Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

Youth's Vital and Promising World Sjriwff ill Conunmccmcnt Address M University of Soiitbcrn Cjlijoniu Sdys Problems Jiid Pmls jrc Pjrt of the Priee of ''Monitiiientjl Achiereiiieiits^' A REMARKABLY vital and promising world" has been built by the parents and grandparents of today's youth, Brig. General David Sarnoff, Chairman of the Board of RCA, told the graduating class of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, in commencement exercises on June 12. During the ceremonies, General Sarnoff received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. "The conventional pattern of a commencement address, I am aware, requires the orator to apologize for the sins and failures of his own generation—then to congratulate the graduates on their chance to clean up the mess being handed to them," he said. "This shows proper humility and flatters the youthful audience. "I beg leave to break with the pattern. I cannot in good conscience admit that we have made a mess of things. On the contrary, I believe that your parents and grandparents, which is to say roughly my generation, have built a remarkably vital and promising world. "It is a world that holds plenty of problems and perils, but these are always part of the price of monu- mental achievements. Our failures, and they are many, for the most part spring from our successes. They reflect the growing pains of an extraordinary period in human history. Considering the handicaps under which we worked, perhaps you will agree that we have not done too badly." "The unique and fateful fact about the last fifty years is the dizzy speed with which a multitude of shattering changes have come upon us," he said. "Hardly had mankind gotten over the shock of one tremendous discovery when it was staggered by another and usually bigger one. Small wonder, therefore, that we have been bewildered and a little scared. The terrific accelera- tion of life has subjected us to immense strains, which at times seemed almost intolerable. We are most acutely conscious of this just now in our reactions to atomic energy. Mature Technologically, Adolescent Spiritually "The inability of man as a social and economic creature to keep step with his science—that is the crux of his dilemma today. He is mature technologically while still an adolescent spiritually. Physical distances have shrunk, but the distances between the hearts of man and of nations are wide as ever. This is the primary challenge that awaits you in the world beyond this campus; by this your generation and those that follow will be judged. "Our choice—more exactly, your choice—is between accepting the challenge or allowing yourself to be crushed by it. You can grovel in terror before the mighty forces released by science, even as savage man groveled before lightning. Or you can face those forces boldly and harness them to your purposes, just as electricity has been harnessed for mankind. That choice is what makes this a time for courage and for leadership." Progress in Fifty Years Making what he called a "haphazard inventory of the Twentieth Century," General Sarnoff said that "never before has man's environment been so radically and rapidly modified." "In comparison with 1954, man at the beginning of the present century was deaf, dumb, blind and earth- bound. He could not speak, hear or see beyond the horizon, or navigate through the air. "Since then, radio has extended our sense of hear- ing and carried our voice clear around the globe. Radar has plucked echoes from the moon. Television has projected our sense of sight across continents and soon it will span the oceans as welL Only recently the glorious panoply of full color has been added to this extended vision." Advances in transportation by ground and air, in chemistry, medicine and agricultural techniques, and in the discovery and development of atomic energy, have made of the Twentieth Century a period "when the worlds of the poet and the scientist have intersected, when the boundaries between the visionary and the practical have been blurred," General Sarnoff said. "My point is not that these wonders have transpired during my generation and have become part and parcel of our daily experience," he added. "It is that they have come like an avalanche, in so short a time. To understand the world you inherit, you should consider not only the number of these changes, but their tempo —the unexampled speed with which they came." RADIO AGE 3