WHITBY FREE PRESS, WEDNESDAY,JANUARY 8, 1986 PAGE 5 "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." - Thomas Jefferson THE CROW'S NEST THAT'G OUR NON-,e7ARV/NG& 5E CT104 )P by Michael Knell Have you ever given much thought to the future? I don't mean next week, nor even next year but to the year 2001? I find it hard to believe, but that's only 15 years from now. A mere twinkle in the eye of eternity, if you don't mind my being corny. In that year my daughter will be a young woman of 22, my son a young man of 17 summers. As for how old I will be - mind your own business. But have you ever wondered what the world will be like in the year 2001? Our great-grandparents probably wouldn't recognize the world today, their parents and grandparents would suffer culture shock from which they would probably never recover. The world bas changed so much in the last 100 years that it is hard for most of us to think about what life will be in five years time - let alone in 2001. A good example was discovered by yours truly while listening to the car radio during the daily madness known as rush hour just the other day. The reporter was giving a special report on the state of transacting business five years from now. It is a distinct possibility, the reporter remarked, that cash money, as a source of everyday exchange, could become a thing of the past. Pretty soon we will be all doing business by credit card - but not one like Visa or MasterCard. This card will give the vendor and the purchaser direct access to the owner's bank account. The amount -of each transaction will be deducted automatically from the owner's bank account. No fuss. No mess. Money will no longer clinks or fold. It becomes nothing more than a series of dots on a computer print-out. To me, that doesn't seem quite real. Money should have a smell to it. It should be a challenge to try and remember just who's pic- ture is on the $100 bill. (Do you know? Well ... I shouldn't tell you, but, it's Sir Robert Borden.) The way we buy the groceries won't be the only thing that will change before the year 2001. During a recent visit to Chicago I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Melvin Cetron, a noted American futurist. Dr. Cetron's area of interest is the work- place. Technology, he said, will change the face of the North American work- place. For example, the good doctor notes that the days of the unskilled laborer are numbered. By the time you and I are ready to retire, you will have to be able to do something or be hopelessly outclassed in the employment marketplace. It will not be enough to be able to read and write and have a willingness to learn. In the 21st century, an employable person will not only have to have these things but an education and a skill as well. Dr. Cetron used the factory as one of his examples. He noted that automation is the key to any manufacturer's long term survival. We are only now beginning to see how effective and efficient a role robots and computer-aided manufar. turing technologies are making in the factory. While these advances are taking hold on the factory floor, change is also the watchword of the day in the general office. With the advent of computer technology in record keeping and word processing, the common secretary will soon be less in demand. However, the computer operating skills she acquired in the office will be of even greater value on the factory floor operating those robots and CAM devises. The simple secretary that the movies love to stereotype and the bosses love to patronize in various demeaning ways will become the most important link between raw material and financial product. Technology, Dr. Cetron maintains will be both a boon and a curse to society as we know it today. It will change the face of society. It will change how we live, how we work, how we play and our attitudes towards all three. It will also place greater demands upon the individual in return for the prosperity and promise that it offers in return. The greatest strain will be on the education system. Dr. Cetron notes that it does not currently equip our children to meet the challenge of the new world of the 21st century. The standards of e.ducation - the discipline - the expectations we place on our children must be tougher, stronger, higher. If they aren't they will be out- classes. Doomed to a life of welfare and broken dreams unable to compete in a technological society where brainpower, not muscle power is the key to suc- cess. After listening to Dr. Cetron, I recalled the attempts by the unions represen- ting what we today call common laborers, most notably the postal workers' unions ard the United Auto Workers. They have been fighting automation and the progress of technology for 20 years now. In their view, what technology represents is not a bright new tomorrow, but a threat to today. What these unio.ns don't realize is that by working against the march of time, they are con- demning not only their currept but their future membership to hardships that were not even imagined during