                           January 18, 1995



                          THE KNOWLEDGE CLUB

                             PART 2 OF 2


                            by T. Winslow


                            -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


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%%Opening_screen    2000
%% 2000, 0, 0, 0, 8, The Knowledge Club

   The Knowledge Club
      The Knowledge Center Concept and Plan
      Including A Proposal

   Part 2 of 2

By

   T. Winslow


(C) Copyright 1985, 1986, 1995 by T. Winslow.  All Rights Reserved.

First Edition: September 16, 1985
Second Edition: November 26, 1985
Third Edition: January 18, 1986
Fourth Edition: January 18, 1995


    License:
       This book may be freely distributed by electronic means,
       such as electronic bulletin board systems, without further
       permission of the author, as long as the work is transmitted
       in its entirety without alteration or omission.  Publication
       in print form, diskette or CD-ROM duplication, requires
       written permission of the author, and a royalty agreement.

%%Status_line       2001
%%*
%% 2001, 0, 7, Status line
   The Knowledge Club (c) Copyright 1985, 1986, 1995.  All Rights Reserved.

%%Default_flags     6
%% 0, 600, Chapter 6: The Knowledge Center Concept
%% 600, 0, The Knowledge Center Concept
6.0 The Knowledge Center Concept 

	"So that men today are in a certain sense in the same
condition in which those ancient philosophers would be if they
could have prolonged their old age until now."  Blaise Pascal

	"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been; it is
lying as a magic preparation in the pages of books." Thomas Carlyle


	By now the reader should be ready to appreciate the concept of
a Knowledge Center.  It will inevitably be billed as an automated
space-age library, but you who read this ought to know better.  It
is really a complicated institution with many societal interfaces
and indeed its boundaries are not all that well defined because it
will change society itself!

%% 600, 0, What It Is
6.1 What It Is

	The basic idea of the Knowledge Center is to create an
"electronic warehouse" of "knowledge items" which can be accessed
remotely through a number of channels (phone, fiber-optic cable,
satellite, mail), and "browsed" until a desired item is located
and "ordered", it then being "shipped" to the customer
electronically and his account billed.  This warehouse and
distribution system will be built and operated by the government,
just as physical highways now are, to facilitate commerce.

      To see the benefits to be gained, just think how inefficient
it is to obtain electronic (not to mention physical) knowledge items
now: a physical visit to a software, music, or video store; purchase
of needless packaging; paying of useless middlemen; increased costs
due to breakage, theft, piracy; clumsy distribution of revisions and
updates; federal tax on unsold inventory; etc.

	However, the traditional concept of a warehouse is inadequate to
describe this system which is almost "alive" in that it is also a
factory for designing and manufacturing the knowledge products
themselves.  Indeed, many knowledge products will be design and
manufacturing tools in themselves; and products can be
remanufactured by the customer and turned into new ones.  Also, the
warehouse itself will be constantly adding value to the products by
tying them together and making them easier to find!

	The second key idea is to manage what physical knowledge items
the state possesses by consolidating the state's inventory and
putting it in a group of robot warehouses up and down the state
serviced by a fleet of shuttles that redistribute the inventory
dynamically based on demand; building an office center nearby (with
walk-in offices for the public as well as leasable space for
businesses), with pneumatic tubes leading from the warehouse into
each office; organizing the inventory around a computer system with
consoles in each "electronic office"; and permitting
computer-controlled ordering of the items with near-instantaneous
(10 to 30 second) delivery.  Thus, all knowledge items, physical and
electronic, are managed with a single highly-automated system, which
will gradually phase the physical items out as they become obsolete.

	This system will replace the current public knowledge
distribution system, delivering knowledge much more efficiently, and
provide an infra-structure for the knowledge economy through its
facilitation of knowledge commerce.  For the first time, the little
guy can bypass the middlemen and sell his knowledge products
directly to the consumer, the system collecting his royalties for
him (as the customers are billed).  No longer will the "editors" or
other self-appointed middlemen be able to reject a manuscript for
publication; rather, any item can be "cataloged" for the going
fee, where it is immediately available to all citizens.  The
inefficiencies in distributing physical products (transportation and
storage costs, tax on unsold inventory, retailing costs, wastage,
etc.) will be automatically eliminated as knowledge products become
all-electronic.  And since all forms of knowledge are treated
equally, an unprecedented new market opportunity will be created
that will stimulate the state's economy beyond anything known
before.

	The system will also bring universal nearly-free home education
to the citizens, dramatically reducing the cost of the public
schools and universities, who can get out of the "classroom
business", consolidate their physical plants, and concentrate on
knowledge discovery, collection, systematization, and delivery,
creating a "discovery boom" whose potential can only be imagined.

	For those familiar with "computer bulletin boards" it might be
added that the Knowledge Center will be an adaptation of that
technology, made useful to all.  Its system design and public role
will make it incomparably superior in terms of services rendered,
however, when it comes to knowledge products.

        What about the Internet?  It is a fine pioneering effort at
connecting masses of computers together, blindly groping along, but
it is no Knowledge Center.  For example, you have to request a file
from a "domain" with explicit addresses (32-bit with mnemonic coding)
via a "ftp" (file transfer protocol), such as:
        "nic.funet.fi /pub/misc/funnies/smiley.txt".

        Then, you aren't charged per knowledge item, but rather for
connect time.  And there is no configuration control of knowledge
items, or master control of file resources.  And it waffles between
being a file system and an e-mail system, with a refreshing but
quite devastating lawlessness when asked to become the foundation of
an information economy.

        With the Knowledge Center approach you don't have to know
"addresses" or "domains", just the catalog number of the knowledge
item, and you are billed for the item while the author is paid,
automatically, upon delivery of the item to your domain -- which can
include even physical delivery if the knowledge item is cataloged
but not electronicized yet, especially in the early years.  The same
advantage would go for e-mail: people would get domain-free ID's,
for life, indeed, this is their lifetime account with the KC itself,
for purposes of billing AND credits.  But mail is privacy-conscious,
and the KC will be geared towards public knowledge products, hence,
whether and how much e-mail they will carry is not known even to the
author at present, so Internet could co-exist with it harmoniously
probably for a long time.

	Finally, this system will have a "mission" to systematically
collect "complete knowledge", so that the citizens will one day have
the entire stock of knowledge of humanity literally at their
fingertips.  This fulfills the destiny of the public libraries that
it is replacing, increasing the opportunities for educational
growth of the citizenry "to the max".

	To summarize the concept, here is what a Knowledge Center is:

	1.  A physical plant that combines an office complex with a
robot warehouse of physical knowledge items ("catalog items")
(books, magazines, tapes, records, disks), and electronic knowledge
items.  As we enter the 21st century, almost all knowledge will be
electronicized and, in particular, paper and eventually plastic will
become obsolete as knowledge media.

	2.  In the near term, a public facility where anybody can
walk in and get a free place to work (study).  Each workspace will
have a computer console and a port for sending and receiving catalog
items from the robot warehouse via pneumatic tubes.  All the state's
Knowledge Centers have a common inventory which is shuttled between
them on an expected and demand basis (minimum wait period = 10
seconds, maximum wait period = 2 hours, average wait period = 15
seconds?): eventually the system will be extended worldwide!

	3.  An entity that can be dialed up from anywhere in the
state and used the same way as if one were physically present in a
workspace.  (The user must have a personal computer available, but
they are expected to be as common in ten years as telephones are
now.) Any physical (as opposed to electronic) catalog items ordered
will be sent via the mails (public or private carrier), or held to
be picked up at a "bank" style car port.

	4.  A business park where information and knowledge businesses
can quarter themselves to increase their competitiveness in the
information economy of the 21st century.  Here one will have the
most rapid access to new knowledge and the benefit of the latest
communication, computing, and human interface devices, for example,
super high data rate processors for movie animation, 3-dimensional
displays, or a Space Shuttle simulator!

	5.  A commerce system which facilitates retail distribution of
electronic knowledge products: a citizen simply orders any knowledge
item from the Knowledge Center, and it is shipped to him
electronically (where he can record it for his own use or access it
subsequently for free), and he is then billed electronically.  Since
the cost of each item is what the market will bear, most commercial
items will gradually become almost free, finally passing into "public
domain" items.

	6.  The heart of the university system, where all knowledge
discovered in laboratories or field sites is sent for further
near-instantaneous work by scholars worldwide.

	7.  A systematic collection of "complete knowledge": its
administrative mission will be to systematically collect all human
knowledge for distribution on demand to state citizens.  For
example, every movie and TV show ever made will be available, as
will every newspaper, magazine, novel, cookbook, comic book (in
video form), record, rock video, political pamphlet and religious
tract, government form, etc.  And this knowledge will eventually be
provided in any human language.

	8.  An educational system from birth to death.  It will be used
either as a supplement to, or in place of, classroom teaching.
Teachers will become producers of educational knowledge products.
Schools will become community recreation and social centers.
Universities will be able to concentrate on the advancement of
knowledge: "degrees" will be granted electronically after passing a
prescribed series of tests; campus residency requirements will often
be dropped.

%% 600, 0, Some Common Questions
6.1.1 Some Common Questions
	
	1.  What will happen to the retail stores that handle physical
knowledge products like books, records, tapes?  Ans.  They will
either cater to "antique collectors" ("I'd like to own one of those
old 'book things', and a set of 'vinyl records' too, maybe a 'VCR tape',
and display it in a display case with my old newspaper collection") or
will go out of business.  Those who used to specialize in giving expert
advice to knowledge (as opposed to antique) collectors will package their
knowledge and sell it through the Knowledge Centers like any other
knowledge product.

	2.  What will happen to the present public education system?
Ans.  The classroom teachers will be removed, saving the taxpayers
"big bucks." The teachers, if they really know their business, will
transform into knowledge businessmen and produce educational
knowledge products for the huge waiting market.  The school
buildings will be sold off and the administrations consolidated,
for another huge tax savings.  The few remaining buildings will be
used as social, babysitting, and recreational centers with no more
forced attendance for the masses with all the concealed social
engineering agendas.  What universities that survive will have to
concentrate on knowledge discovery and collection, promoting a boom
in research.  The massive government involvement in "student loans"
(a large part of which goes for needless away-from-home living
expenses) will be ended.  The international competition in
education will be decisively won by .... THE KNOWLEDGE CLUB.  The
feeling that some people are getting tired of paying for the
education of other people's children will be dissolved.

	3.  How will the Knowledge Centers be financed?  Ans.  Since
they are technology-driven, they have to evolve out of the existing
industrial base.  So, the earliest Knowledge Centers will likely be
hybrids.  Through office space rents, cataloging fees, a percentage
of the authors' royalties, and user fees, taxpayer funding can be
reduced.  But it's a matter of ultimate responsibility, so the
government must pay for what the private sector can't or won't.  The
typical citizen will probably spend less for this new service after
it has been created than he now spends for knowledge in physical
form (newspapers, tapes and records, novels, etc.), and receive much
more to boot.

	4.  What about the poor?  Will they be left out?  Ans.
Actually, no one will be unable to access the Knowledge Center;
those who cannot afford to access the more expensive items will no
doubt have a portion of their bill subsidized by the taxpayers after
their protectors in the government have their way.  And the
electronic devices required to interface with the Knowledge Centers
will no doubt eventually be provided by a super-competitive private
industry, along with televisions and home multimedia centers (where
the entertainment system, the telephone, and a personal computer are
packaged together), without increasing their cost significantly.

	5.  Does this conflict with the free market system?  Ans.  It 
need be no more an intrusion on the knowledge market than highways are
on the physical market system.  Long ago American voters decided that
it would be preferable to let government build the highways to
eliminate private, incompatible toll roads: on the other hand, they
decided that communications and mail service should not be a
government monopoly, permitting both public and private systems: now
it is time to decide the fate of knowledge collection and delivery.
The proposed system of Knowledge Centers would be workable either as
a public or private project; however, the role of standardizing
interfaces to eliminate incompatibilities, and the "missions" of
collecting complete knowledge and making it universally available
seem like classic functions for government.  And this system will
help in getting government bureaucrats off our backs as the
automation of the knowledge delivery system will greatly reduce
their number.  But let the voters decide first this time!
	
%% 600, 0, Why Your State?
6.1.2 Why Your State?

        As of the release of this edition, the whole concept is
inside this edition.  No money is being spent on this master level,
and none of the 50 states of the United States, or the federal
government of the United States, have any projected funding for
Knowledge Centers.  Other countries can't stop the U.S. from being
a leader here, but they certainly can bypass it if it fails to take
the baton.  The author is willing to lead any effort to field a
working Knowledge Center system that is sufficiently well funded,
and he would prefer it to be an America-first system of course.
So, let's talk about your state, maybe the author's sales pitch will
hit your uprights and go through (like in American football).

        Let's talk about one or more of the 50 states simply going
for it all-out, as a means to develop their state's economy.

        If your state were to become a leader in the Knowledge
Center based knowledge economy, it could to solidify its lead for
decades.  Once it had attracted enough new information businesses,
large and small, not only would this in itself tend to attract
others, but the "roots" they put down would make coaxing them to
move out of the state much more difficult, unless/until another
state had something significantly better than yours, not just
incrementally better.

	For political appeal, note that a successful knowledge industry
in your state will be a major factor in repelling undesirable
industrial development, overpopulation, pollution, etc., and in
furnishing the money to beautify the state.  In essence, it is
"supply side economics" given a kick-start.  Also, the future knowledge
industry is sure to be a fertile ground for small businesses because
of the small amount of physical capital required to go into
business.  (Some business areas, for instance, elementary education
products, might be so well established that millions of dollars of
front money would be required for a successful new product, but the
opportunities are so unlimited that a new person can always identify
and cultivate his own market niche with a small monetary investment,
mainly the value of the time involved.)

