Belt #2

Man recently has begun to communicate with another world, a

world with a very ancient and an extraordinarily organized civilization,

quite different from the civilization that he is accustomed to.  The

customs , strategies, and basic principles of the society are, for the

   largely
most part,/unknown.  This civilization is a very ancient one, probably


                                  -/"7

one to three billion years old. It'\a highly organized,icivilization.

Jl&ei~re.~~&&Iy complex;. Every individual uses essentially
/.z --.-

the same language.  Man now understands this language; he has found libraries

which contain a truly vast amount of information, and has begun, but only

barely,  to translate the text.  Millions -of temnts


                                        construction

which contain thee precise instructions for the SX~~IXX~~~SKSS~&R

are available

of very

complicated and remarkably ingeneous microscopic machines which w re-

quired to build a wide variety of materials which are used by each individual.

Each text is rewritten in a slightly different form by a scribe and the new

text then is @S&en by robots who follow each instruction blindly ;and with

the aid of ancillary machinery fabricate machines which are needed to

f&r&ate the things that are needed by every individual.  In short, the

                 R         e-r-
texts describe a ch'mistry and +Aeassociated industrial technology which
      P

is quite different and far more advanced than that of man's.


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   Man now understands the language of the civilization, I s written

                                                                           < /
quite elementary messages in the form that robots understand, and 2

such texts has connnunicated directly with the robots,- F he

robots read and faithfully carry out the instructions.

-,  an has obtained many millions of texts from this civili-

zation but, thus far, has translated only a handful of them.      under-

stands and can use some of the machinery of the civilizations.  He has

not yet had time to inventory the immense libraries at his disposal, much

less translate the tex 4  He understands the construction of only a few

machines but has

hundreds of kinds of machines and can use+ to some

extent, many of the machines.  For example, man can use a machine which

rewrite the texts in the form that the robots understand.  The major

problem is sorting out the machinery, the texts, and, of course, learning

how to use the machines. However, man is rapidly learning how to write

texts with the relatively primitive tools which are at his disposal. He

probably will be able to write meaningful texts within five years. It

probably will be much easier to do this than to separate one text from

                                                .                 . . . .
anotherYiees w&c5 wc. 11~ L .


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--3
   reas 's, 't is difficult to separate one text from another in

the libraries that are available- the instructions for tiillions of
              t

machines may be encoded on a single tape.  Therefore,the problem of
                                --

separating instructions for one machine or the other seems extremely

difficult.