the Great Depression of the 1930's. Furthermore, the union movement doesn't seem to understand that without progress, we can only regress. The union may be able to stop one or even a group of companies from enjoying the benefits of modern technology. But they will not stop new companies from emerging and asserting themselves in the marketplace. Becaüse they can do it better, they will put those companies that aren't as technically advanced into bankruptcy which means those poor unionized workers will be on the dole, probably forever. The future is coming. It will be here any day now. But it will be a different tomorrow. The mind of man has created the means te create a society that Sir Thomas Moore and other famous philosophers couldn't begin to imagine. In the next century man will finally cease to be a beast of burden. We will finally stop living like animals. Civilization will come, at long last, to the human race. Because the mind of man is stronger than the muscle of man. But will we have the strength of character to achieve that which is se close at hand? See what happens when I think about tomorrow? WITH OUR FEET UP He was a Canadian known to the wolrd as Ralph - l'Il tell you his full names in a bit, but first let's create a little guessing game - although that was not his name. He wrote some 30 novels in his lifetime. These gathered him fame in United States, England, Scotland, Ireland, Europe, Australia - in short, the English speaking world. Translations carried his books into countless other lands. His literary prowess brought him into a world in which he met prime ministers, American presiden- ts, and royalty. Throughout his lifetime, his novels sold more than 3 million copies - enough, even today, to provide a person with more than passing comforts. Enough, in fact, to make a person rich. This man, however, never really became rich from his literary pursuits. Literature was never more than a hobby, dashed off in the evenings, in moments stolen from sleep. Who? I thought you'd never ask. We Canadians have a way of doing that - accepting the accom- plishments of the most talented among us and then precisely forgetting them. His real name was Charles William Gordon, although few would remember his accomplishmen- ts under that name. In real life he was a Presbyterian minister, pastor of a church in Win- nipeg. He was born in 1860, son of a Presbyterian minister who had immigrated to Canada from the Scottish Highlands in the 1840s. He grew up in Glengarry County, in eastern Ontario and when he was ten moved with his family to West Zorra Town- ship in Oxford County, near Woodstock. From his autobiography, Postscript to Adven- ture, (published in 1937 a few months after his death) and from the description in his novels, he en- joyed a vigorous boyhood, playing shinny, shooting and hunting. He went to high school in St. Mary's Ont., and taught school to save enough money to put himself through university. He was ordained a Presbyterian minister at the age of thirty. He spent several years as a missionary in the Northwest Territories (in what is now Albertà ) and in 1894 became minister of St. Stephen's Church in Winnipeg. His literary career began three years later when he took time to write some brief sketches-of life in Western Canada. The anecdotes he related were true stores based on his experience as a pastor in the wilds of Alberta. The sketches were aimed at a church publication and designed to catch the in- terest of church-goers and raise money for western mission work. Those sketches were soon expanded and collected into a book, Black Rock: A Tale of the Selkirks. The first edition ran to five thousand copies and was picked up. in pirated editions in the United States. More than half a million copies were eventually sold, although most versions paid no royalties. Other books followed. Only one, perhaps, remains in the collective Canadian conciousness. About 1904 he published a novel based on his boyhood in Glengarry County. The book, Glengarry School Days, was once required reading. In preparing his first book for publication, his publisher selected his pen name, the name by which the world know and remember him. Ralph Connor. His books, however, are not pure gems of literary gold. Always the minister first, Connor wrote stories in which the Christian life would triumph. He portrayed Christian men as tough, fighting spirits who could take on the devil - and did - and still be gentle mild lambs. His heroines were patterned af- ter his mother, a pastor's wife who worked in the wilderness without complaint to comfort the sick, teach the ignorant, adnionish the heathen and outrun wolves. However, his books are worth reading today for the "local color" if nothing else. His descriptions of pioneer life are vivid. Even some of his characters come to life. Connor himself rose within the church, and in 1925 was moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Canada when large sections of the church joined the Methodists and Congregationalists in what became SEE PG. 10