	The climate and low population density, key attractions of
any state, would not be themselves damaged by an inflow of these new
businesses.  First of all, these are not "mass labor businesses" that
rely on hordes of low-paid factory or office workers; but instead,
"people businesses" consisting of many one or two person companies
as well as worldwide networks of independents.  Second, there is no
environmental impact from their presence: these people simply work
in front of a computer console, which can be located at home,
developing their own working lifestyle with the government's
blessing.  Third, there is little danger of attracting federal
government (especially Dept. of Defense) contractors here and
ghettoizing the area with their peculiar lifestyle so evident in
Southern California and Washington D.C. (the huge plants with
badged employees and acres of parking lots, the crowded freeways,
"fast" high-debt paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle, "body shop"
contracts, etc.)

	It should also be mentioned that if the hi-tech job
market in your is currently somewhat depressed (although flourishing
nationally), this makes the timing ideal for the creation of the
new Knowledge Center system, both for the business growth it will
encourage and because the many local talents (who often hang on in
the state even when they are unemployed) will be available to
design, build, and operate it.  It is also expected that these new
centers will virtually stop if not reverse the brain drain from the
state, because for the first time the majority will be able to
choose their physical location based on the attractiveness of the
quality of life alone.  Of course, if your state is not a desirable
place to live in, say, because it's bleak and underpopulated, then
the Knowledge Center concept could be turned around as a way for the
scattered residents to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and draw
wealth into the state by selling knowledge products -- they can later
afford plenty of vacations!

%% 600, 0, The Knowledge Center Vs. The Library
6.1.3 The Knowledge Center Vs. The Library

	1.  Active, dynamic vs.  passive, static.

	2.  A working office (for all citizens) vs.  a virtual museum to
visit for brief periods.

	3.  Electronic knowledge (preferred form) vs.  aging paper or
plastic.
	
	4.  "Televisits" vs.  physical visits (minimizing geography,
weather, distance, and time).

	5.  Availability of one's own "working copies" of knowledge
items (in electronic form) vs.  "original copies" of them that must
be treated with kid gloves.  (I.e., one can get an electronic copy
of an item, cut it up and insert "quotes" from it into one's own
working item, put personal notes in it and save it on one's own
storage device, etc.: this includes picture knowledge!  And of
course, if "cataloged", some royalties will be diverted to other
copyright holders.)
	
	6.  Instant publication and cataloging of patrons' works vs.
the publishing industry editors and their rejection slips.

	7.  User control of knowledge resources vs. asking the fat lady
behind the desk after she stirs fifty spoons of sugar into her coffee.
 (Automated to provide complete control to each patron and minimize
the "staff").

	8.  Automatic inventory control and delivery vs.  long trips to
the messy stacks erratically maintained by foreign language speaking
shelvers wearing "walkman" earphones.

	9.  Breathtaking electronic information processing (electronic
transmission, searching, sorting, comparing, tracing, collating,
indexing, reformatting, calculating, bookkeeping, word processing,
pretty-printing) vs.  cutting one's fingers on sharp pages, hurting
one's back reaching down for books on the lower shelves, finding a
key book with pages crumbling to dust or scribbled on, and suffering
from other patrons' general abuse of materials.

	10.  A center for integrated communications and knowledge
storage devices (video/audio, computers, cable network, satellites)
vs.  a bunch of books, some pay typewriters, a few telephones, and a
"media center" with some abused record albums and a prohibition on
bringing in your own tapes because they might "damage the
equipment".

	11.  An automated system versus a private empire subject to
abuse by bureaucrats (such as having you thrown in jail for threatening
their source of income).

%% 600, 0, Benefits
6.1.4 Benefits

	Among the Knowledge Center's many benefits, the following should
be emphasized:

	1.  Lowers the cost of knowledge delivery and facilitates
commerce.  (Reduces pirating of electronic knowledge products.)

	2.  Consolidates and optimizes the state's resources,
eliminating duplication of effort and permitting the state to deal
as a unit with other states.

	3.  Reduces staff requirements through automation.

	4.  Improves the competitiveness of information and knowledge
businesses, encouraging them to move to the state.

	5.  Permits the individual to have creative expression with a
minimum of investment.  The only thing on the horizon to permit all
citizens to share in the opportunities of hi-tech knowledge delivery
technology (universal personal computer and electronic knowledge
access).

	6.  Permits home schooling.

	7.  Permits "cottage industries" and "telecommuting".

	8.  Encourages self-employment.

	9.  Encourages self-education and improvement.

	10.  Compatible with tele-shopping, tele-banking,
tele-conferencing, video phones, etc.

	11.  Aids all shoppers through availability of complete
information on every product.  Permits interested groups to "label"
products with warnings and ratings without affecting the
manufacturer directly or involving the government; it will be easy
for shoppers to check the ratings from desired groups before
purchase.  (Compare this with the current idiotic and ineffective
movie and record rating systems.)

	12.  Reduces the cost of government.  Government forms can be
filled out and sent electronically, where they are automatically
checked and processed (a multi-million dollar yearly savings?);
government publications will be universally available to the
citizens; government-financed research will be less expensive.

	13.  Stimulates all forms of knowledge advancement including
science and technology, academic research, the arts, social studies,
news, etc.  Decentralizes and neutralizes the power of
bureaucratic universities and research centers.

	14.  Provides the knowledge delivery system needed for
retraining all of the workers whose jobs have been automated away.


%% 600, 0, How They Will Operate
6.2 How They Will Operate

	This section will go into Knowledge Center operations in more 
depth.

%% 600, 0, Cataloging Vs. Publishing
6.2.1 Cataloging Vs. Publishing

	The Knowledge Center will treat all users as equals vis a
vis the old consumer-producer dichotomy.  As any user is free to
produce a knowledge product, there will be fewer barriers to
"publishing" an item; in fact, there will be no publishing per se,
but instead a "cataloging" procedure for which a going fee will be
charged, to help pay for the Knowledge Center and to prevent
frivolous cataloging.  (Of course, there will always be a market
for "distributors", who review and promote pre-selected item lists
or designer suites and establish a reputation.)

        To use the system, the user first locates a desired knowledge
item in the inventory (all of which will have universal inventory
numbers), and then orders it from the Knowledge Center.  The item is
then delivered, usually electronically, and the user is billed, also
electronically.

        For example, a rock video can be ordered, whereupon it will be
played for the user, who is free to record it, or can request it
again for free (since he has already paid the royalty).  It might be
lamented that this system of charging each user for the right to
access a knowledge item is worse than the public library system,
where much knowledge is obtained for "free".  This objection has
already been covered in a preceding section; in essence it has been
unfair to authors to circulate their works without paying them any
royalties; they have to compensate by overcharging their paying
customers, or by overcharging the libraries themselves.  Now with
a more equitable electronicized payment system, the true market
prices of knowledge items will quickly establish themselves, and
importantly, most authors will rapidly lower the royalties charged
on their items as the market is saturated: this is how the rest of
the free market system works, as for example with movies which are
shown in budget theatres after they have taken their profit in the
main theatres.  And lastly, there will always be much "public
domain" knowledge that is available for the distribution cost, which
will itself be reduced through the increased efficiency of the new
Centers.

        It might also be noted that near-instantaneous cataloging
of electronic knowledge products will be a boon to all authors
because there won't be any added expense to updating a cataloged
product even on a daily basis.  (E.g., no longer will they have to
"stop the presses" because of the need to update a book.) It will
also permit authors to fine-tune the "product vs. service"
relationship with their customers on a spectrum ranging from a
one-time published product to a continuously-updated knowledge
service.

%% 600, 0, Information Processing Activity
6.2.2 Information Processing Activity

	A major aspect of the Knowledge Center is that it is a knowledge
manufacturing system, automating the routine information
processing tasks (searching, sorting, retrieving, tracing,
collating, comparing, indexing, editing, pretty-printing, etc., all
at electronic, rather than mechanical, speeds) authors and
researchers are now bogged down with, freeing them to be maximally
creative.  Moreover, there will be a large amount of "automatic"
processing going on all the time: it may be thought of as a zillion
processors grinding away 24 hours a day on the inventory, quietly
increasing its value.  As knowledge delivery technology progresses,
the level of information processing will reach astounding heights.

 	For example:

	1.  Whenever a new item is cataloged, its internal bibliography
will automatically be traced and referenced items located.  Then
when somebody orders this item, all the referenced items will
optionally be automatically ordered also, and the exact passages
referenced displayed when needed.  Of course, knowledge engineering
data bases will be available to tie items together on a detail
level.

	2.  Bits and pieces of knowledge will automatically be
integrated and turned into new knowledge products.  For example:

	o Indexes and bibliographies (and perhaps even biographies) will
be automatically pre-created for instant access.  (Compiling indexes
for paper-based books is a big chore!)

	o "Histories" will be correlated and collated, permitting
"display" on a date by date basis.

	o Genealogies will be automatically traced.

	o "Extraction processing" will produce useful compilations,
e.g., an automatic extraction of horoscopes from the various
newspapers, inserted in a personal diary; a complete set of
crossword puzzles, comic strips, "This Date in History", "Your
Literary IQ" from "Saturday Review"; the complete editorials of an
editor, or news reports on a politician; a comparative list of
current advertised prices for a particular product, or a check of
past advertisements from a single retail outlet to see if their
latest "sale" price is really a bargain; a complete historical
dossier on any house or neighborhood from real estate sections of
local newspapers.

	o And one day, subject classification, tying together of text,
and other "knowledge engineering" activities will be quietly going
on every second in the background.

	3.  In place of the library's concept of a "cataloging system",
which is basically an indexed bibliography, there will no longer be
just one cataloging system but rather one inventory system and a
variety of cataloging systems (which can themselves be sold as
products) produced by private companies, academic societies, and
government funded organizations.  The tendency of the current
"major" library cataloging systems to segregate knowledge items
based on their physical media (for example, giving a taped and
printed version of a speech completely different call numbers) will
be easy to reverse.  In contrast to current cataloging systems,
which only "address" down to the item level, an individual page,
line, word, or letter can be uniquely referenced.  And, since the
contents of knowledge items are equally accessible with the
"catalog", the distinction between the two will tend to fade.
(Instead, the distinction will be based on the number of levels of
"indirection" in the ties between knowledge items.)

	4.  No longer will it take many hours to trace down one tiny
little fact (as for instance in an Encyclopedia).  Each knowledge
item will have an associated classification data base that insures
that all who search for it will find it.  Similar or identical
"facts" will be electronically linked for simultaneous updating if
needed.

	5.  New knowledge services previously only dreamed of will be
	possible at a reasonable cost.
	
Examples:

	o "Expert systems" which are controlled by professionals and
their organizations and provide an electronic expert on any subject.
(Not to mention professional tool systems such as design, cost
estimation, and project planning systems.)

	o Knowledge entertainment centers which can play any piece of
musical entertainment ever recorded (including recorded broadcasts
from any broadcaster and any past date) at home or in the
automobile.

	o "Thoughtware" which organizes and assists in the manufacture
of knowledge products.  For example, idea management systems with
a personal data base and combinatorial generators that take a set of
ideas and generate all combinations or permutations for
consideration, tracking their disposition.

	o Writing automation systems which will include automatic
syntactic analysis and spelling correction, outline generation and
organization, and even complete rewriting of text into any desired
style (including that of famous authors, E. B. White's, or one's
own), any dialect (e.g., Elizabethan into Cockney, or vice versa),
or even mood.  The collected works of an author can automatically be
checked to compile his "vocabulary", or reworded to fit a predefined
vocabulary.  Writers of historical fiction can have their work
automatically checked for concepts or language (such as "progress",
"science", "morality", "zero", "ok") that did not exist in the time
period written about; or conversely, have help in changing the time
period written about without affecting the story line.  (They say
that all works of fiction can be reduced to a handful of plots with
only the characters and scenery changing!) Eventually, a global
historical machine (or simulation) will be constructed, permitting
any person to "go back" in time and attain the same level of
knowledge as real people had at that time.

	6.  Picture knowledge will be as accessible as textual
knowledge, so that anyone can request a picture of any work of art,
any form of wildlife, or any geographical location (and of course,
videotext), and "paste" it into his working knowledge product.  (For
example, permitting one to get a picture of a geographical location,
and the route to it, given its telephone number; then feeding this
knowledge into an automobile's trip computer and satellite locating
system.) Pictures will even be automatically "described" in words if
desired (quantifying the old cliche.) There will be a huge
(trillion-plus item) picture knowledge data base to which all can
contribute and which will be extensively classified, cataloged, and
cross-indexed to permit pictures on any subject whatever to be
located easily.  Readers of works of literature can automatically
find all drawings and pictures of characters, scenes, or authors
ever made.  A person can electronically combine pictures and text:
for example, a picture of Leonardo's Mona Lisa may be embedded in a
knowledge product which comments on everything known about Leonardo;
or a whole library of text might be written about the Mona Lisa
alone, these commentaries being "activated" by "pointing" to various
regions of the picture itself (e.g., the eyes)!

	7.  Moving pictures will also be cataloged as knowledge items,
permitting knowledge products to use them as easily as text.  (Of
course this will affect the form and even length of movies, which
won't have to limit themselves to two hours to maximize movie
theater profits.) And animations will be explored as a happy medium
between books and moving pictures.

	8.  Audio knowledge will likewise be accessible, including a
data base of "sounds" such as the clucking of a chicken; and musical
knowledge will be accessible, not only as musical scores, but in any
desired form, including as "performed" by any musical instrument
(classical or contrived, including a piano played with any number of
hands), human voice, or orchestra; conversely, there will be
products for transforming audio segments into musical scores; and
musical ideas and themes can be automatically traced historically or
musically.  Music automation systems will likely emerge which permit
any person to eliminate the need for years of practice to achieve
musical expression.  There might even be products which take a
person's thoughts in text form and generate a musical theme based on
analysis of the mood, metre, and subject.

	9.  All forms of electronic knowledge being equally available,
they can be combined into interesting new products, e.g.  books with
embedded movies or cartoons (rather than just pictures); movies with
embedded computer games; movies that are dynamically updated and are
different every time they are viewed; automatic generation of an
animation from a book or movie, or vice versa; audio/musical tracks
for books; etc.

	10.  Huge near-perfect data bases will become accessible to all,
such as a universal chemical data base (the crying need of the
chemical industry, which is currently swamped with hundreds of
thousands of near-trivial "abstracts"), botanical/zoological data
base, genetic data base (one day containing the "code words" for
every life form under the sun), medical data base, archaeological
data base, and so on.  Then, all researchers will have a common
focus of activity eliminating duplication of effort and permitting a
great acceleration of discovery and economic development
(bypassing the academic journals and monographs as a primary
publication medium).

	11.  A "fast cataloging" capability will permit near-real-time
data (such as news reports, meteorological data, data from
observatories and spacecraft) to become available to Knowledge
Center users.

	12.  The capability of storing pictures will permit forms of
knowledge now collected only in physical form to be electronicized,
for example, photographs of postage stamps, matchbook covers,
packaged food labels, commercial catalogs, autographs, tattoos and
unusual navels, and, of course, old books.

	13.  Knowledge products will no longer be static but will vary
dynamically.  The latest update of any electronic item will be
automatically available within seconds.  Linear "books" will begin
to give way to data bases that "execute" rather than just "display"
information, are accessible on multiple levels, and have no single
"path" through them.  (As any programmer knows, data can be
interpreted as instructions to a processor, and instructions as
data.) Any user can add to or correct a knowledge product, and be
paid for it automatically.  (Some will make their living via
"correction engineering", "verification engineering", "translation
engineering", or "knowledge automation.") Many persons can work on a
single knowledge product at the same time, with geography no
obstacle.

	14.  Knowledge tools (e.g., software systems) will themselves be
knowledge products that are not only "read" but "used".  The
potential for ending illiteracy, overcoming learning deficiences,
amplifying memory, helping the person "speed read" and organize his
thoughts with knowledge tools, and ultimately manufacture knowledge
products of all kinds, is one of the greatest new market
opportunities in history.

	15.  The number of types of information in traditional knowledge
items will increase also.  For example, many authors of otherwise
traditional monographs may want to include the work's outline as a
cataloged knowledge item, and even the preliminary notes, especially
if they contain information not in the final manuscript.  Producers
of moving picture knowledge may want to catalog the script, the
sound track, the commercials, still pictures, all the out-takes, the
"how we made it" items, and even the software used for special
effects (such as the futuristic displays in the "Star Trek" movies);
other knowledge products will automatically collate the movie, its
script, and associated book for parallel display, and maybe even
help create a cartoon series, theme toys, comic books, coloring
books, and game version of the movie (electronic and traditional);
in the future, movies may become multi-level products with no single
linear "path" through them.

	16.  Game products will also greatly improve.  For example,
"knowledge chess" will parochialize the traditional game by
providing the ability to change the size and dimensions of the game
board, the number, type, and function of game pieces (e.g., as in
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian Chess), the rules, scoring procedure,
and number of players, from game to game (or move to move), and
minimize or maximize the role of human memory (by providing an on-
line library, allowing the player to play "blindfolded" with any
number of other players, etc.), providing the ultimate opportunity
to display one's intellectual prowess.  (The lack of imagination in
current computer chess products is puzzling to the author.) The
traditional "board" games will electronicize and become more
dynamic, challenging, and realistic.  (The author is waiting for a
"Knowledge Monopoly" game that will accomodate remote players and be
much more up-to-date, even basing itself on current market reports.)

	Even "trivia" as a knowledge industry is expected to be very
successful, with, for instance, a "generic trivia game" that can tap
into any knowledge base, and restrict its questions to a given
subject.  One day, three-dimensional projection will permit
incredibly realistic "fantasy" games that will bring the universe
into one's home (replacing traditional movies).  And home pleasure
(not just entertainment) centers, integrating all sensory
stimulations, with biometric monitoring and a knowledge approach, is
another market waiting to be born.  Really, the future is not so
boring!

%% 600, 0, The Knowledge Center and the Phone Company
6.2.3 The Knowledge Center and the Phone Company

	The difference between the Knowledge Center and the Phone
Company is that the former provides a central party through which
all communicate in public, formal (cataloged) messages, whereas the
latter provides direct, private (uncataloged), party-to-party
communication.

	To be honest, the author can't figure out where the one leaves
off and the other begins.  For example, many will access the
Knowledge Center by phone, and many phone conversations are recorded
or pre-recorded, and might be cataloged, either as voice or text;
and the Phone Company already has special numbers which bill the caller
for listening to pre-recorded messages and then credit the message
originator (a crude form of the Knowledge Center).  As the Knowledge
Center evolves, it will be found more efficient to increase its
integration with the phone company, by asking the phone company to
provide special services such as combined billing, special code
numbers, data interfaces, security devices, etc., and the Knowledge
Center to take over present services offered by the phone company, for
instance pre-recorded messages, voting systems, computerized phone
and zip code directories, etc., and hence the dividing line between
the two systems is hazy indeed.  This issue will simply have to
evolve.

       The Post Office, the Phone Company, the Shopping Mall, and
the Knowledge Center: until there IS a Knowledge Center in general
operation, even the author would be silly to discuss their relative
turfs in the information economy, but one thing that is safe is that,
to survive they will have to not do what the Knowledge Center does
better.

%% 600, 0, The Knowledge Center and the Broadcast Stations
6.2.4 The Knowledge Center and the Broadcast Stations

	The Knowledge Center will have a high data rate video hookup
into each home (via a cable network, a satellite, or the phone
company).  The difference is that the Knowledge Center provides
two-way demand knowledge rather than one-way programmed broadcasts.
In other words, today's news would come over a broadcast channel,
but the news for December 7, 1941 (or last Tuesday) would come from
the Knowledge Center; the TV schedule would be a cataloged knowledge
product that could be searched back for years, although it is
continuously updated for programs that have not yet aired.  Even the
funding would be more flexible, as the user might have the option of
paying a slightly higher royalty to get the product with all of the
advertising segments cut.

  	There is no reason that the Knowledge Center will put the
broadcasting companies out of business; on the contrary, they will
actually increase their revenues from resales of past broadcasts,
sales to distant markets, as well as the opportunity to greatly
increase the number of products offered, not being constrained by
the need to fit them all into broadcasting "time slots" or slant
them to a particular geographical or time-of-day market.  And the
airwaves will likely evolve until all forms of knowledge products
can be broadcast; for example, software and text instead of just
audio and video.  Of course, actual broadcasting of live shows may
die as the shows are simply cataloged like any other knowledge
products.  (Sales of video tapes have already proved the great
demand for TV show products, with radio shows, plays, documentaries,
etc., sure to follow; and most broadcast shows are pre-recorded
anyway.) But as the "time value" of information will always be
important, live broadcasting will likely survive after evolving a
more newsy emphasis.

	It might also be mentioned that a problem with the major TV
networks is that they often air controversial shows financed with
revenues that ultimately come (through purchases of advertised
products) from many who disagree with the viewpoints.  The present
ugly results, such as boycotts, lawsuits, and other forms of
pressure (which are completely justified because the viewers indir-
ectly pay for the broadcasting), will disappear when the
broadcasters' products are merely cataloged and paid for selectively
via individual decision.  This will end the threat of broadcast
shows becoming bland, issue-free pablum.

%% 600, 0, Publishing and News Industry Impact
6.2.3 Publishing and News Industry Impact

	Clearly, this system is the "handwriting on the wall" (pun
intentional) for the traditional publishing industry.  In effect,
they will become useless middlemen and should go out of business.
(Not that the author has anything against them -- they were a
significant factor in enhancing the growth of science, commerce,
democracy, etc.) The companies involved should naturally attempt
to survive by transforming into knowledge businesses, providing
knowledge products themselves instead of "publishing" the works of
others.  Of course, there will always be a market for a catalog of
reviews of knowledge items which evaluate and select a few out of
the mass of cataloged items for the discriminating.  Also, there is
value in creating and maintaining a corporate image or logo which
stands for quality knowledge products, and concentrating on the
marketing and promotion business.  And finally, there will be an
industry devoted to cataloging and electronicizing (as electronic
text, audio and video narrations, etc.) past physical knowledge
products, in which the copyright holders (the publishers) will have
a financial boon.

	This doesn't mean that there will be no market for new serial
publications, but quite the contrary.  With the permanent
cataloging provided by the Knowledge Centers, for the first time all
producers of serials, whether in newspaper, magazine, broadcast
show, or other form, can enjoy sales of all past issues continually
rather than depend on the latest release for income.

	As for the news industry, the future seems unlimited.  Without
the Knowledge Centers, more news can already be "cataloged" than
any one person can keep up with in a traditional newspaper or news
broadcast.  But with them, the citizens can access news products
when needed, conveniently, based on an electronic search, instead of
having to page through unneeded news, fiddle with a VCR to capture a
broadcast at a specific time, worry about the newspaper being used
to wrap fish, or old clippings turning yellow and losing their
identification.

	The opportunity to sell local news worldwide directly, bypassing
the networks, will revolutionize the news industry, in particular,
taking the selection of the nation's daily news diet out of the
hands of a few individuals with obvious social engineering goals.
(An example all can verify is the standing order the TV networks
have given their camera crews to pick out and focus in on any
"minority" in an audience, to give the impression of a much more
"integrated" society than actually exists; and there seems to be a
systematic plan to introduce feminism, homosexuality, and racial
intermarriage as socially acceptable as fast as the public will
allow.)

	By accessing the Knowledge Center, the world's past and present
news products will be equally available.  For example, a Denver
Broncos fan will be able to electronically search all news products
nationwide for analysis of a recent (or not so recent) game; the
news products from one's distant hometown may be regularly viewed; a
person can get as much information on a single issue as desired,
changing the priorities of the news programmers; and the products
from the stations nearest to a major disaster can do a land office
business.  The opportunity for a virtually unlimited distribution of
electronic news products via the Knowledge Centers will likewise
lessen the effect of big money backing as a requirement for success.

%% 600, 0, Book Compilers
6.2.4 Book Compilers

	As a technical note, it is expected that most electronic books
will be stored not in the "published" but rather in the "manuscript"
form, the compilation, editing and formatting now done by
publishers taken over by a more or less standardized software
automation system ("book compiler").  This is desirable because the
manuscript versions are more efficient to store, transmit, and
update, and because the book compiler can re-compile the same
manuscript in any desired style, typeface, column size, page size,
and automatically produce an outline, Table of Contents, and Index.
(It is expected that each user's terminal will have an embedded
processor powerful enough to compile any book on-the-fly as it is
"read" from the Knowledge Center, and that "configuration files" of
instructions to the book compiler will be available to automatically
compile a book in the author's preferred format, as well as those of
all of today's publishers.) Also, the book compiler will permit any
"reader" to insert marginal notes, re-compile it in collated form
with his own "commentary", or even rewrite the book and republish
it!  (With some royalties automatically being diverted to the
original author.)

	In case it is asked what the difference between a book compiler
and a word processor is, the answer is that the latter is a general
purpose tool for producing any type of document, whereas the former
is oriented towards the end-product of a "book".  In other words,
it will take a manuscript generated on any word processor and
continue processing it into a finished book.

	It is believed by the author that it is the lack of the book
compiler concept that is now holding the electronic publishing
industry back, most people still thinking of computer-published
books as limited, inflexible, fixed-format objects (stored in
"compiled" rather than manuscript form) that are sometimes too
"wide" or "long" for available display devices, have a single format
for the Table of Contents, a single, rather ugly typeface, and in
general are boring and cumbersome to work with: in actuality, a
well-designed book compiler will be able to take the manuscript for
any book ever published and reproduce the printed book exactly, down
to the most minute detail (other than the type of physical materials
used), using a phototypesetting device, actually increasing rather
than decreasing the variety of styles now enjoyed.  (It is
anticipated that in a few years inexpensive phototypesetting devices
will be available for personal use.) One day it is expected that the
concept will be so well accepted and refined that "decompilation" of
paper-based books will begin, perhaps helped by robots that
systematically examine and electronicize them prior to decompiling
them back into manuscripts with embedded formatting commands.  When
this is accomplished the paper-based books will have finally become
obsolete!

%% 600, 0, Software Industry Impact
6.2.5 Software Industry Impact

	Software products are knowledge products that instruct a
computer to simulate some sort of information processing function.
Currently, most software products are sold out of retail stores,
packaged in plastic as if they were books!  With the Knowledge
Centers, the software market will finally achieve its potential as
any person can instantly buy and use any software that he needs or
fancies.

	Actually, there is no difference between software and other
knowledge products except a temporary distinction caused by the lack
of Knowledge Centers!  That is, software products are nothing but
packaged knowledge, consisting of source code, object code,
specifications, manuals, test data, and marketing literature; and
most all knowledge products will tend to become "executable" anyway.
The Knowledge Centers will therefore accelerate the fading of the
distinction between software and other knowledge products.

	The most pressing problem in the software industry today,
namely, incompatibilities of hardware and software, will be much
eased by the ability to access source code and work on it like any
other knowledge product, converting it for use with different
hardware or software, and offering it for sale again, some royalties
being automatically diverted to the original author.  The almost
insanely jealous guarding of source code, which is now common, has
no more purpose than the guarding of a work of fiction, once it is
published and hence subject to legal protection from plagiarism
(which will be easily detected with yet other knowledge tools).
Rather, future software products should be worked on by a variety of
companies to provide displays, key algorithms, testing and
verification, music and sound, etc., just like modern movies.  And
the encouragement of a new "compatibility engineering" industry,
with its own tools and techniques, and Knowledge Center support,
offers the best solution to this major problem which is now holding
the software industry back.

	Another concept that has been talked about for some time,
namely, providing a software "components" catalog, from which
products may be chosen and "wired" together, is now seen to fit
neatly inside the Knowledge Center concept.  It might also be
mentioned that many software authors may offer "trial" use of a
product for free, to permit the buyer to make comparisons.  The
Knowledge Center will provide support for this in the form of
"execute only" modes of access.

	The software industry, incidentally, illustrates the author's
point about the potential of people working for themselves.  After
the introduction of the personal computer the self-employed
entrepreneurs have developed one innovation after another that the
"employee" programmers working for the big companies never even came
close to thinking of.  When all knowledge producers have the option
of working for themselves the innovations will come so fast that
only a system of Knowledge Centers will be able to keep up with
them!

