EDUCATION OR DISASTER

Press, 15 July 1978, Page 15

EDUCATION OR DISASTER

The View from Serendip. By Arthur C. Clarke. Gollancz. 273 pp. $13.25. (Reviewed by A. J. Curry) Arthur C. Clarke is well known as an entertaining futurologist and science fiction author. This collection of his essays, some of which have been previously published in journals, represents a kind of autobiography. "Serendip” is one of the ancient names for Sri Lanka (Ceylon), where Clarke has made his home for many years, and some of these essays are about the history and society of this lovely island. But, as one might expect, the bulk of the essays are about the future and the implications for man of scientific and technological development. Clarke is at his best when writing about space projects, and the practical value of space research. His ideas and opinions about these topics were sought by the House of Representatives Committee on Space Science and Applications in 1975, and extracts from this committee’s hearings are among the essays. Communications of one kind or another are also of absorbing interest to Clarke. He provides a first rate account of India’s experiment with village education via satellite, and his address at the American Telegraph and Telephone Corporation’s celebrations

fin 1976 of the invention of the f telephone gives a fascinating glimpse into the future of audio-visual devices. Interspersed among the weightier articles are more light-hearted pieces of Clarke’s friendly feud with Isaac Asimov, flying saucers, and, of course, the filming of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” If I had to choose the best essay in the collection, I would plump for "The world of 2001,” in which Clarke sets out some of the more predictable elements of the technological future. The autonomous, self-contained, computer-controlled, ground based home-cum-spaceship, with dehydrated food stocks, compact power source, sophisticated communications systems, all designed to eliminate 99 per cent of human activity will? Clarke warns, leave our descendants with a future of utter boredom, where the main problem in life is which of the several hundred TV channels to select. Clarke warns that unless we make education the greatest single industry of the future, we face catastrophe. Education, he argues, must be a process which continues for the whole of man’s life. How can it be otherwise, when in today’s world "... half the things a man knows at 20 are no longer true at 40 — and half the things he knows at 40 hadn’t been discovered when he was 20?”