-term targets. If
we could, an exciting opportunity to begin the founding of a
new science lies before us.

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