Responses to Bowman's "Review Essay: Megatrends: Unshocking the Future"
Abstract
Responses to Bowman's "Review Essay: Megatrends: Unshocking the Future" SAGE Publications, Inc.1985DOI: 10.1177/002194368502200301 John W. Gould University of Southern California Marie E. Flatley San Diego State University David Stuchler Montclair State College Guy Garvin Ryerson Polytechnical Institute L.Wayne Shell Nicholls State University Sallye S. Benoit Nicholls State University John Hagge Iowa State University It is comforting, and I trust not irrepressibly optimistic, to realize that (1) information is not communication, (2) information is about something, (3) the something in every human life must still be that which provides food, clothing, and shelter, (4) some people must still concern themselves with producing these things, (5) the people of the world differ greatly in the way they produce these things (some are still living in caves, still nomads, still tilling the soil by hand or ox, still undergoing their industrial revolution), (6) the United States, for whose people Naisbitt, Tofller, and company write, is not the whole world (thank God!), (7) computers are not, and never will, be capable of wisdom, and (8) data bases do not by themselves produce progeny, so there will always be need of consultants and their bases, the universities. Three cheers for Bowman! He has