	It might be mentioned that the author is a thinker in a field
called "software automation" which seeks to lessen the cost and
improve the quality of software products, but as there is not yet an
"idea right" (see) he can't tell what he has come up with!

%% 600, 0, Entertainment Industry Impact
6.2.6 Entertainment Industry Impact

	The entertainment industry will likewise achieve its potential
with the new Knowledge Centers, as any "performance" can be
cataloged for future enjoyment by any who desire it.  The threat of
pirating of entertainment products will be reduced, and perhaps the
public broadcasting of them will virtually cease.  (The idea
presently being banted about to add a surcharge to blank tapes can
be safely put away.) Movies will be "released", not through movie
theaters, but through the Knowledge Center, where they are instantly
available for use.  (To the author, whether the movie theater
survives another 30 years is a toss-up.) Since there is such a large
selection of music, some companies may specialize in packaging
musical programs for any conceivable occasion (saving the "disk
jockey" from obsolescence), and others may produce music data bases
which contain the bits and pieces of future compositions.  The
average person, with Knowledge Center support, can achieve musical
creativity without the years now required to learn to play
instruments, a great boon to the market and to music itself.  Of
course, those who have mastered an instrument are going to become
rarer as music automation arrives, but the net effect will be an
expansion of the music industry, so the performers will likely be
little missed.

%% 600, 0, Advertising Industry Impact
6.2.7 Advertising Industry Impact

	As advertising is a form of knowledge product, the impact on the
advertising industry will follow that of other knowledge delivery
industries.  In particular, the author believes that trade shows,
show rooms, travelling salesmen (the demonstrator type) will become
increasingly obsolete as complete video-audio-text advertising
products can be cataloged for electronic search by potential
customers, and updated instantly with price and availability
information.  (Those cities who now boast big expensive convention
centers, which are now profitable, might be in for bad news in the
next century, although the author believes that smaller, working,
"knowledge conventions" may become popular.) Of course the economics
of advertising will change, as even the poorest companies can afford
distribution of advertising via the Knowledge Centers; and the
practice of advertisers paying for knowledge distribution (e.g., TV
shows) may not dominate as much as previously, although they may
still pay for knowledge product development and news-getting
promotions.

%% 600, 0, General Business Impact
6.2.8 General Business Impact

	Lest the impression be given that the new knowledge economy will
benefit only the actual knowledge businesses, it might be noted that
all business will partake of the knowledge delivery technology, and
all businessmen will be, at least partly, "knowledge" businessmen.
In fact, the Knowledge Center concept is directly applicable to the
needs of all types of businesses, who may want to band together and
develop Mini-Knowledge Centers for their own use; or the Knowledge
Center system paid for by the taxpayers might also provide for
private, confidential or proprietary information to be cataloged
under a "security system", with the business users paying for these
special privileges.

%% 600, 0, Human Interface Technology
6.2.9 Human Interface Technology 

	For some reason (future shock?), there are still many who fear
computers.  (Ironically, fear is conquered by knowledge, which the
computers will provide!)  One sometimes hears this fear exemplified
by cute statements like "you can't curl up with a good computer."
Actually, the emerging market for "knowledge ports" will bring
"human engineering" into play, producing devices that beat the socks
off books even on an aesthetic level.  For example, a port with
multiple screens that floats over your bed, tilts to follow head
movements, reads text out loud (in any voice), obeys voice commands
(e.g., "turn page", "page 1", "larger", "change to purple with white
background") or even takes dictation; which dispenses beverages,
cigarettes, etc.; which is part of, or managed by, a household
robot; and which doubles as a phone center, entertainment center,
educational center, and office.  Give the electronics industry just
ten years (and the market created by Knowledge Centers) and no one
will want to deal with clumsy paper & plastic knowledge again!

	And this is just the beginning.  Perhaps one day there will be
special knowledge headgear, clothing, wrist devices or even implants
to connect each person to the Knowledge Center, reading the minute
physiological changes caused by a person "saying" words to himself,
and creating "optical illusions" that display "screens" anywhere in
a person's field of view.  (No, this is not the "Big Brother "
scenario, as all the knowledge is available only on command and is
self-selected, at least it is planned that way!)


%% 600, 0, Privacy, Security, Computer Crime, and Government Abuse
6.2.10 Privacy, Security, Computer Crime, and Government Abuse 

	There is always the possibility of Big Brother taking control of
the Knowledge Center system and using it to abuse private citizens
or even create a totalitarian form of government.  But see it this
way: the "government" isn't the enemy, it's government's AGENTS; the
more numerous, the more dangerous.  For instance traffic cops.  They
want to rake in all the money they can for the "crime" of "going too
fast".  So, they hide behind billboards and wait for a "speeder" and
then wildly chase him no matter how dangerous their actions are.  So,
regular travellers (truckers), who know they can safely travel long
distances at speeds above the "posted limit", and indeed have to in
order to survive economically, use citizens band radio to inform each
other of "smokeys".  Response: the cops begin to use radar detectors
and become more mobile.  Countermeasure: truckers buy radar detectors
to intercept and decode signals received via scatter, maybe just in
time to hit the brakes and let some vehicle in front of them be
ticketed.  Countercountermeasure: the cops go to the lawmakers and
soon in the name of the government, after "statistics" are used to
prove that "speed is dangerous" (really, the insurance companies are
attempting to maximize their profits and little else), they can chase,
arrest, and even destroy a citizen just for having a radar detector!
But what is a radar detector?  Electronic eyes and ears! To simply
record what kind of emissions government agents are beaming onto a
citizen's person or private property.  So, the easy abuse-of-power
solution of jailing people just for exercising their inalienable
rights to see and hear!

        Call the author names, but he recognizes a limit to government
power over liberty called inalienable rights.

        Will it ever get as bad with the information highway as it is
already with physical travel?  How bad can it get?  In Colorado just
this year, 1994, they passed a law that it is a crime to be caught
driving on a public road without a "license", and penalties can include
the confiscation of your vehicle; when the right to travel on a public
road is guaranteed to be inalienable by the U.S. Constitution, meaning
that no government can charge you for it, tax you for it, license it,
or provide criminal penalties for doing it per se, vehicle or no vehicle!

        Since we can predict that the mentality of government to abuse
power in the sake of catching breakers of its own rules will never go
away, the solution to staying free is to plan on minimizing government
agents in the design of the highway itself, then resolutely stonewall
the "we need a law" types by the wisdom of profound apathy.

	So far, small conflicts are easy.  For instance, the attempt
to force owners of satellite or microwave dishes to pay the broadcasters
for signals received -- defeated but then stasis reached with scramblers.
(As if someone could shout at you from a distance and make you pay if
you happened to listened by going to the law!)  The scramble-free
solution is for those who originate one-way broadcasts to charge the
advertisers for time slots just like the major TV and radio networks
do; and when the Knowledge Centers arrive, the option of cataloging
broadcasts as products after the broadcast is no longer "live", will
make the problem less hot.

	The same issue in disguise is the attempt to censor computer
bulletin boards, as if the computer conduit eliminates First
Amendment rights -- pretty much defeated now except for forays made
to criminalize "hate speech", "obscene speech", and "annoying speech";
and the too-successful attempt to make it illegal to "steal"
information by computer over public telephone lines (not just by a
physical break-in), or, worse yet, merely "tamper" with a computer
connected to a public communications channel.

	This issue is not as clear cut as it seems, and the laws passed
are way too strong for the author's tastes; for surely the "robbed"
persons have some responsibility to diligently guard their information?
Is not the "victim's" computer that person's "agent" and he therefore
responsible for its behavior?  If you call up a stranger and ask him
for information, and he gives it, how can you be prosecuted for
"stealing" anything?  What if he leaves it openly displayed in his
home and visible from a public sidewalk?  And how can copying
information be considered as stealing, when the "robbed" person still
has it?  And even if one "destroys" information on another's computer
through a telephone connection, isn't that also like asking a stranger
to "forget" something, and having him willingly comply?   This
situation can't be compared to picking a lock on a car parked on a
public street, as there is no physical intrusion or theft: knowledge
as "property" is clearly deserving of its own laws, not just
extensions of old laws (and old punishments).

	In short, anyone who would permit valuable personal secrets to
be left on a computer that is accessible (and even controllable) by
strangers over a public telephone line is just plain stupid not to
protect them with all available precautions, and the solution is not
to prosecute person B for person A's mistakes!  Rather than being
treated as criminals, these clever "hackers" (a term that originally
meant programmers who would work on and improve public domain
software, for free, and usually anonymously, for the challenge
involved, but has been perverted to mean those who "steal" programs
over public communications facilities -- a better term is "cracker")
should be applauded for advancing the state of the art of computer
security -- good companies are always looking to recruit such people.

	Thus, when a computer is connected to the public telephone
lines, the "computer crime" laws seem like just another government
intrusion into private affairs, and the author believes that they
should be stricken off the law books and a common sense law of
"connector to public communications channel beware" put in its
place.  What's wrong with civil suits in this sphere of human
activity?  (National security seems the only real basis for a pure
criminal law in this area.)

        But there is an obverse side to the coin, the collection of
private data by companies and individuals, such as health records,
telephone numbers, criminal records, etc.  Since knowledge is so
deserving of being free, the author is leery of privacy laws where
the government uses its power to punish those who have come in
possession of such private data.  The answer lies not in criminal
laws, but in the design of the system itself, the total package, so
it's inherently harder to get at certain types of data by even
rich and unscrupulous companies and individuals -- that takes
a lot of people wanting the problem fixed at the same time and is
just another argument for the Knowledge Center holistic approach.

	Anyway, for those "thefts" which amount to cheating an author of
royalties, the advent of the Knowledge Centers (which are designed
to automatically bill anyone who accesses a knowledge item, thus
eliminating "piracy" and reducing the costs for legitimate
purchasers), will permit knowledge items placed in this "store" to
always be "safe"; and there are already laws preventing an
author's working papers or manuscripts from being copied and sold as
another's work.

	The author is also concerned about the outrageous abuse of the
IRS of forcing private companies to provide data on their customers
without their permission.  (Whereas government agents seek to make it
a great crime for a citizen to access a computer's private data, they
constantly seek to do it on any pretext.)  Therefore the Knowledge
Center accounting system will be designed from the ground up to make
sure that the individual has a great amount of security that cannot
easily be bypassed by government agents.  (The IRS is not a part of
the Treasury Dept. of the U.S. like their letterheads casually mislead
you to think; their letters always say "Department of the Treasury" of
something else -- the Federal Reserve Bank, a quasi-private company!
The IRS is therefore nothing but a bill collector company not the
government itself!)

	Be warned, though, that as it is nearly certain that the
government will know all the technical details of the system (since
they paid for it), there is a danger of them finding a way to bypass
its formal security system at will, so that the individual should
seek to protect his private knowledge base through private
encryption techniques despite the inconvenience and risks of loss.
("Crypto engineers" should do a land office business.) (Note: if
the government attempts to force anyone to leave their data
unencrypted, or to decrypt their data to incriminate themselves,
or similar abuses of Constitutional rights -- you have read the
Declaration of Independence.)

	On the other hand, the author believes that any citizen should
have the right to easily and cheaply obtain a copy of all information
that the government has about him, which will be extremely easy with
the proposed Knowledge Centers, bringing a lot more sunshine into the
government's murky corridors, and permitting the citizen to be
forewarned about what other citizens can find out about him.

	A last point is the issue of statistical data which the
government (e.g., the U.S. Census Bureau) distills from confidential
information and provides to private citizens who cleverly "reduce"
and cross-correlate supposedly anonymous statistics to pinpoint a
particular individual or small group.  (For example, data about
people over seven feet tall, data about professional basketball
players, data about people over forty, data about black people, data
about movie actors, might be cross-correlated to pinpoint something
about Wilt Chamberlain, for instance, his income.)

	The best solution to this problem, namely, prohibiting the
government from collecting private information on the citizens,
being no doubt impossible, the next best solution is to permit any
citizen to demand that the government inform him every time
statistical information in which private information about him is
embedded is released, with an appropriate waiting period during
which he can challenge the release if he can prove that it might be
"personalized" with appropriate processing.  Again, the knowledge
delivery services of the Knowledge Centers will make this process
easy and inexpensive for all.

%% 600, 0, Lying, Censorship, Brainwashing, Propaganda, and Libel
6.2.11 Lying, Censorship, Brainwashing, Propaganda, and Libel 

	The greatest deficiency in the present knowledge delivery
system, in the author's opinion, is the difficulty in countering
intentional lying.  First there is the problem of detecting it, then
the problem of correcting it, distributing the truth, and getting
people to listen.  All of the problems are automatically reduced
with the Knowledge Center system.  For example, any item in a
knowledge product can be "reviewed" by any interested person, and
the review will automatically be "hooked" into the knowledge
product, available to those who wish to see it, much like a marginal
note.  Thus, one who produces products full of intentional lies will
soon discover to his consternation that the work has been fully
reviewed on a detail level and that the readers can't be prevent
from reading the reviews.  Of course one is free to review the
reviews, and so on, so there is no threat of giving the reviewers
superior opportunities to engage in lying themselves.

	With such a system fairly protecting the truth the author
believes that censorship of Knowledge Center inventory should be
absolutely prohibited by state law (if that is needed: the Knowledge
Center concept seems to fall squarely under the Bill of Rights to
the U.S. Constitution as it combines the functions of speech, press,
and "exercise of religion".) Of course there are many who will
object to such absolutely universal access to knowledge, but these
people are free to restrict their own access with appropriate
software systems that are keyed to the reviews or advice of certain
groups; and, additionally, a parent can control their children's
access to the system by, for example, commanding the Knowledge
Center system to automatically bar access to any "X rated"
materials.

	Another problem with the classroom teaching system that was not
mentioned, namely, the teacher's opportunity to use mind control and
brainwashing techniques on a captive audience, will be much
alleviated also.  The essence of brainwashing is the use of force or
coercion, but until they develop a computer terminal that can reach
out and hold a person in front of it the user is the master and can
turn off any knowledge product that he feels is attempting to
brainwash him.  As to the issue of surreptitious brainwashing
through subliminal mesages, the problem is easily resolved by
watchdog groups cataloging reviews of such products warning of the
perceived dangers.

