Historical perspectives on information science

There is a general attitude in science and particularly computer science, that if something is more than five year old, then we have nothing to learn from it. This paper seeks first to destroy the basis of this myth with reference to areas of current research which are still striving to live up to visions set many years ago. Secondly to look at an area of research, Knowledge Discovery in Databases and demonstrate that it to has a great deal to learn from the distant past, which has been all but overlooked.