POLITICIANS - AN ENDANGERED SPECIES  

Everybody worries over the tropical rain forest. Groups battle to save the habitat of the horned owl. Children cry when they see baby seals clubbed. Inuit hunting is restricted to spare the polar bear. Doesn't anybody worry about politicians?

Holding political office may soon offer a stage life equal to that of a fruit fly. Technology will make thousands of politicians unemployed, not because of scandal, chicanery or poor vote-getting manners, but because they didn't keep up with technological change.

Today's likely-to-become classic example: politicians with an edifice-complex who support and erect old-fashioned, ego-driven buildings to house institutions, which are about to collapse because of emerging ultra-efficient technologies. These inventions replace not one nor ten workers. But hundreds and thousands who now work as oarsmen to propel slave ships will soon be replaced by a simple motor. Consider a town council that hears a proposal to build a new municipal library. Naturally, the proposal is enthusiastically supported by the developers and architects, construction and other workers who will build the building and split the millions in revenue that such an edifice demands from increased property taxes. Suppliers of materials also think the project is a good idea. Politicians see it as helping to encourage young citizens to learn and grow, and to enhance the quality of their town.

Plenty of support. Hardly anybody objects, except a few taxpayers realize they are hopelessly outnumbered at public hearings and ask but a few mild questions. If no one is thinking out there, if no one is asking about a better way, if no one is aware of imminent changes in the rest of the world, one day they might wake up and find that money that could have produced better medical care, really better learning facilities or more affordable housing instead of being thrown into an obsolete aircraft carrier. Oh yes, we already did that.

Herein lies the quicksand of tomorrow's politics. Support for an outdated institution may mean a political neck on the line if it doesn't work or will be replaced with new technology almost as soon as it is built. In a global economy ignorance of the facts can be devastating.

One hundred and fifty years ago, politicians supported the introduction of the Pony Express. It did the impossible, carrying communications across the land from the Mississippi to the Pacific in a matter of weeks, not the months it took to go overland by covered wagon or around the tip of South America in clipper ships. The Pony Express lasted but 18 months. At the end of 15 months of highly successful operation, Samuel Morse created the telegraph. Three months later the Pony Express was toast ... bankrupt at a cost of two million dollars, a fortune in those days. Investors and politicians both lost.

Now the risk is a thousand times greater, as the acceleration of new technology approaches the speed of light.

Today it's not horses being replaced by telegraph wires. It's going to be traditional libraries, staunch aids to man since the days of Alexandria, failing to keep up to SERODS. Surface Enhanced Raman Optical Data Storage. One 12-inch optical disc can hold the Vancouver Public Library. That is the equivalent of ONE MILLION, THREE HUNDRED PAGE BOOKS!

Even as you read this, innovative entrepreneurs in various world centres are setting up systems to allow anyone to enter this library of the near future for a cost lower than parking a car outside a Gutenberg-format library. The libraries of the future will allow anyone anywhere in the world to electronically enter data banks and obtain any information desired. Because their potential market is all the five billion people on the planet, the volume will be high. The cost will be almost insignificant. Probably below one percent of present property taxes used to pay for current libraries.

Your town might not even need a library.

See why we should worry about politicians?

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