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Caption: Dedication - Grainger Engineering Library Symposium
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realize the tremendous opportunities resulting from the university's collaborative relationship with industry and government. Historically, the introduction of new technologies challenges existing social, cultural, and institutional structures. This was true with automobiles, telephones, and television. It is also true with computers, faxes, cable television, and the Internet. There is an inherent danger, however, that the overload and excess that characterize much of television's electronic "entertainment" will dominate the emerging cyberspace of the information superhighway. it is no longer a choice whether computer networks will reshape the fabric of human society and consciousness; rather, the choice involves the kind of future we want to design with these new tools. They can create a virtual reality where fear, confusion, violence, and anguish dominate, where we are seduced by glittering images of a virtual cyberspace inhabited by a disembodied world of electronic pixels. Or, they can be used to create a virtual democracy where emancipation, creative inquiry, and knowledge dominate. Finally, then, libraries have over the centuries provided society with tools for human transformation. They enable us to explore possibilities and to engage responsibilities. They supply our context for civilization, and they offer us a sense of meaning, purpose, and connectedness. Libraries like the Grainger connect us with our past and with our future. They provide more than a conduit to knowledge. They are the engines of good science, good knowledge, and good society. Thank you for your attention, and . . . POWER TO THE LIBRARY! PAGE 19
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