This weekend’s broadcast of On the Media had another segment on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The segment included parts of the speech Lyndon Johnson gave when he signed the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which created the CPB. It’s interesting to see what Johnson was thinking at the time:
In 1862, the Morrill Act set aside lands in every State — lands which belonged to the people — and it set them aside in order to build the land-grant colleges of the Nation.
So today we rededicate a part of the airwaves — which belong to all the people — and we dedicate them for the enlightenment of all the people.
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.
If we are up to the obligations of the next century and if we are to be proud of the next century as we are of the past two centuries, we have got to quit talking so much about what has happened in the past two centuries and start talking about what is going to happen in the next century beginning in 1976.
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 storing information that the individual can use.
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.
Who knew LBJ was a member of the digerati?
