The Rotary Club of Atlanta West End met at Atlanta Technical College for a regular meeting presided over by President Victoria Seals, with President-Elect Chris Hempfling serving as program chair. The featured speaker was Dr. Don Schewe, long time AWER stalwart, former AWER President and for a more than a decade the AWER Treasurer. Don’s a product of the public schools of Nebraska and has had a huge career as a historian, culminating in his selection by President Jimmy Carter himself to be the first President of the highly prestigious Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. His fascinating presentation for about 23 minutes covered thousands of years of the use of words to record history and facts of governments, their regimes and even business transactions. At the Keyway Editors request, Don summarized this exceedingly well-researched millennia of how people and institutions record and communicate about all aspects of life - see below.

The Information Explosion

     Human Beings are the only animals that can transmit information over time and space. They can do this because they developed the ability to read and write. The earliest know form of writing is traced to the Mesopotamian valley around 3000 BCE. Between that time and King Solomon, about 2000 years, the amount of information man had accumulated about doubled. From then on, however, information began to accumulate at a much faster rate. By 1 CE it had doubled again, and 500 years later doubled again. Today scientists estimate that the amount of information we accumulate doubles every ten years.

     Accumulated information, however, is useful only if we can use it—that is, we do something useful with it. Knowing the earth was round and not flat was only of value when someone sailed west far enough to return to where they started—that enable trade to develop. Knowledge (the use of information) develops at a rate similar to the accumulation of information. Historians estimate that knowledge doubles along with information. One indication of this is the growth of encyclopedias. By the 21st century, we are being bombarded with new knowledge at a prodigious rate, and this causes some people to resist the spread of, or the implementation of, this new knowledge. In the Industrial Revolution, Ludites sabotaged the machines they saw as taking away their jobs.

     One example is the changing view of history. In the early 20th century the focus was on “Great White Dead Guys”—in American History it was George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, etc. But the new knowledge (and the new ways of manipulating the multiplying information) allowed Historians to study people beyond the “Great Guys”. By 1980 Black History was an accepted area of study in college, and ten years later Women’s History joined the curriculum. It was no longer possible to depict slavery as a gentle, benign institution, or women as better off in the kitchen, happily raising their children. And some reacted against that, because it made them uncomfortable.

The meeting also included several club updates. Leonard Pope was inducted as a new member! Progress was reported on the peace pole project, with installation anticipated later in March.

The meeting reinforced a core principle aligned with Rotary’s mission: access to information alone is insufficient. The transformation of information into knowledge requires disciplined judgment, thoughtful interpretation, and responsible application. As information continues to expand, the responsibility to use it wisely remains firmly within the human domain.

— KeyWay Reporters: Neil Shorthouse, Chris Hempfling, Jared Evans, and Don Schewe