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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，有理由相信这一速率仍在急剧上升。譬如，现今科学刊物和论文的数量，就像发达国家的工业产量一样，每隔15年便翻一番。用生物化学家菲利普·西克维茨的话来说，“在最近30年中，我们对生物属性的了解，就知识广度而言，足以使人类历史上任何可与之相比的科学发现时期相形见绌。”今天，仅美国政府就每年推出10万篇报告，另有45万篇（册）文章、书籍和论文。在全球范围内，科学技术文献达到每年产生6千万页文字这样一种速度。
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.
计算机是在1950年前后一下子问世的。它有着前所未有的能力，能以惊人的速度分析、传播数量多得令人难以置信的形形色色的数据资料，因而成为知识获取方面出现最新加速趋势的主要驱动力。它与其它观察周围无形宇宙世界的日益强有力的分析工具相结合，将知识获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·培根告诉我们“知识……就是力量。”现在这句话可以用当今的说法来诠释。在我们的社会里，“知识就是变化”—加快知识获取，给科学技术这台巨大的发动机添加燃料，便是意味着加快变化。