	Propaganda, which boils down to control of knowledge sources,
will be virtually impossible with the Knowledge Centers that provide
universal knowledge to all.  Of course, totalitarian societies
will at first try to deny their need for Knowledge Centers, but when
they find they can't compete with us economically without them and
that complete control of the inventories is virtually impossible,
they will have a real problem.

	Finally, it might be mentioned that the present disgusting trend
to attempt to prevent criticism by threatening a "libel" suit (which
can bankrupt the defendant even if he wins), can be completely
reversed with the Knowledge Center system because the "libelled"
person can have his recourse in cataloging and tying in his reviews
rather than in seeking monetary damages through the parasitic legal
system.  (This depends on the courts recognizing that this avenue of
recourse obviates the need for such law suits.)

%% 600, 0, Archiving
6.2.12 Archiving

	A natural government function is to regularly archive, or "take
snapshots" of the Knowledge Center inventories, for the use of
future generations who will consider them objects of study in
themselves, as well as those who might inadvertently erase valuable
information.  The massive amount of processing going on inside the
Knowledge Centers will make it impossible to archive the knowledge
base on a microsecond-by-microsecond basis, but a reasonable design
goal is a once-a-day archiving which is stored in "read-only" form
for one hundred years (36525 days stored at a time), and then
compressed through special processing for longer storage.  Of course
this is also a responsibility of private enterprise, and the
dividing line between private and tax supported archiving will have
to evolve.  At least the present technological trend of halving the
cost of memory every few years (the million-bit chip was just
announced in 1984, and this year the half a billion byte optical
disk) is expected to make any amount of knowledge archived, however
large, seem much smaller to future generations, so why do a skimpy
job?

%% 600, 0, Personal Workspaces
6.2.13 Personal Workspaces

	Allied to the issue of archiving is that of providing personal
accounts with storage space for private (uncataloged) information.
Like archiving, this issue will have to evolve, with the Knowledge
Centers probably providing a ertain amount of space "free"
(taxpayer-subsidized) and a greater amount upon payment of a fee to
the Knowledge Center or private company.  Of course there is the
problem of government intrusion into these private memory banks, and
invasion by "crackers".  But the advantages to be gained are a
lifetime repository for work, including a "personal library" (lists
and copies of knowledge products with private modifications, notes,
etc.), that can be accessed worldwide, freeing the individual of the
vagaries of his personal existence (moving, storage costs).  How
many of us have lost years of accumulated work or collecting
because of a physical disaster to the materials?

%% 600, 0, Government Knowledge Products
6.2.14 Government Knowledge Products

	Currently, the government designates selected libraries as
"repositories" for certain of its knowledge products, usually only
the "documents", such other products as software, data bases, film,
and so on almost completely ignored.  (For example, Denver Public is
a repository for patent information, and the Univ.  of Colorado for
general government documents, yet there seems to be no repository
for the software products produced by the billion dollar a year
government software industry.)  Of course, as most of this
information is in physical format (often paper or spiral bound and
highly perishable), and ineffectively cataloged, it is of limited
value to the citizens.  The Knowledge Center will accelerate the
electronicization of government knowledge products, making them
universally available, promptly, without royalties (as they are
uncopyrightable), allowing more people to "blow the whistle" on
incompetence, waste, and inefficiency, while permitting truly
valuable products to reach the most people at the least cost.

	In addition, the complete electronicization and cataloging of
all government documents will tend to remove the "classification
bottleneck" (documents that are classified as secret but never
reclassified when the secrecy is no longer justified), and save a
few forests at the same time.
 
%% 600, 0, Copyright and the Knowledge Center
6.2.15 Copyright and the Knowledge Center

	The concept of copyright is an artificial property right in
knowledge products, or intellectual property right.  Unfortunately,
the ease with which knowledge is now copied and transmitted makes it
difficult to enforce the right in the courts.  And the widespread
lack of understanding of the concept has encouraged many abuses,
such as suing to stop the distribution of a knowledge item, when the
copyright law was designed to encourage the distribution of
knowledge products by fairly compensating the authors, which
compensation should be the only object of a law suit; and physically
packaging knowledge products so as to make them harder to copy
(which only hampers the knowledge economy, hence is not
recommended).  Instead, the Knowledge Center approach of
constructing a universal public knowledge product delivery system
and automatically billing the accesser of a knowledge product is
recommended as a workable and fair solution for all.

	The obvious objection that electronicizing all knowledge
products and providing a central warehouse and distribution system
will permit one person to purchase an item and then electronically
distribute it "free" to his friends or at "discount" to his illicit
customers, is answered by noting that the same system will make
every knowledge product ridiculously easy to change, modify, or
tamper with, by anyone including the author, hence most people will
prefer to pay for a "pure" up-to-date version of a product that is
regularly maintained and updated by the author and not screwed up
(or falsified) by the chain of illicit distributors; and if a person
other than its author can really add significant value to the
product, he should be allowed to do so, and recatalog it to share in
the market!  (No one should be able to put a lid on progress.)
Hence, the ease of modification of electronic knowledge items is a
major factor insuring the success of the Knowledge Center concept!

	As illicit distribution will continue anyway, there is an
additional consolation that the more illicit sales are made, the
more "tracks" are left for the discovery of law enforcers; and the
more the customers are made into "accomplices".  Thus, anyone who is
significantly cutting into the sales of the legal copyright owner
will be that much easier to detect.  On the other hand, those who
share a product with friends or otherwise illicitly distribute a few
copies of a product will most likely get by with it as they should.
(The threat is a desirable watchdog on those who overcharge for
their products, hence is another factor in favor of the concept.)

	Of course, as the entire system is electronic, the author of a
cataloged item can instantaneously change the royalty he is
charging, or even "program" the price as a function of sales or
calendar time; thus the new knowledge economy is likely to be
extremely efficient and equitable in its rewards.

	It might be mentioned that the producer of a knowledge product
will have a right to "trade secret" protection until he allows the
product to be cataloged in the Knowledge Center or otherwise
"published".  Likewise, he will have no legal basis for stopping the
distribution of a knowledge product which he had previously
cataloged or been distributing another way, but only a right to the
royalties from its distribution.  If he thinks a product of his is
"obsolete" he can declare it obsolete, raise the royalty sky high
and catalog a new and cheaper edition; if it is still in demand,
"illicit" distributors will offer it at a discount until the author
changes his mind about it.

%% 600, 0, Idea Right
6.2.16 Idea Right

	One of the biggest deficiencies in the present copyright law,
namely, the inability to copyright an idea, can be easily rectified
with the Knowledge Center system.  The author believes that a legal
"idea right" (IR) should be instituted, giving the originator of a
cataloged idea the right to one percent of the gross sales of all
knowledge products which utilize it (with a cap of one percent on
the override on any one product).  This right would be easy to
enforce, as it is all done electronically and the diversion of funds
would be automatic and apply to all competitors, like sales tax.
Its existence would fuel the knowledge economy by encouraging the
creative to share their ideas rather than keep them secret until
they can exploit them themselves; it would also encourage those who
want to make a career of coming up with ideas rather than bringing
them to market.  (You probably would have learned of the Knowledge
Center concept -- which the author came up with 15 years ago -- much
earlier had the author been able to apply for an idea right for it
and the hundreds of knowledge product ideas that go with it instead
of having to wait until he made an economic decision to publish it.)

	To see the potential for the idea right, observe that a creative
writer like Melville could have quickly made "bread money" by publishing
the ideas of Moby Dick and Captain Ahab long before he cataloged his
finished works.  As presumably no one more talented would have
developed the ideas like he did, he could have eaten his cake and
had it too as other writers produced works (cartoons, dolls, comics)
based on these ideas while he enjoyed a one percent override, then
published his own master work only when he was ready; later, he
would enjoy even more royalties from sales of toys, clothes, etc.,
stimulated by the popularity of his work.  (There might then be
well-paid careers for people who specialize in providing literary
ideas to others who develop them into full length works.)

	Since we have all experienced a flood of ideas at some period of
our lives, which, not being exploited, were quickly forgotten, but
could now be put to the service of man by cataloging in the
Knowledge Center, the geared-up Knowledge Center system will "cover
the world like a rainbow" with new ideas.

	The idea right (IR) would work as follows:

	1.  A person catalogs an idea and electronically applies to the
Knowledge Center for an IR.  The cataloging date and time
establishes priority.

	2.  The originator of the idea then searches new knowledge
products for their use of the idea.  If he finds it being used, he
puts in a claim with the Knowledge Center administration (or elected
commission), who verifies it and establishes the fund diversion.
The owners of the copyrights affected would be notified, and have a
grace period to object, although few probably would because of the
small money involved.  (Note: it is the responsibility of the holder
of the IR to find and make claims; we don't want to create another
huge government bureaucracy!  The fund diversion would only apply to
sales made after the claim is made, so that there will be no
back-charging and less litigation.)

	3.  The IR would apply to the gross sales of all knowledge
products that use an idea, so that the more successful the products
that use it are, the more money the IR holder would receive.  (Some
really creative people might be able to make a million dollars by
coming up with a hundred million-dollar ideas which others exploit.)

	4.  Because a new product might utilize several cataloged ideas,
the IR overrides would equally share the one percent of gross sales,
which seems fair to all parties.  (No one knowledge product will be
assessed more than one percent for utilizing someone else's ideas,
originators of new ideas will be encouraged to spread their ideas
around into as many products as possible, and producers of knowledge
products will be encouraged to incorporate their own ideas as much
as possible.)

	5.  To prevent a bookkeeping nightmare as new knowledge products
are cataloged which utilize hundreds of "old" cataloged ideas, the
IR would be given a rather modest time limit, say six years.  After
that point, the ideas would be "public domain" and completely free.
(If a person catalogs an idea and it is not used until the IR
expires, he receives nothing; but no one is going to purposely wait
until an IR -- and its tiny sales override -- expires to miss a
market opportunity in the face of competition; and this will encour-
age the idea's originator to promote and publicize it.)

	A possible objection is the cataloging of a fantastic number of
utterly trivial "ideas" in the hopes for easy money.  The answer is
that no one can obtain an IR on an idea that has been previously
published or cataloged, and that will limit the number of claims
greatly.  (Of course the IR data base will be a record that is
constantly scanned and "purified" by the public.) Also, the
cataloging fee and limited period of validity will discourage
frivolous cataloging of all kinds.  And after a short shakeout
period, the new ideas are bound to become quite serious and
exciting.  Then the holder of the IR must identify the products that
use his idea.  It must be admitted, however, that the need to
validate claims will create the need for some kind of governmental
bureaucracy, but then there are already so many that one more would
not be noticed; and the potential gains to the knowledge industry
are too great ignore.  Finally, the figure of one percent is offered
for discussion purposes only and is not definite.  Up to three
percent seems reasonable; or perhaps a sliding scale of one, two,
three, for each of the 3 two-year periods of the IR's life.  (The
scale goes up rather than down to encourage quick exploitation of
new ideas.)

%% 600, 0, The Cashless Society
6.2.17 The Cashless Society

	Some may notice that the new economy created by the Knowledge
Centers will have little use for physical currency: electronic
accounting systems will make funds exchanges paperless.  While
certain people may lament the passing of paper money ( e.g.  because
of the ease with which government can monitor a person's finances or
"make" money without even running a printing press), it might be
noted that advances in printing technology are already threatening
to make paper money worthless, as for instance in a recent local
case where some people used a desk top photocopier to successfuly
make dollar bills which were passed through change machines.
(Although they were caught, the point is that this amateur ring was
successful in passing the counterfeit money.) Thus, as with all
physical knowledge items money will have to become electronic to
even survive (unless we go back to gold coins, which have their own
problems), and at least the proposed Knowledge Centers have the
virtue of solving all these knowledge economy security problems at
one time.

%% 600, 0, Other Technical Issues
6.2.18 Other Technical Issues

	1.  Technical Difficulty.  Ten years ago some may have
questioned whether the author has underestimated the technical
difficulties in creating such a system.  For example, the cost of
electronicizing knowledge, the cost of storing it, the cost of
electronic distribution.  The industry's current surge towards home
multimedia systems should quiet all such questions.  Now that there
is a huge existing market for knowledge products, Knowledge Centers
will be seen to provide a focal point for generations of future
work.

	Furthermore, the plan provides further "backup plans" in that
the system will start with the physical knowledge items under computer
control and then progressively electronicize the inventory and
increase the level of service, easily adapting itself to any
electronic breakthroughs.

	Also it must be stressed that within a matter of years of a
first Knowledge Center appearing anywhere, every state in the U.S. and
every developed country will have their own compatible systems.  In
fact, the idea of a Knowledge Center seems almost the only thing in
our present culture that is sure to survive ten thousand years -- if
it does -- so let's get started now!

	2.  Information Explosion.  Some may say that the proposed
system will add more fuel to the "information explosion".  Actually,
the author hopes so.  Information is the "raw materials" of
knowledge, and often new knowledge ties together and condenses
mountains of information.  (Although the creation of a successful
new "theory" is no excuse to "forget" all the information it is
built on!)  Once the society has provided the knowledge delivery
system, the tools for managing all the information and knowledge man
can come up with are sure to follow.  So the more the merrier!

%% 600, 0, The Knowledge Club
6.3 The Knowledge Club

   "The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the
	waters cover the sea." Isaiah 11:9


	One day the author hopes to see Knowledge Centers distributed
over the whole of man's domain, accessible by all and connected
together, sharing knowledge on an equal basis, minimizing geography,
distance, time; language, cultural, political, economic differences;
and involving all humans in a cooperative effort to solve mankind's
problems.  At that point the whole of humanity will be a Knowledge
Club, which carries nobler connotations, and indeed is more
far-reaching, than "global village", "cyberspace", "information
highway", or other metaphors.  (The author has to admit that he got
the "master idea" from the Bible in the passage quoted above,
although he is an Atheist, so "Knowledge Church" or "Knowledge
Testament" had to be discarded.)

