Information Revolution and Esperanto

Alvin Toffler predicted in his book "The Third Wave" around 20 years ago, that human beings will experience fundamental social reformation by way of information revolution, next to the Agricultural and Industrial Revolution.

The core of the Information Revolution is without doubt computers. Twenty years ago in the office where I work we had a computer that was equipped with a central processing unit of magnetic cores and with a magnetic disk device, which was as big as a refrigerator to supply a storage quantity of only 50 MB. However, this computer system cost as much as $500,000 US in those days and was never a thing that we can easily purchase like a TV. The prediction by Toffler seemed to be as unrealistic as a dream then.

Computer companies of the world were making a great effort to develop a large-scale computer in those days. In Japan a merged group of those companies was aiming, as a national project with a cooperation with the central government, to develop the huge computer system with learning ability. On the other hand, an American young man Bill Gates was developing a personal computer by himself, looking at that kind of main flow from the corner of his eyes. And now, it is obvious to everyone that what realizes the information revolution predicted by Toffler is not a super computer, but a personal computer. The revolution was brought about abruptly from nowhere at the corner of the society. At that moment, the Japanese ambition, in which the nation will control the world economy by mega-scale computers after motorcars, the last profit-making products from the Industrial Revolution as the second wave, was totally broken.

This Information Revolution, which has just started, will integrate all the information means such as electric communications or mass media that came into existence at the last stage of the Industrial Revolution, and will realize the social system, where humans can communicate directly and immediately each other - between person and person or between individual and organization - by means of a personal computer at home through the communication network connecting every place of the world. Existing telephones, radios , TV's , video recorders, newspapers, magazines and books will give place to personal computers. As a result all the industry relating to these kinds of information will suffer great reformation. Moreover, this will involve the office works in libraries and government offices or reservation jobs at travel agencies , and will have an influence on monetary system in the forms of electric shopping and electric banking.

Since the Industrial Revolution of the second wave, mankind has in numbers gathered around cities for information. It resulted in the birth of megalopolises which is beyond human scale and where mankind suffers from the problems like insufficient residences, traffic jams, environmental pollution and the increase of crime. In Tokyo office workers are confined in a commuter train in hours, in the worst case for 4 to 5 hours a day, to commute to work from a faraway home in the spooled metropolitan area. This is an unnecessary waste of life and, at the same time, of society.

The Information Revolution will surely change the future of mankind on a vast scale. One of the most important results caused by the revolution is in the fact that it breaks the one-way relation - from organization to individual - typically found in mass media. We never had a method to send our information to the world individually. The Internet now shows us the possibility of doing so. It is the world where everyone can send and receive information without the help of mass media. If anyone living in a back country cannot be isolated and can have relations with the rest of the world, then the above mentioned problem of urban concentration will be solved. If the Information Revolution guarantees the social shift from one-way mass communication to two-way mini communication, it will also provide a minority group of Esperantists with a new stage for their movement. We have acquired a powerful weapon.