Wayne Danielson's Address
College of Communication Commencement
May 22, 1976
What Will You Remember?
This class, the class of 1976, has an advantage over all the other classes of the century -- it will always be able to remember what its year was. The rest of us -- as the years pass -- may grow a bit dim the eye and a few connections may shake loose and if we are asked suddenly -- what year did you get your degree?, we may fumble a bit, searching for the correct date.
But the class of 1976, whose graduation coincides with the bicentennial of the nation, will have a built-in aid to the memory that will never fade or dim. Twenty-five years from, in 2001, when you are asked what your year was at U.T., you'll be able simply to trip it off your tongue -- it will be right there.
I wonder what else will be there -- what will endure of what you have learned at the University? I've been thinking about that question recently, ever since I found an old cardboard box in the attic filled with notebooks from my college years -- that's been nearly 25 years ago now -- the not-so-memorable class of 1952 at Iowa and the years immediately following at Stanford.
As I opened those old pages I was astounded at how legible my writing used to be and at how new most of the material seemed. About all I recognized was my doodles in the margins of the pages -- I still draw rabbits and flowers today in about the same way I did 25 years ago when things got dull.
But the content of those notebooks was strange territory. Consider this note:
"Munsterberg's early work was important, but its value was exaggerated."
Presumably that meant something to me 25 years ago, but today, I must confess that I don't know why Munsterberg's work was important at all -- and I'd have to agree that in my case at least its value was indeed exaggerated.
Here's another note from a course in opinion measurement:
"People who live in the country don't like the color green very much -- people who live in the city do."
Well, it sounds reasonable, but I must admit that particular fact, which I once dutifully recorded and memorized for a final exam, must have leaked out of my cranium somewhere along the way.
I also found this observation from a course in abnormal psychology:
"Willoughby made a test, but he used such a big vocabulary, nobody could understand the questions."
As far as I know, 25 years later -- Mr. Willoughby's test is still untranslated.
Yes, I found that I had forgotten most of what I once knew.
I also found that much of what I once considered important later proved to be of limited value.
In my notes, for example, I found directions on how to program a computer that was the most advance machine of its time. I was certain that this information was of the greatest and most enduring value. That machine, which had been purchased for millions of dollars, was sold within a few years of its installation as scrap. Technological change had passed it by. My notes, so important to me at the time, provided skills that were outmoded soon after graduation. Since then, the computer field has turned over twice more.
We often guess wrong, both as teachers and students, about what is important and what will endure.
But there were some other surprises in those old notes. I began to come across passages which I read with amazement and chagrin. "Why the old goat stole some of my stuff," was my initial reaction. Then I realized that was impossible. What I was reading, you see, was a section of a course in which the ideas had sunk in so deeply that I had come to think of them as my own -- but actually I had picked up those ideas on a lazy, drowsy day in class a quarter of a century ago.
"A good question is half the answer." I used that only last month on a gradute student without realizing that I had swiped it from Prof. Paul Wallin.
"In an interview t is important, always, to distinguish between what is fact and what is opinion."
That gospel according to me, I found actually came in a lecture by Prof. Chick Bush of Stanford.
Most things we learn at college we promptly forget -- but some things we learn so well they become ours -- part of our very selves -- the people we are.
And finally, I looked in vain in those old notes for certain happenings I remember now but that were so unimportant at the time I evidently failed to record them . somehow, these memories became most important of all.
I remember Prof. Calvin Stone, professor of psychology, standing in fornt of the class and saying casually, "Dr. Lashley willed me his brain. You should have seen it. He died when he was over 80 but his brain was as smooth as a baby's."
At the time the remark wasn't important. What weird people teach in the University, I probably thought, willing each other their brains! But later I remembered -- the image persisted of men so dedicated to their tasks, so serious about their studies, that even in the face of death, they wanted to see the work continued. That's the kind of person I wanted to become -- and the image emerged from those University years to guide me.
For the rest of us -- as the years passing
course in opinion measurement:iped it from Prof. Paul Wallin.
Prof. Chick Bush of Stanford.
I also remembered later, though I can find no record of it in my notes, a phrase from Dr. Farnsworth's class: "Through communication, mankind seeks omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence."
That didn't mean much then -- I must have stored it away in my collection of 50-cent words. But later, as invention after invention in the communiction field continued in the 50's and 60's and the 70's -- those words became more and more meaningful. What were we not driven -- as Farnsworth had suggested -- toward omniscience -- trying to build machine memories that would allow us to achieve better and better information that would allow us to achieve better and better information retrieval? Were we not driven toward omnipresence -- putting up satellites so that, before breakfast, we could observe the weather across an entire half of the world? Were we not driven toward omnipotence -- as via television we find
politicians and government officials attempting to sell programs like swine influenza vaccination not to some of the people some of the time but to all of the people all of the time?
Those few words, nearly unheeded, barely noted at the time, later turned out to be an organizing principle that enabled me to understand a little better the world around me.
I also remember Farnsworth's later remark -- that omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence are three of the attributes of the Divinity. But the final attribute -- mercy and goodness -- was absent. Unless mankind added that goal to the others toward which it was striving all would be in vain--only greater and greater peril, and eventual disaster, lay ahead, he thought.
I've tried to remember that thought also in attempting to draw into a School of Communication teachers and students who know that the whole story of communication is not technology, is not creativity, is not abstract research, is not a collection of marketable skills, but is concerned at the heart with people and the way they learn to live together. A central concern of the study of communication is ethics -- the serious consideration of the implications to our fellow human beings of what we communicate and how we communicate.
Yes, many of the things of greatest value in my college years went unnoticed at the time -- only in later years did I realize what I had learned.
What will you remember in 2001 of what you have studies here?
If your experience is like mine, you now have the skills you need to begin -- but you may forget them, or technological advance may make them obsolete. Some of the other things you have learned will be so important you will think of them as your own ideas, and will forget that they were taught to you. Finally, you have learned, I am sure, a few things you are not aware of now -- but later on you will recall them -- and these memories -- may prove to be the most meaningful of all.
Let's meet again and talk about these notions in 2001 -- I might still be around if I'm not in a rest home on the moon or in some place more prosaic like Marble Falls. See you then.