	It is the author's opinion that the electronicization of all
human knowledge is the most significant event in human history, more
important than the first trip to the moon.  When there is a
worldwide network of Knowledge Centers, the knowledge they maintain
will of course be electronically distributed in such a way that
nothing less than a complete destruction of all of them will
seriously threaten man's heritage.

	And, if current research in memory technology pans out, for the
first time it will be possible to store all human knowledge in a
small container ("ark") that can be sent into space on an elliptical
orbit (or buried deep underground), automatically returning after
a certain number of years, thus permitting the survivors of a
possible global catastrophe to salvage civilization when they build
their numbers back up.  (Even the extinct life forms may some day be
reconstructable from their cataloged genetic codes.) This is the
only realistic plan for salvaging civilization that the author knows
of (the music of Mozart will go on), as well as one of the best
projects for the country's faltering space program.

	Although possibly out of place in this report, the author would
like to mention that the proposed Knowledge Centers will be the
greatest weapon the free world has ever had against organized
Communism which, as it ought to be known by now, thrives on direct
physical confrontation by using the old psychological trick of
justifying its existence by the mere fact that it has enemies
(control of information sources lets them get away with it easily).

	For those who have seen the film The Wizard of Oz (1939), the
author doesn't feel silly in recommending it as an accurate prophecy
of the end of Soviet communism.  In allegorical terms, the empire of
the Wicked Witch of the West is the Soviet Union (the film made a
point of "Russianizing" her soldiers), the Witch herself is the
Communist Party, the motley band of heroes are we and our allies,
and the end of the Witch will come, not by trying to assault her
castle with an army directly, but by sneaking in and pouring the
water of knowledge on her head, easily disintegrating her while her
zombie soldiers watch with fright that soon turns to wild
celebration.  Of course the Knowledge Club is Oz, the author is the
Wizard (knowledge technology is his kind of magic), the Chinese
Communist Party is the Wicked Witch of the East, and that leaves the
broomstick, which the author is impatiently waiting for (you can
guess what it is)! <this was written in 1985>

	It also should be mentioned that the author believes that the
long-term future of planet earth is to be de-industrialized and
systematically returned to its primeval state, with heavy industry
re-established underground, in orbit, then on the moon and planets.
Those billions/trillions remaining on earth will be those lucky people
who either play for a living or constitute the knowledge economy.
Therefore, the author would like to see all Knowledge Center designs
start as environmentally-harmonious structures so that future human
residents of earth will naturally tend to the lifestyle of playing
in earth's gardens when they are not working with their minds.

%% 0, 700, Chapter 7: Knowledge Centers
%% 700, 0, Knowledge Centers

7.0 Knowledge Centers
 
	This section contains the conceptual design of the proposed 
Knowledge Centers.
					
%% 700, 0, Architectural Concept
7.1 Architectural Concept

	The physical architecture of the Knowledge Centers is of key
importance as long as physical knowledge items remain in use.  Any
design to be acceptable must permit use of physical and electronic
knowledge items at the same time, while providing for the evolution
to an all-electronic inventory in the 20 to 30 years after they are
opened; it must also integrate an office center based on
all-electronic offices, with, hopefully, a minimal environmental
impact.

	There are two architectural concepts that appeal to the author:
the disk and the tower.

%% 700, 0, The Disk
7.1.1 The Disk  

	The first concept is to design the Knowledge Center warehouse in
the form of an extremely wide (1 city block diameter, i.e., 100K sq.
ft., to permit storage of up to twenty million knowledge items) but
shallow disk or cylindrical section buried underground.  This way,
all users would be communicating with a literal central pool of
knowledge (controlled by robots that distribute the items through
chutes leading radially), and not get in each other's hair at the
same time.  The office structures could be located on top of the
disk, like a sand castle; or more excitingly, the ground above the
warehouse made into a beautiful lake, with the offices located
around the perimeter in the form of "park cottages", or half-sunk
into the ground themselves, so that the entire complex is a big
public park with ducks and geese and lapping waves right outside the
door.  (Just like the ancient Egyptian Lakes of Creation which
graced the temples of these founders of the great library of
Alexandria.)  Who says hi-tech is incompatible with natural beauty?

%% 700, 0, The Tower
7.1.2 The Tower  

	The second concept is to design a large skyscraper in the form
of a tower (ivory of course, bearing no resemblance to that famous
one of Babel), with no breaks or holes to block free access to or
isolate any area from the others.  This is to permit a maximum of
physical knowledge items to be stored in the minimum volume (as well
as land area) in a position (the lower stories) to be delivered to
patrons (in the upper stories) as rapidly as possible.  This tower
could be constructed almost anywhere the disk concept would not
work, for example, in the mountains, a crowded city, and so on.  If
Denver were to decide on this design the logical place to build it
would be the Auraria campus, since it is near "skyscraper land"
anyway, the view from all but the lowest stories would be beautiful,
and there is plenty of land available there after the present
library building and surrounding obsolete classroom buildings are
removed.

%% 700, 0, Functional Design
7.2 Functional Design

	The conceptual functional design for the first generation
of Knowledge Centers assumes most people will work at home, but
that some will want to work at the Knowledge Center site itself,
since proximity will for a long time if not forever be a desirable
economic commodity.

%% 700, 0, Interior
7.2.1 Interior

	For the tower: Modular, with the number of floors an
"implementation variable".  There will be relocatable walls to
create a variety of floor plans to suit the tenants, and a number of
individual workspaces for walk-ins (to subsume the public library
function).  The amount of privacy will be controlled by the tenants,
as in a first class office building.  Large shafts and corridors
will be provided for wiring in any imaginable type of
communications.  Raised floors, filtered air conditioners, waterless
fire extinguishers and buffered power supplies with backup will be
provided for quartering delicate electronic equipment.  Room for
meet-the-public businesses such as restaurants will be designed in.
The top floor will be a glass-walled restaurant with a special
elevator from the ground floor so that sightseers and tourists can
be accommodated.  Special fire control precautions will be taken to
protect both the people and the precious cargo of the Centers.
Security will be the responsibility of the tenants as well as the
Center, with no special half-trained "policemen" subject to misuse
by the authorities.  As for comfort, it is expected that various
groups of floors will be made into picture-window botanical gardens
possibly open to the outside, and maybe even nostalgic old-style
libraries, but where communications facilities are installed to
permit work to be accomplished if desired.

	For the disk: the chutes will lead radially from the disk to the
perimeter where the offices reside.  Since each office building can
have its own design, there is complete freedom in interior design.

%% 700, 0, Exterior
7.2.2 Exterior 

	For the tower: the exterior can be changed to blend in with the
environment.  Each tower, while recognizable as a Knowledge
Center, can be tailored to local tastes and landscaped without
affecting the functional interior design.

	As for access and parking, surrounding the tower will be a
system of airport-style driveways to permit loading and unloading of
passengers, equipment, and inventory, and another system of
bank-style car ports for public pick-up of pre-ordered knowledge
items.  The author prefers to let the private sector provide the
parking facilities in the area because he doesn't want to create
another government bureaucracy.

	For the disk: much imagination will be required to design this
little city, but perhaps the government's function is to provide
only the disk and the "hookups" to the warehouse, electricity,
communications, etc., permitting businesses to design their own
little castles, park buildings, "hobbit holes", etc..  (A certain
number will still be built by the government for the use of the
public.) As for parking, the dispersal of offices eliminates many of
the parking and congestion problems that the tower has, so no
special design is required.

%% 700, 0, Electronic Offices
7.2.3 Electronic Offices

	The Knowledge Centers will be based on all-electronic offices.
This means that each person will have his own powerful personal
computer workstation, which is already feasible with off-the-shelf
technology.  (A typical personal computer in latter 1994 has a 50-66
megahertz CPU, 8 megabytes of random access memory, a 400 megabyte
hard disk and a 1.44 megabyte floppy disk, plus a CD-ROM drive and
sound card, and a 14.4 kilobaud modem, all for about $1500 to $2500,
or $100 a month over its useful lifetime.  By the year 2001 we can
expect as much as ten times this for roughly the same money).

        The Knowledge Centers will provide the necessary organization
to permit all these computers to work efficiently on the sum of human
knowledge in the electronic warehouse, and coordinate the commerce in
knowledge products which is the lifeblood of the knowledge industry.
Of course, little paper will be in evidence.

	All the interfaces that can be standardized will be, so that all
computer manufacturers can service the market.

	Some may note that present personal computers don't usually
integrate video, graphics, and audio facilities as required, but the
author believes that this could and will be done by the
manufacturers overnight when this plan is made public.  Indeed, all
kinds of new knowledge workstations will be developed and put on the
market at no cost to the Knowledge Center funders.

	It might also be mentioned that the publicly-available computing
facilities will be built into strong metal furniture with
electronic security devices that make tampering or theft extremely
difficult without detection; hence there is no risk of loss of the
taxpayers' investment.  For those who do not consider the
publicly-provided computers satisfactory, there will be empty
workstations wired with standardized plugs to permit patrons to
bring their own computers.

%% 700, 0, Robot Warehouse
7.2.4 Robot Warehouse

	The robot warehouse for physical knowledge items will be based
on existing American and Japanese "pick and place" robot technology,
and will be designed to be gradually replaced with computers and
electronic storage devices as the physical knowledge inventory
becomes obsolete.  Each office's workspace will be centered around a
conveniently located chute leading to the warehouse where physical
items are shipped back and forth by pneumatic tubes.  The Center's
central computer will make available the complete inventory list,
and the ordering of items is a computer command (the items are
automatically "checked out" as they are sent up, and "unchecked" as
they are sent back).  The average waiting period for items will be
on the order of 10 to 30 seconds if they are located in the
Knowledge Center warehouse, or up to 2 hours if they must be shipped
from one of the other Centers.  When the patron is through with an
item, he merely pops it back down the chute, where it can even be
marked as a reserve item so that no office will need crowded
bookshelves even for working materials.

	This system automatically prevents illicit theft, provides a way
to get payment for unreturned materials (the user's account is
simply debited), and the electronic management system will permit
the true price of unreturned materials to be charged, not just the
initial purchase price.  When this savings is added to that of the
reduced labor costs, it might prove that the system pays for itself
on this accounting method alone.

%% 700, 0, Shuttles
7.2.5 Shuttles 

	Since the inventory will be under robot control, the most
effective management will be on a statewide basis: the entire state
Knowledge Center inventory will be considered as one, with a fleet
of shuttles circulating between the state's Knowledge Centers
dynamically redistributing the physical inventory to meet expected
demand and minimize waiting time.  At each Knowledge Center there
will be a loading area where the shuttles are electronically
connected to the Knowledge Center and their loads processed under
robot control.  Even the physical maintenance of inventory items
will be under robot control, at least partly.

	This system, while initially expensive, will be cheaper in the
long run to operate than a manual labor system such as libraries now
have, and more efficient, reliable, and consistent, as bowling alley
managers well know.

	For those who might complain about not being able to "browse the
stacks", the answer is that through computer programming they will
be able to browse the inventory in ways that are impossible
physically.  For instance, the inventory may be viewed under any of
a number of cataloging schemes, including one of the patron's own
devising, and a large amount of electronic data about each item will
be available for preliminary work before the physical item is even
needed (for example, the promotional literature, reviews,
classification data, Table of Contents, Bibliography, and Index).
And when a physical item is wanted, it is available to one's
fingertips in seconds through a computer command, which beats a
visit to the stacks any day.  Also, there will be no more shelving
of items based on physical format (book, bound periodical, pamphlet,
record, tape).  Finally, an increasing number of knowledge items
will be available only in electronic form anyway.

%% 700, 0, Functions
7.3 Functions

	The functions of the Knowledge Center are to collect and
distribute knowledge, to house knowledge businesses, and provide
facilities for the general public.

%% 700, 0, Knowledge Collection
7.3.1 Knowledge Collection 

	Knowledge collection will be a joint private industry and
government function, financed both by tax monies and by the creators
of the knowledge items themselves, who will pay a "cataloging fee",
currently envisaged as a modest going rate, say, $10, $20, even $50,
perhaps based on information "size".  Since there is no longer any
"publishing" of electronic knowledge items, but rather their
cataloging and distribution by the Knowledge Center, any person is
free to catalog and collect royalties from his knowledge products.

        However, there is a public responsibility to go beyond what
is merely commercially successful and collect "complete knowledge"
systematically, and for this purpose there will have to be a
government-university-industry backed administrative policy to
purchase (and eventually electronicize) with tax moneys those items
that have not been cataloged for whatever reason (e.g., because they
are in the public domain).  Those who are sure of making money from
their products will not be tempted to wait for the government to get
around to doing it -- time is money.

%% 700, 0, Knowledge Delivery
7.3.2 Knowledge Delivery 

	Knowledge will be delivered to the citizens by both electronic
and physical means.

	7.3.2.1 Physical Knowledge Items.  Physical knowledge items can
be received at the Knowledge Centers themselves, either through the
chutes in each workspace, or at a bank-style car port.  (The user
first dials up the Knowledge Center and places his order; when he
arrives he punches in his identification number and the items pop
out on a tray.)

	Of course there will be so many people doing remote ordering
that don't want to drive up to the Knowledge Center that there will
be a good market for the mail carriers to establish a special
delivery service, with competition driving the cost down.

	7.3.2.2 Physical Production Facilities.  For those who see a
potential flaw in the plan in relying on the phasing out of paper
and plastic knowledge too soon, the author has another surprise.
While the author believes paper is on the way out, he realizes that
it will likely take a full generation (20 or 30 years) before it is
really out.  And of course there is the problem of interfacing with
out-of-staters who are not as fully electronicized as we are.
Therefore, each Knowledge Center will have its own robot production
facility (print shop) that is capable of paperizing (printing and
binding) or plasticizing (on tape or disk) any electronic text or
graphics product under computer control.  In other words, a user can
have any electronic knowledge product physicalized and sent up the
chute to his office automatically, and even optionally send it back
down to the warehouse where it is permanently stored.  The users are
of course free to have their own physical production facilities if
they wish, and there will be special interfaces designed so that
private companies can set up printeries and binderies and so on in
the Centers, delivering their products through the built-in
distribution system, insuring that their last years will be golden
ones.

