View source for The fundamental problem of documentation

<div class="intro">From "Monde", 6.9</div>
For each science, for each order of human activity, it is important to define its fundamental problem, a state surely far from reach, but able to suggest how to direct the specific researches in a general direction.

The fundamental problem of scientific knowledge: to know so well reality, its beings, its phenomena and its laws, that it would be possible to take apart and put back together everthing that exists, to recombine it in different ways.

The fundamental problem of technique: that for a single man the press of a button would be enough to put in production all the factories in the world, perfectly snchronized with each other, to produce everything that is necessary for all humanity.

The fundamental problem of Society: freedom generates conflicts. In the final state, that there wouldn't be the need to resort to others. Everyone could obtain everything that one would want resorting to things alone, exempting humans from the task. Hence the machine would become the liberator of everybody, its operation performed by one, and things being arranged conveniently for that one alone. 

And, finally the fundamental problem of documentation (technique and ordering). That man wouldn't have anymore need for documentation if it would have become an omniscient being, as God itself. At a less final degree, that it would have been created an instrument working from afar, which would combine radio, x-rays, cinema and microphotography. All the things in the universe, and all the ones of man would be recorded from a distance in the moment they would be produced. This way it would be formed the moving image of the world, its memory, its genuine double. Everyone at a distance could read of it a part which, enlarged and limited to the desired subject, would be projected on the individual screen. Thereby, everyone in his chair could contemplate the creation, as a whole or in parts of it.