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Knowledge as Fuel
知识作燃料
A.Toffler
A·托夫勒
The rate at which man has been storing up useful knowledge about himself and the universe has been spiraling upward for 10,000 years.The rate took a sharp upward leap with the invention of writing, but even so it remained painfully slow over centuries of time.The next great leap forward in knowledge-acquisitions did not occur until the invention of movable type in the fifteenth century by Gutenberg and others.Prior to 1500,by the most optimistic estimates, Europe was producing books at a rate of 1,000 titles per year.This means, give or takea bit, that it would take a full century to produce a library of 100,000 titles.By 1950,four and a half centuries later, the rate had accelerated so sharply that Europe was producing 120,000 titles a year.What once took a century now took only ten months.By 1960,a single decade later, the rate had made another significant jump, so that a century's work could becompleted in seven and a half months.And, by the mid-sixties, the output of books on a world scale, Europe included, approached the prodigious figure of 1,000 titles per day.
人类积累有关自身以及宇宙的各种有用知识的速度一直呈螺旋形持续上升，这种趋势已保持了1万年。书写的发明使这一速度有了一次急剧的上升，但即使如此，在几个世纪的岁月中，这一速度仍缓慢无比。第二次知识获取的巨大飞跃直到15世纪谷根堡以及其他人发明了活字印刷之后才出现。根据最乐观的统计，1500年以前，欧洲的出书速度是每年1千册。这就意味着，建立一个拥有10万册图书的图书馆大致上需花费整整一个世纪。到了四个半世纪后的1950年，这一速度急剧上升，欧洲每年出书12万册。曾经需花费一个世纪完成的工作现在只用了10个月。到10年后的1960年，这一速度又有了一个巨大飞跃，因而一个世纪的工作在7个半月内即可完成。到了60年代中期，世界范围内的出书量，包括欧洲，达到了每天1千册这一惊人数字。