	7.3.2.3 Phone.  Any person can dial up the Knowledge Center at
home and communicate with it via a personal computer over the phone
lines.  (In several years a planned satellite phone system will make
worldwide personal access possible, and provide phone service to the
few remaining unserviced areas.) However, as the normal phone lines
have too low a data rate capacity for video or audio knowledge, a
supplementary distribution system must be provided.  The author
believes that two approaches are worth investigating: cable and
satellite.

	7.3.2.4 Cable.  The cable TV industry is well on its way to
wiring U.S. homes into a so-called information highway, so why not
go onto a Knowledge Center system?  This would permit each home to
use the Knowledge Center as a "channel" that is unique in that it
is a two-way communication line permitting access of video and audio
as well as computerized knowledge.  (This would be the first time
that television achieves its potential as an educational device,
snicker snicker.)   As more and more knowledge is electronicized,
the average citizen will be able to increasingly access the world's
knowledge from his living room.  And exciting new products to
service the market created by the Knowledge Centers are sure to
arrive in a hurry: for example, combinations of video and
interactive computer education programs such as an educational
knowledge product which teaches American History complete with movie
and TV footage, and conducts its own tests.

	7.3.2.5 Satellite.  It would be easy to launch a special
satellite in the early 21st century to reside in a geosynchronous
orbit over the state and provide thousands of channels for citizens
to reach the Knowledge Center via their rooftop (cartop) satellite
dishes.  Perhaps some "old" satellites will become available at
bargain rates for this purpose.  And the number of channels that can
be provided in a few decades may be in the hundreds of thousands.
(The early 90s saw the spread of the small hand-held satellite dish,
how perfect.)
 
	7.3.2.6 Equipment-Intensive Knowledge Delivery.  In rare cases
where the electronic equipment required to deliver the knowledge is
extremely costly, as for instance, a super high data rate movie
animation system, a Space Shuttle or aircraft simulator, a
geographical/topological data base, or fine-grain picture data base,
the Knowledge Centers will house the equipment required to permit
the public to gain access to the knowledge.  This is kind of a
half-way house between a Knowledge Center and a museum, but it can't
be helped and there is no other public institution which currently
provides this service, although government agencies already own much
of the equipment and provide it to favored engineering contractors
(as if the general public has no rights).

	7.3.2.7 Microwave.  Microwave is an alternative to cable.
(Microwave towers can be erected in the front range and the citizens
can access threm through small microwave dishes on their homes;
through electronic switching many thousands of users can be
accomodated simultaneously even though the bandwidth is limited.)
The author prefers cable for the major cities because of the problem
of microwave interference, and because so many homes have already
been wired for cable.  This alternative should be kept in mind for
certain remote communities however.

%% 700, 0, Knowledge Commerce
7.3.3 Knowledge Commerce 

	It is easy to see now that the Knowledge Centers will be the hub
of a great communication network collecting and distributing
knowledge much as public highways promote physical commerce.  This
system will be a boon to the entire economy through its lowering of
the cost of doing knowledge business for all.  This new role leaves
that of the present-day libraries far behind.

%% 700, 0, Staffing and Operations
7.4 Staffing and Operations

	The high degree of automation, and sharing of knowledge
nationwide, will permit a skeleton staff, mainly for physical
maintenance and contract administration.  As the real operations
of the Centers are electronic, any needed programming services can
be contracted to some of the many private companies that use the
system and are intimately familiar with it, or more simply, the wise
administrators can let the knowledge businesses figure out what
services they really need and provide them for themselves (as
cataloged knowledge items).  (The internal design of the software
and electronics will itself be cataloged on the system as public
domain knowledge.)

%% 700, 0, Funding
7.5 Funding

	The funding for the construction of the Centers would ideally
come from state and federal funds, with operating costs largely
financed through office rents (and tourist fees if the tower plan is
adopted), cataloging fees, and royalty fees (a percentage of the
royalty for each item).  (As the new Centers would have a skeleton
staff, and as present-day libraries spend most of their budgets on
staff, they would already be cheaper to run if they did not have the
new sources of revenue.  Hence, even a botched attempt at setting up
these Centers is bound to be financially successful.)  It might also
be noted that such a large appropriation is going to require
statewide voter approval, with, paradoxically, the leading state
suffering from the most heated and time-consuming battle: once the
first state's system is up and running, the grim economic realities
of business life will make approval for similar centers in other
states much easier!

%% 0, 800, Chapter 8: The Colorado Plan
%% 800, 0, The Colorado Plan
8.0 The Colorado Plan

	This section describes old work the author did for the
Knowledge Center plan for Colorado.  As it is only in the conceptual
stages, dollar signs are not attached.

%% 800, 0, State Library System Reorganization
8.1 State Library System Reorganization

	As discussed in the author's 1985 Report #KC-85-001, a complete
statewide reorganization of the present publicly-supported library
system is needed.  The whole system must be consolidated into one
administration, one staff, and one inventory of items with a common
cataloging system, common central computer system, and common
policies and procedures, all funded at the state level.  This
reorganization will ideally be accomplished well before the
construction of the Knowledge Centers, hopefully before 2001.  (Even
while the Centers are being constructed work must begin to prepare
the new inventory system, the computing system, and so on; and a
"People's Express" type of organization, where each person is made a
manager and worker at the same time, with specialization
discouraged, should be instituted and given the time needed to make
it work.)

%% 800, 0, Scrapping of the Present Library System
8.1.1 Scrapping of the Present Library System

	There is much in the present library system that is simply
outrageously obsolete.  For instance, branch libraries and
bookmobiles have little value in an age when one can order books by
"800 numbers" or mail, watch MTV on cable, get a satellite dish
system or professional personal computer for under $3000, travel by
air to any point in the country for a couple of hundred dollars, and
so on.  (There just isn't a "boondocks" any more where people are
isolated from knowledge.)	

	And, as mentioned previously, most large libraries split their
collection up into several smaller buildings, which is one of the
biggest problems now facing progress.  And Colorado's city-run
public libraries are by and large housed in outdated buildings,
which often don't even have adequate security for materials, much
less space for electronic offices.  Hence it is time to simply close
the buildings down and/or sell them.  (In Denver they went and
paid millions for a new city library in the early '90s).

	As for the bookmobiles, perhaps they can be salvaged as the
shuttles that will be needed to redistribute the inventory
dynamically between the state's Knowledge Centers, if not purchased
by private mail carriers to provide the new service of physical
knowledge item distribution.

	Since the proposed Knowledge Centers have need for only a
skeleton staff and a single statewide administration, it must be
stressed that the great majority (over 90 per cent?) of current city
or state library workers will have to be laid off in the ten years
before they open.  But ten years is nine and a half years more
notice than most workers get when automation takes their jobs away;
and anyway, the new economic opportunities of the Information Age
will absorb most of the workers (after much-needed retraining via
the Knowledge Centers!) with no problem.  And as the author's
feelings about the quality of state employees and administrative
bureaucrats are well known (and completely justified!), the author
is absolutely "ruthless" in designing the new Centers with the goal
of reducing staff and administrative requirements to the bone, and
arranging that what work remains is done via private contractors
when possible.

%% 800, 0, Construction of New Centers
8.2 Construction of New Centers

8.2.1 Locations

	It is proposed that the Colorado Knowledge Centers be built as
much as possible in the center of public university campuses.  That
way they would be given the status they deserve as the center of the
university system, but their public access would unify all segments
of the community.  (It is not believed that the ancient problems of
universities with their surrounding towns, which resulted in their
becoming virtual walled cities, apply any more, especially in
hi-tech, democratic Colorado; however, current university rules and
regulations, which permit administrators to prohibit "trespassing"
of anybody they don't like, must be completely abolished, or no
knowledge business will want to locate there.)

	Currently it is thought that eight of them should be built on
the front range, with an additional one on the western slope and one
on the eastern plains, in the centers of population of the
surrounding regions.  (Those in the mountains would communicate with
the Centers via cable or satellite.)

	The Knowledge Center locations currently thought most desirable
are as follows:

	1. Ft. Collins (Colorado State University)
	2. Boulder (University of Colorado)
	3,4,5. Denver (Washington Park, the Auraria Campus, the Denver Tech
	Center)
	6. Aurora (site unknown)
	7. Colorado Springs (University of Colorado)
	8. Pueblo (University of Southern Colorado)
	9, 10. The best location of the western and eastern Centers
	is unknown. 

	It might be mentioned that in less than a decade after these
Centers open, the public university campuses not located near a
Knowledge Center will likely find themselves becoming obsolete and
subject to shutdown, much to the relief of taxpayers.  (The
universities will be busy transforming into research centers, which
will itself be easier to do because the new Knowledge Centers are
bound to increase Colorado's attractiveness to top researchers and
students.) Therefore, the time to jockey for position is before
they are built: none of the above site selections is irrevocable.

%% 800, 0, Denver
8.2.1.1 Denver

	As mentioned previously, the Denver Centers can be located in
the Auraria Campus, Washington Park (the author prefers the North
lake), and the Denver Tech Center area.

	The Auraria Knowledge Center (a tower) can be located on the
space now occupied by the present squatty little two-story library
building (which is dominated by the taller buildings all around it),
and some of the surrounding classroom buildings, which no longer
will be needed.  Its location adjacent to Denver's great undeveloped
Platte River Valley area is attractive because of the potential for
new businesses locating there; and its proximity to downtown Denver,
the Mile High Stadium, the Interstate highway, the State Capitol,
and so on, puts it right in the middle of some of Colorado's most
attractive resources as well as its population.  The view,
especially from the upper stories, will be a drawing card in itself
(of course there should be a tourist ride to the top and a top floor
restaurant, to help pay for the building); and as the Auraria Campus
is located just blocks from "skyscraper country" there is no danger
of the center blocking anyone else's view.  (Its construction will
itself influence development as the downtown area expands.)

	The proximity to downtown Denver is especially important, for it
is likely that most of the businesses there will want to have
special communications facilities built to better tie it in, which
helps both them and the Center.

	Incidentally, this new tower would provide the long sought
landmark symbol for Denver, with its location next to, but neatly
separated from, the downtown skyline; and in future years it can
easily come to symbolize the whole state's economy as well as a
"city in the sky" image that is the capital, not only of Colorado,
but of the Knowledge Industry itself.  (The author might as well
think big -- nobody paid him yet.)

	The Washington Park site likewise seems ideal for a number of
reasons.  One, it is just plain beautiful and peaceful over there,
which is conducive to clarity of mind and lowered stress levels.
Two, it would be highly attractive to businesses, yet not "mess up"
the area as a majority of it would be out of sight underground or
behind the trees.  (If such a site doesn't attract businesses to
Colorado the author will shoot himself.) Third, its existence would
insure the preservation of that park through economic clout.
Fourth, the site is not far from the highway (hence downtown), and
is an intermediate location between downtown and the fast-growing
southeastern sector of Denver.  Fifth, there are many nice homes in
the area for knowledge businessmen.  Sixth, the elementary and high
schools (which will become obsolete) and the large apartment towers
adjacent to the park could possibly be made into offices if needed.
Of course since the author has spent much of his childhood playing
in it he is emotionally biased, but the advantages seem objectively
overwhelming as well.

	It is also possible that other park sites, such as Sloan Lake or
City Park Lake can be considered, but the author feels that the
lakes might be too big to pull off such a development; and of course
a depressed area of Denver, perhaps near Capitol Hill or the Golden
Triangle, can be levelled, and the Center, complete with new park
and lake, built from scratch if desired.

	As for the Denver Tech Center, the desirability of placing a
Center in that area is obvious, since it is already a mini-center
for a burgeoning knowledge industry.

	It may be noted that Denver is planned as the linchpin of the
Colorado system, because of its location at the center of the front
range and center of population (and quite honestly because it is the
author's birthplace and home).
  
%% 800, 0, Boulder
8.2.1.2 Boulder

	The Boulder Knowledge Center can be located on the space now
occupied by the obsolete Norlin Library building, although some of
the surrounding campus buildings (which are mainly old classroom
buildings) will have to be cleared away also.  Here it is probably
desirable to build a tower for space reasons.  This location is
right in the center of the campus, just blocks from the town's major
street, and the view from even the lower stories of the center will
be breathtaking.  (Because of its location in the middle of a
non-residential section of campus it will not disturb anyone
else's view; from other points in Boulder it will add much to the
skyline as an inspection of the shot of Boulder at the beginning of
"Mork and Mindy" episodes shows.) Of course, other sites, such as
CU's east campus, can be considered.

%% 800, 0, Construction
8.2.2 Construction

	The construction of the new Knowledge Centers is expected to
take about five years (after a five year planning and design
period).  For the tower buildings, there is nothing new or unusual
about the construction.  For the park centers, the lake must first
be drained (preserving the wildlife) and a large excavation made
before the robot warehouse is installed and the lake restored.  It
is not expected that there will be any problems with water seepage
into the warehouse as the country has too much experience with
underwater tunnels and the soil is not that porous.  The design of
office structures harmoniously blended (often half-sunk) into the
environment poses no problems, and it is expected that before
construction of the warehouse is complete several established
companies will "reserve" their space and help design their own
buildings.

%% 800, 0, Setting Up the Knowledge Commerce System
8.2.3 Setting Up the Knowledge Commerce System

	Colorado's cable TV industry somehow arrived too late and too
early: too late because satellite TV is bound to make it obsolete,
and too early because its real future is as a delivery system for
the new Knowledge Centers.  When the construction of the Colorado
Knowledge Centers is approved the first thing to do is to take over
(or contract to) the cable TV companies and then finish the wiring
of Colorado to reach every home.  That way a high bandwidth channel
will be available for transferring video and audio, as well as
computerized, information.  (For those in the mountains, a microwave
or satellite approach might be cheaper.)

	Of course the phone company cannot be underestimated and it is
possible that in ten years they will have upgraded all their lines
to the bandwidth required by the Knowledge Centers (e.g., with
Mountain Bell's digital fiber optic system), or maybe have taken
over the cable companies themselves.  (They might also provide
automobile and airplane hookups for the "traveling office".) In
either case, the channels must be in place as soon as possible to
give each citizen the full benefit of the Knowledge Centers.

