Blog Jones

Something I’ve been meaning to blog for a while: Jeff Jarvis has a link to a speech that Lyndon Johnson gave in 1967 that sound eerily prophetic:

I believe the time has come to stake another claim in the name of all the people, stake a claim based upon the combined resources of communications. I believe the time has come to enlist the computer and the satellite, as well as television and radio, and to enlist them in the cause of education….

So I think we must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge-not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and of storing information that the individual can rise.

Think of the lives that this would change:
–the student in a small college could tap the resources of a great university….
–the country doctor getting help from a distant laboratory or a teaching hospital;
–a scholar in Atlanta might draw instantly on a library in New York;
–a famous teacher could reach with ideas and inspirations into some far-off classroom, so that no child need be neglected. Eventually, I think this electronic knowledge bank could be as valuable as the Federal Reserve Bank.

And such a system could involve other nations, too–it could involve them in a partnership to share knowledge and to thus enrich all mankind.

A wild and visionary idea? Not at all. Yesterday’s strangest dreams are today’s headlines and change is getting swifter every moment.

I have already asked my advisers to begin to explore the possibility of a network for knowledge–and then to draw up a suggested blueprint for it.

And here we are, talking on the very same network. The internet is the best government project ever.

I came across a disturbing bit of trivia today, but I don’t know if it’s true. According to a Gore press release during the 2000 presidential campaign, BJU banned African-American students as late as 1970. This claim is corroborated by Wikipedia, which states:

From its 1927 founding to 1971, black people were prohibited from enrolling. From 1971 to 1975, only unmarried black people were permitted to apply to the school. After the 1975 court decision of McCrary v. Runyon, which prohibited racial exclusion from private schools, the policy was changed. Other public colleges in the south had similar policies at that time, including Clemson University who did not admit their first black student until 1965.

Is that true?

…

Of course, that would put BJU only a little behind the rest of the country; MLK was assassinated in 1968.

It really is interesting to see how quickly racial discrimination has fallen off. There are still instances here and there of course, but in two generations, racism has gone from being the normal way of thinking to being regarded as backwards, xenophobic, stupid, and just plain wrong by most Americans.

Good.