The university is one of civilization's most enlightened creations. It simultaneously preserves knowledge and creates new knowledge that often upsets the old. A great university must be forever off-balance, caught between the past and the future. The information revolution provides a particularly disequilibrating time for the University. The magnitude of change it brings has been likened to the discovery of fire, of writing, and of printing.
Information is at the heart of learning and of knowledge.
If we are in an information revolution, we are in a university revolution as well. At best, we point in a direction that must be traveled to be discovered. Nevertheless, the challenge before us is so pressing and the stakes so high that we dare not hold back. It is the duty of a great university to reach beyond what is known, even when that means going beyond our own well-known ways of doing business. While the recommendations of this report start us on the journey, the journey itself will require constant reassessment and correction.