	Satellite, also, is not to be underestimated, and it will be
investigated whether the Knowledge Center system can have its own
satellites that can be accessed by any citizen with their commercial
TV satellite dishes.  With proper communication techniques, a single
satellite can be shared by thousands of citizens at the same time,
so that this approach should always be considered.

	Then there are the mail delivery companies.  They too are
capable of providing electronic mail and their system should be
considered for plugging in to.  And of course the delivery of
physical knowledge items will be their business for many years to
come.

%% 800, 0, Knowledge Center Operation
8.3 Knowledge Center Operation

	As repeatedly stressed, the majority of functions of the
Knowledge Centers will be completely automated and only a skeleton
crew of state employees will be required.  The real work will be in
computer programming the massive software systems needed to make
knowledge delivery more complete and efficient, as well as the
systematic collection of knowledge items.  (It is probably in only
this last category that some former "librarians" will "hang on".)

	As also stressed repeatedly, the Centers will strive to
electronicize the entire knowledge inventory systematically and
transition to a paperless inventory in about twenty or thirty years.
The robot delivery system, therefore, will become unneeded about
the same time it becomes technologically obsolete or wears out.
(The warehouse can then hold computing complexes and massive
electronic storage devices.) It is not expected that the size of the
inventory will systematically shrink, however, but rather reach a
saturation point and stay there until a rather sudden drop to
zero.

%% 800, 0, Impact
8.4 Impact

      Back to leaving the historical state that first builds working
Knowledge Centers up for grabs.

      The investment in Knowledge Centers will reap economic, social,
and political benefits, but the transition period will likely throw
people out of work, change the political landscape, affect social
orders, etc.  Are your state leaders big enough to plan for the long
term and ignore status-quo selfishness?

%% 800, 0, Economic Impact
8.4.1 Economic Impact

	The most obvious impact on your state's economy would be the
creation or relocation of several thousand information businesses
here.  If even one thousand businesses, with revenues of $1 million
each, were to open up here, that would directly add $1 billion a
year to the state's economy (10 percent of that to the Knowledge
Centers), and $100 billion in the 21st century: the indirect
benefits to the economy would be several times that.  (For example,
the likely endowment of multi-million dollar research institutes.)
And of course there would likely be a few companies with sales of
hundreds of millions of dollars a year each.

	The author would require a deeper study made of the economic
impact on your state of the proposed Knowledge Centers, including
an analysis of the impact on public education, libraries, and other
knowledge delivery, the knowledge economy and its projected growth,
the competitors your state will have and the potential effects of their
plans, the coordination among state officials and funding required
to sell your state to outside businesses, the cost of doing knowledge
business here, the changes in the state's tax structure that would
foster growth, and so on.

%% 800, 0, Educational Impact
8.4.2 Educational Impact

	As already discussed, the new system would dramatically impact
education, permitting home schooling, a 50 or more percent reduction
in the cost of public schools, and yet better educational
attainment.  The universities would get out of the classroom
business, concentrating their resources on research and the
advancement of knowledge, as well as some evaluative services (the
future "degree").

	There would of course be a massive layoff from the public
schools (more than half of all state and local government employees
nationwide work in education), but the impact is softened by the new
opportunities for producing and marketing educational knowledge
products with a worldwide customer base, as well as other knowledge
industry opportunities.  (Would you rather be a "model school
teacher" working for "peanuts" or a Michael Jackson, Steven
Spielberg, Jane Fonda, or Carl Sagan, who can make millions with a
single successful knowledge product?)

%% 800, 0, Social and Political Impact
8.4.3 Social and Political Impact

	The social impact is sure to be immense.  For one thing, there
is no problem which man faces that can be solved without knowledge,
which this new system will make available as never before.  (Even
the retraining needed for the masses of displaced workers will be
provided at less cost by the Knowledge Centers!)

	The reduction in the cost of knowledge delivery will bring
greater communication, the driving force of social change.  New
electronic serials can be started and reach success overnight,
proselytizing for all kinds of causes will be made easier, and the
success of thousands of entrepeneurs will strengthen the free
enterprise system.  As the Knowledge Center system is extended
worldwide the Christian churches' big dream of worldwide
distribution of the "gospel" will finally be achieved; and the
ability of petty dictators to control information sources will be
all-but destroyed.  (The Soviet Union, which is now 20 years behind
in computer technology, will have a real dilemma in choosing to
catch up, as giving its citizens more consumer electronics would
give them the opportunity to plug into the West's Knowledge
Centers!).

	The improved knowledge delivery to the ordinary citizen is bound
to be a big boon to democracy (e.g., permitting more complete
knowledge about candidates which might lower the cost of
elections), and the potential for enlightened, open, efficient
"knowledge government" (with rapid teleprocessing of letters and
forms, immediate response to queries, complete constellations of
knowledge collected on every situation, and televisits to
uncloggable "knowledge courts", whose public records can be
accessed by all), is eye opening.  The opening of this vast new
market opportunity might even suddenly cut the "population
explosion" down to size.

	It might be added that with these new Centers in place your
citizens will be the luckiest life forms of all time, having all
human knowledge literally at their fingertips for the first time ever.
Is Colorado, the home of the bison and the beaver, where dinosaurs
once walked, Indians camped, and pioneers wagoneered, going to be
the birthplace of the Knowledge Center?  Or some other state?

	If your state sees the potential in this plan and acts quickly,
a great economic upset will be pulled off which will have long-lasting
consequences for the state.  The tremendous market forces which are
now building up all over the country will be channeled in our
direction, giving us the chance to direct their future growth.  The
21st century will see your state's economy become
a model for the country, and your state the center of the world's
knowledge economy.  The boom-and-bust cycles your state has been
prone to will be virtually eliminated.  A strategic shift of
population, namely, those that are "knowledge powerful", is also
likely to increase your state's political power.  Of course, if
your state's politicians don't see the potential quickly enough, their
big chance will have been lost and the 21st century will see
your state as just another state.

%% 800, 0, Schedule and Cost
8.5 Schedule and Cost

	Since it is known that highway maintenance costs about $1
billion per year per state (average), medical care costs $8 billion
per year per state (average), Colorado's public K-12 education
system another $2 billion per year (as much as all state tax
revenues put together!), and the state spends another billion
for public colleges and universities, the one-time expenditure of
another billion dollars or two to construct a "knowledge highway
system" which will secure the state's economic position in the 21st
century, accelerate all kinds of problem solving activity, and more
than halve the cost of education, is a real bargain.

	It is believed by the author that the first Knowledge Centers
can open their doors ten years after Phase 1 of the contract begins.
This would give your state that much of a "jump" on all 21st century
competition ("our century" your children might later say),

	The following are the feeble swags (scientific wild-ass guesses)
the author has come up with so far without having a contract
permitting him to hire expert consultants.  The figures seem to
indicate that the system will pay for itself even without accounting
for the savings in education and libraries or increased business
efficiency.

%% 8000, 0, Non-Recurring Costs
8.4.5.1 Non-Recurring Costs

        This is a ballpark estimate for a state in the U.S. with 4
million citizens.

	Design and Planning: $500-$1000 million.  (It is hoped that
the federal government will contribute a portion of this cost,
because of the national social, economic, and security
implications; however, your state may want to remain in control
of the project.)

	Physical Plant: $100 million per center X 10 centers =
$1 billion?

	Electronics: $200 million per center X 10 centers =
$2 billion?

	Inventory (non-electronic): $50 per item X 10 million items =
$500 million?

	Inventory (electronic): free!  (provided by the copyright
holders) (There will also be an ongoing activity to systematically
electronicize missing items -- listed as a recurring cost.  The
state can later backcharge other states who choose to come online
and recoup some of this maybe).

	Optic cable network (may be paid by private companies):
$100/household x 1 million households = $100 million?

	Total: 1 + 1 + 2 + .5 + .1 = $4.6 billion?

%% 1000, 0, Recurring Costs
10.2 Recurring Costs

	Staff: 3 administrators @ $60K + 8 staff @ 30K per center
per year X 10 centers = $4 million per year?  (110 people for an
entire state!)

	Physical Plant Maintenance: $100K/center/year X 10 centers
= $1 million per year?

	Depreciation: (3% per year) = $100 million per year?

	Shuttles: 10 shuttles X $100K/shuttle/year = $1 million
per year?

	Knowledge Services (contracted): $20 million/year?

	Total: $4 + 1 + 100 + 1 + 20 = $126 million/year?

%% 1000, 0, Income
10.3 Income

	User fees (ten percent "off the top" of all sales):
$100/citizen X 1 million citizens = $100 million/year?

	Office Rents: $5000/year/office X 5000 offices =
$25 million/year?

     Cataloging Fees: 100,000/year X $50 = $5 million/year?

     Tower Sightseeing Fees: 200,000/year X $5 = $1 million/year?
	(Note: Seattle's tower has over a million visitors per year.)

	State Funding: $15/citizen/year X 4 million citizens =
$60 million/year?

	Federal Funding: $1 to 10 million a year?

	Total Recurring Income: 100 + 25 + 5 + 1 + 60 + 1 [10] =
$190 million/ year?

 	Net Income: $190 - 126 = $64 million/year?  This
means net income for the Knowledge Centers themselves, not the
net income of its users.  Maybe no tax money is needed on a
recurring basis.

%% 1000, 0, Payback
10.4 Payback Period
	
	Without interest: 4.6/.064 = 70 years? 
	
	At 5% interest: 100+ years? 

%% 1000, 0, Other Income Possiblities
10.5 Other Income Possibilities

       Predicting income possibilities is almost as hard as predicting
the weather.  But guesses can be made.

%% 800, 0, Foreign Sales
8.4.5.1 Foreign Sales

	If your state succeeds in constructing the world's first Knowledge
Center system, all of the world's knowledge businesses (including
virtually every Fortune 500 company), could decide they need its
services almost immediately to stay competitive.  Of course, your state
wants to entice these companies to relocate to your state, but there is
also an opportunity to charge premium prices for those who refuse to
locate, at least until the other states (and foreign countries)
construct their Knowledge Centers.  The author believes that each
Fortune 500 company headquartered outside your state can be charged
a million dollars a year for the use of the system for up to ten years;
and tens of thousands of smaller companies can be charged
proportionately.  Therefore, it is a possibility that your state's
entire system can be paid for by outside businesses!  The preceding
financial estimates, however, have ignored this funding source to
show that the system can pay for itself anyway.

%% 800, 0, Business Travel, Conventions, and Tourism
8.4.5.2 Business Travel, Conventions, and Tourism

	To add to your state's existing tourism and convention business,
the Knowledge Centers will at first attract "working conventions" of
businessmen who can plug into the Knowledge Center system and
greatly improve group productivity.  To attract this business,
your state has only to "wire" its existing convention centers into the
Knowledge Centers, providing an "electronic convention hall" with
thousands of hookups and workspaces.  While it is currently unknown
what benefits it will bring the state, the author believes it is in
the hundreds of millions of dollars a year.  Of course all kinds of
business travellers passing across this section of the country might
be enticed to detour into Denver and spend some time as long as we
have a monopoly in the Knowledge Center business.

	Ultimately though, it is the author's belief that the
Knowledge Centers will make most trade show type conventions nearly
obsolete, but that's not to say that tourism will not make up for it.

      Tourism might be a prime product of a state like yours, so if
there's something worth touring there, the knowledge approach should
make it impossible for any potential tourist not to know, and be able
to plan just how to get there at the best time.  The ultimate one day
would be your state free of ugly-type industry, or unnecessary travel
that could be circumvented by the Knowledge Center approach, but
instead virtually all travel would be tourism or relocation.

%% 800, 0, Conclusion
8.5 Conclusion

	This report is a working document and thus can never be
considered complete.  Always obtain the most recent update from the
author.

%% 0, 900, Chapter 9: A Proposal
%% 900, 0, A Proposal
9.0 A Proposal

	T. Winslow hereby proposes to act as system consultant to
the State (or Government) of XXX under a 3-phase contract, as follows:

	1.  Phase One: Quantitative Plan.  A 3-year study will be
made to quantify and perfect the present plan and prove technical,
financial, and legal/political feasibility.  A team of
approximately 300 consultants, including experts in architecture
and construction, computer hardware and software,
telecommunications, robotics, library management, finance, law,
education (traditional and computer-aided), and state politics,
will be recruited into an umbrella company (nominally to be called
The Knowledge Club Inc.).  These people will stay with the contract
through all 3 phases ideally.  An economic impact study will be made
to determine the true benefit of the Knowledge Centers after
accounting for the closing of the libraries, impact on school and
university costs, growth of the knowledge economy, real estate
considerations, and other sources of income.

	2.  Phase Two: Detail Design.  The consulting team will be
expanded to approximately 1500 members, who will conduct the detailed
design down to the implementation level, which is expected to take 5
years.  At this point the Knowledge Centers would be ready to build.

	3.  Phase Three: Implementation.  The Knowledge Centers will be
constructed, and opened to the public within 3 years.  (Most
likely the appropriation would require voter approval.)  The team
that worked on the previous phases would act as system consultants
and manage the development, of which a major portion would be
sub-contracted.

	4.  Reviews.  At one-year intervals, formal progress reviews
will be conducted, with continuation of the contract subject to
satisfactory progress.  At the end of each phase, the contracting
agency would have the option of terminating or competitively bidding
the contract.

	5.  Cost.  The contract price is negotiable, but the author
and other consultants would expect standard consulting rates, plus
itemized professional costs, a 20% overhead, and a 10% profit for the
umbrella company.  Either a cost-plus-incentive-fee (CPIF) or
cost-plus-fixed-fee (CPFF) contract is acceptable, the former being
preferred.

	7.  Proprietary Clause.  The contract must contain a clause
assigning the umbrella company proprietary rights, outside the State
of XXX, to all designs (but not design data) made under the
contract.  This would actually benefit the State of XXX as the
umbrella company will then be able to sell the same (or a closely
compatible) basic design to all the other states, permitting the
State of XXX to turn competition into cooperation and easily
network with them, sharing their possibly superior knowledge
resources.

        8. Contact via e-mail: twinslow@holonet.net


%%


