Information in national planning—a developing role

It is appropriate in this setting to remember the story of the Scottish Minister chastising his flock for their multitudinous sins, and threatening them with hell‐fire and damnation on the Day of Judgement. ‘Ye'll cry out then to the Almighty “Lord, Lord, we didna ken!” and the Lord in his Infinite Mercy will look down on ye and say “Aye well, ye ken the noo!”’ Lack of information can have serious consequences. Ignorance of the law is no defence in court. And a recent series of advertisements for The Times offered graphic examples of the consequences of not being better informed. Everyone agrees that being better informed is a good thing, everyone wants information but not everyone is prepared for significant resources to be spent on it. But no advances can be made except on a basis of a considerable body of information. All actions are based on information. The experienced person is calling on his own mental information store a million times a day. It is interesting to speculate to what extent he selectively recalls information, to what extent one part of his brain acts as ‘information intermediary’, filtering information and rejecting ‘noise’, an aspect of information work arousing considerable interest today.