December 18, 1968

Mr. Aaron Cohodes

Vice President

Tastructional Dynamica Incorporated
166 East Superior Street

Chicago, Illineis 60611

Dear Mr. Cohodes:

The promptness of my reply may help to suggest how deeply intrigued I was
with your letter of December 13 - if you could see the rest of the pile
it might be an even more impressive witness. This remark is not entirely
tangential, since it reflects the only important reservation that I would
have about participating in the program you suggest.

There are several aspects of the program that I would enjoy discussing with
you in more intimate detail, and hope this letter may set the stage for it.
Is there any possibility that you, or one of your representatives, might be
in the Stanford area during the near future?

Let me take the occasion now for a few remarks. I think you are definitely
onto one of the most important innovations in educational methodology.

There is the limitation that there ought to be at least some visual material
connected with presentations, particulary of scientific subjects, and Ideally
we would be speaking as if we were already in the era of the video record.

I have been following this educational approach with deep interest for some
time, as some of my enclosures will verify. I was also particularly interested
to read very recently of the preposed collaboration between the New York Times
and CBS for some experimental ventures. I would agree that the inclusion of
video-pictorial material is somewhat diversionary from your immediate proposal,
but I also will assume that you are not overlooking the future prospects of
this expansion of your approach.

One of the main points I want to discuss with you would be the scope of the
subject matter that you really want me to discuss. I would find a weekly
discourse on current advances in molecular biology rather difficult to put
over, except to an extremeb} specialized audience, and one that I doubt you
have access to as yet. On the other hand, I have been interested for some
time in communicating with a larger public about much broader issues of
contemporary science, and this is reflected in the weekly column that I write
for the Washington Post, which does receive some small additional syndication.
Mr. Aaron Cohodes December 18, 1968
Instructional Dynamics Incorporated Page 2

I think it would be difficult for me to continue the column and to cooperate
in your enterprise without securing some advantage of combining the efforts.
I do not yet have a clear picture of what this might be, but I would think
we might want to discuss this in some detail. I am sending a dozen and odd
examples of my recent columns to give you an idea of the range of subjects
that I have been discussing.

If I have underestimated the technical level of the audiences that you can in
fact realistically hope to reach, we might well wish to modify this suggestion,
although it occurs to me that this particular instructional technique might be
better suited for a more general discussion of the human, political, and social
impact of new discovery than for an elaboration of their technical content, for
which I think there {s no substitute for the written media of communication.

At any rate, I think we can well leave these matters for more detailed discussion,
to whibh I would look forward.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

P.S. Why don't you send me a eample Gassette and playback unit so I can get
some idea of how this actually works with one of your presently
operating systems.