5
SESSION1
It may happen at the earliest words that they say, or even before they
start to speak, but we hope that they will be prepared for this and know
that they can interrupt the interrupters, maybe.
The job of the
thinks they ougit
tions in terms of
than anyone else
we are after.
discussion initiator iv not w icll the others what he
to know, but rather to evoke fron: thermtheir quesvhat they need to know, because they know better
what their needs are. This is the essence of what
We are dealing, as all of you are even more aware than Iam,
with an information explosion. We are told—and the fiyures are nut
very accurate—that there ace more than 20.500 articles published
in journals in the bro-scirentific field per year.
Lhe figure on the
number of journals is very inaccurate at the moment, but they are
showing up fairly rafadly. So, there are many, many journals, and
many, many articles, and it's absolutely trapossible for anybody to
be up even on the narrowest field, or at least be sure he is upetodate, because he can't be sure what's been going on in Argentine
last week or what will be going on in Geneva next week which may
bring out some inforination that he had no idea of at all.
HRUES: Atl { meant by my warning to the initiators, Frank, «as
that they should not have morethan twenty or thirty minutes worth
of gasoline in their tanks’ [Laughter]
FREMONT-SMITH: This is absolutely fine, but thia gasoline is
to be spread over what happens when you're driving in a crowded
city. It will be a stop and go situation: burmper te bumper. 1 thoak
we are twenty-two, maybe twenty-three people here. Hoeach person’
here shook hands with everybody else once, who can quickly come
up with a figure of how many handshakes would hive taken place”?
It won't take you very long. Anybody”
AYRES:
(22 x 1°)
2
:
One-hundred and ninety if there are twenty people —
FREMOWT-SMITH:
.
This gives you ar idea of the number of pose
sible interactions. If everybody apoke once, there would be many
dialogues that would take place, and we hope ‘that several ot you will
speak more than once. So, this is the opportunity, and it’s really
quite surprising how many interactions there are. Not all verbal,
either.