Editorial [PGEWS and future publishing]

Summary form only given. The Professional Group on Engineering Writing and Speech recently celebrated its fifth birthday in distinguished company, as Dr. Alfred Goldsmith lunched with members of the PGEWS Administrative Committee. Among Dr. Goldsmith´s memorable remarks (he is a dean of deipnosophy and prefect of punsters) was the observation that the entire Institute of Radio Engineers is, after all, a professional group on engineering writing and speech, and that PGEWS serves as a focus for these activities. No IRE member can be unmindful of the huge publishing venture that the IRE represents. The PROCEEDINGS, TRANSACTIONS, section magazines, PG newsletters, and conference records of the IRE contribute mightily to the expanding technical literature discussed in our lead paper. The number of pages published annually by the IRE is said to have increased 10 times in about as many years. Perhaps there is 10 times as much to be said as there was 10 years ago; nevertheless, man does not read 10 times as fast as he did then, nor does he have 10 times as many hours in which to read. His problem is simply 10 times as great, and cries for quick remedy. The problem belongs to PGEWS, an organization of writers, and it belongs to the IRE, a much larger confraternity of both writers and readers. If we can´t find a solution soon, some higher authority may impose an agricultural-type remedy, where writers are paid according to the number of papers they do not publish. The analogy between a warehouse filled with unpublished manuscripts and a silo filled with unused grain is replete with poetic possibility.