Today, we reach a landmark. The University of
Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
We reach the 1500th broadcast
of this program just as 1999 draws to a close and
everyone's trying to sum up the Second Millennium.
Well, that does not mean I'm about to summarize
1500 episodes. In fact, I can't think of a better
time to kick back and put ignorance out where we
can see it. This is no time to draw conclusions.
It's a time to savor the huge ambiguities of our
world today. It's a time to be alert to change and
The year 2000 itself is fraught with ambiguity. It
marks only 1999 years from the nominal birth of
Christ, since there was no zero BC, and our
calendars jump from 1 BC to 1 AD. However, after
calendar adjustments, we find that Christ was
actually born in 4 BC or earlier. That means this
New Year will mark the year 2002 -- maybe even
more. Insofar as the millenium is an anniversary of
Christ's birth, it's already history.
As for the 1500th program, like the year 2000, it's
nothing special. If we wrote 1500 in base-six
numbers, instead of in base-10, it'd look like
10,540. In base-six it doesn't attract our
attention at all -- and neither would the number
2000. The only thing that's really special about
either number is that it's a double multiple of the
number of our fingers.
But, as dates, they hold something else entirely in
common. Put yourself in the shoes of a European
living in AD 1499. Millions of new printed books
had been pumped into your surroundings by the new
presses -- just as millions of computers have been
pumped into ours. A New World had just been
discovered to the west, across the Atlantic, and
news of it was pouring back into Europe. Now, five
hundred years later, you and I watch plans being
laid for colonizing Mars, while our industries are
commercializing space nearer to Earth.
In 1499, religion was about to pass from
institutions into the hands of individuals.
Surrounded by horrifying religious strife in
1999, we become newly determined to create
ecumenism and peaceful coexistence. Will we
succeed? Only time will tell.
In 1499, our philosophical sciences were
about to become data-driven in a way they'd never
been. Now, in 1999, the computer and its new
ability to make previously-unthinkable calculations
is reshaping science in ways we can't begin to
Where all this will come to rest, none of us has a
clue. So I find a special irony in finishing the
1500th episode on the eve of the year 2000. It
summons up that other age when summaries and
conclusions were just as impossible as they are
I close in on the year 2000 with curiosity and a
profound sense of my own ignorance. There's danger
here, but also hope. Fifteen hundred radio programs
have left me with a new respect for the
potential-laden ambiguity of our life on Earth. If
ever there were a time when all our summaries and
predictions are worse than useless, this is it.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds