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Furthermore, there is reason to believe that the rate is still rising sharply.Today, for example, the number of scientific journals and articles is doubling,like industrial production in the advanced countries, about every fifteen years,and according to biochemist Philip Siekevitz.“what has been learned in the last three decades about the nature of living beings dwarfs in extent of knowledge any comparable period of scientific discovery in the history of mankind.”Today the United States government alone generates 100,000 reporters each year, plus 450,000 articles, books and papers.On a worldwide basis, scientific and technical literature mounts at a rate of some 60,000 000 pages a year.
再者，有理由相信這一速率仍在急劇上升。譬如，現今科學刊物和論文的數量，就像發達國家的工業產量一樣，每隔15年便翻一番。用生物化學家菲利普·西克維茨的話來說，“在最近30年中，我們對生物屬性的了解，就知識廣度而言，足以使人類歷史上任何可與之相比的科學發現時期相形見絀。”今天，僅美國政府就每年推出10萬篇報告，另有45萬篇（冊）文章、書籍和論文。在全球范圍內，科學技術文獻達到每年產生6千萬頁文字這樣一種速度。
The computer bust upon the scene around 1950.With its unprecedented power for analysis and dissemination of extremely varied kinds of data in unbelievable quantities and at mind-staggering speeds,it has become a major force behind the latest acceleration in knowledge-acquisition.Combined with other increasingly powerful analytical tools for observing the invisible universe around us,it has raised the rate of knowledge-acquisition to dumb founding speeds.
計算機是在1950年前后一下子問世的。它有著前所未有的能力，能以驚人的速度分析、傳播數量多得令人難以置信的形形色色的數據資料，因而成為知識獲取方面出現最新加速趨勢的主要驅動力。它與其它觀察周圍無形宇宙世界的日益強有力的分析工具相結合，將知識獲取的速度提高到了令人瞠目的程度。
Francis Bacon told us that “Knowledge… is power.” This can now be translated into contemporary terms.In our social setting, “Knowledge… is change”-and accelerating knowledge-acquisition, fueling the great engine of technology, means accelerating change.
弗朗西斯·培根告訴我們“知識……就是力量。”現在這句話可以用當今的說法來詮釋。在我們的社會里，“知識就是變化”—加快知識獲取，給科學技術這臺巨大的發動機添加燃料，便是意味著加快變化。
