human-nets@ucbvax.ARPA (04/03/85)
From: Charles McGrew (The Moderator) <Human-Nets-Request@Rutgers> HUMAN-NETS Digest Tuesday, 2 Apr 1985 Volume 8 : Issue 13 Today's Topics: Response to Query - Work Environments, Computers and People - Digital Utility Centers, Computer Networks - World Ear Project, Information - Seminars (2 msgs) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 2 Apr 85 09:17 EST From: Damouth.Wbst@XEROX.ARPA Subject: Re: HUMAN-NETS Digest V8 #12 Re: Jon McCombie's comment: There are some who actually *prefer* to be in a bull-pen environment, though in my experience they are a rather small minority. I would be interested in hearing the reasons of someone who so prefers. If there are high-productivity programmers who actually *prefer* a bull-pen, I too would like to hear from them. I have trouble believing such people exist. /Dave ------------------------------ Date: Wed 20 Mar 85 08:34:59-EST From: Wayne McGuire <MDC.WAYNE%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA> Subject: Digital Utility Centers To: info-micro@BRL-VGR.ARPA, videotech@SRI-CSL.ARPA It's become apparent in recent weeks that the bottom has fallen out of the home computer market. Whether the collapse in demand for home computers will equal in severity the videogame bust of a few years ago is still an open question, but that possibility must be taken into account. A column by Fred D'Ignazio in the April Compute! suggests what is required before home computers become as common as the telephone: namely, the massive and seamless integration of a number of technologies--videodiscs, optical fibers, expert systems, portable laptop computers, speech recognition, videotex, the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), integrated software, artificial intelligence, satellite communications, speech synthesis, natural language understanding, television, telephony, etc. D'Ignazio argues that as powerful as the new generation of micros appears compared to what was available a few years ago, microcomputer technology, and its Worldnet environment, will have to improve by many orders of magnitude before micros become an appliance for the masses. He may have a point: From Compute!, April 1985, pp. 138-140: Experts predict that a real home computer will not appear until computers are integrated into all aspects of people's lives, including banking, shopping, working, communicating, and entertainment. A real home computer will not sit alone on a desktop and look like a typewriter plugged into a TV set. Instead, it will be a hybrid machine--part TV, part telephone, part videocassette recorder, and part stereo system. It will be the brains of a general-purpose digital utility center that a family operates to hear music, watch movies and TV, make phone calls, control household appliances, and pay bills. The home computer of the present is made up of awkward, ill-fitted, and confusing components. The day its components fuse together into a single digital utility center that is sold at discount supermarkets, it will truly become a mass-market device. The digital utility center will come in a single box and plug into the wall with a single cord. The center's audio, video, and computer software will be uniform and standardized (in some kind of optical or magnetic format), and will play everything--from educational games to Bruce Springsteen to the latest Burt Reynolds movie. All the recordings will be digital and capable of being stored on a single, high-density storage device. All programming will be in English and will consist of making simple choices from a menu of selections that appears on a screen and are read to the user aloud by the center's synthesized voice. Input will be from a keyboard, light pen, mouse, microphone, or touch screen, depending on the individual's preference. No technical knowledge whatsoever will be needed to operate the center. And the center will come with one- to five-year warranties, full service contracts, and modular, replaceable parts. When the digital utility center arrives, the home computer will really be a mass-market appliance. But when computers have become digital utility centers, they will no longer be computers. To paraphrase Joseph Weizenbaum, a digital utility center to a computer is the same as a vacuum cleaner to an electric motor. Before we see consumers going wild over digital utility centers, a lot of separate developments have to take place. Audio, video, communications, and computer hardware must evolve much further and become more integrated, digital, compatible and inexpensive. Software for the separate devices has to be integrated under a single multimedia operating system and has to adopt a standardized storage and data interchange format. In addition, the software must have a friendly, human-like mouthpiece that deals with us in our natural, spoken language and is not only user-friendly but also user-forgiving. The software will have to fill in the gaps in people's commands, correct their typos and misspellings, not let them make any serious mistakes, hold their hand as they work their way through a task, and anticipate what they will want to do next. Most important of all, a mass-market home computer will require a reliable, universal communications network that links the digital utility center into very-high-speed satellite channels that support two-way instantaneous transmission of voices, music, video images, computer-generated pictures, text, and numerical data. This network, too, must be standardized, instantly available at the push of a CALL button on the digital utility center, and invisible to the user. Only when such a network is in place will the digital utility center become popular with a majority of consumers. Only then will all the pie-in-the-sky promises of computer enthusiasts become possible. Such a network will make it possible to do home banking, telecommuting, shopping at home, and attending courses and classes at home. People will be able to purchase all the new records, movies, computer software, and books over the network and have them downloaded into into their local mass-storage device or into a portable computer that they can detach from the main unit and carry with them when they travel. The lesson in all this is that our vision of the home computer has been too limited, and that's why we keep having false starts. Our vision has been limited by the fact that we are still too close to the computer's birth; we are still too familiar with the computer's early stages and functions to see what it may ultimately become. We are only now beginning to move beyond the image of the computer as a computing engine that juggles numbers and processes paychecks. But we must go much further. We must see the computer as only a part of the digital revolution of all human media--voice, music, art, graphics, film, literature, and so on. As all science, art, technology, and communications are digitized, the computer assumes a central role as a translator among the media, and as a terminal linking human beings to the media and to each other. The computer should enable the average person to enter information in any medium (pictures, voice, text, whatever) and instantly translate it (at the discretion of the person) into any other medium--or into several different media. It should then enable the person to send the package to any other person. Likewise, anyone who uses a computer should have instant access to all media in any format they wish. This sounds extremely abstract, so picture the home computer of the future as the United Nations Building. It will have two major functions: translator and terminal. It will house all the disparate streams of digitized information representing all the different media, and it will translate them back and forth at the needs and whims of the user. And it will be plugged into the outside world (of cultures, peoples, nations, and institutions) and capable of vital two-way communication with that world in any language that is appropriate. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Mar 85 23:05 +0100 From: Richard_Friedman_PSR%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA Subject: World Ear Project from KPFA-FM in Berkeley Ca. (Text 96800) 85-03-20 20:53 Richard Friedman PSR (several receivers) Lines: 45 Subject: World Ear Project - An Invitation to All. ------------------------------------------------------------ This is an open invitation to all COM participants around the world to also participate in the World Ear Project, currently being organized by the Berkeley (California) non-commercial VHF radio station KPFA . The goal is to produce a series of radio programs (monthly for now) using ambient sound material recorded by people around the world and sent to KPFA. These programs are currently being aired on KPFA (program #2 is March 25) and will be distributed later to other radio stations in the US and, hopefully, around the world. With the recent advances in tape recorder technology, very hight quality recordings (in stereo) can now be made by the general public on cassette recorders costing $200 to $400. Ten years ago, when I started the Project (it lasted only a few months then) this quality was available only at the high end of the portable tape recorder market, for more than $1000. We at KPFA have now revitalized the World Ear Project after noting that there was already a growing number of recording enthusiasts trading tapes of sounds from exotic (and not so exotic) places. What better way to reach a world-wide audience than thru COM! So here we are inviting anyone to participate who has one of these high quality cassette or reel-to-reel stereo portable recorders., to go out into the field (city streets, open places, buildings, etc.) and make extended recordings of the "sonic landscape", send them to us, and they will become part of our programs. Send tapes to World Ear Project Music Dept. KPFA-FM Berkeley, CA USA 94704 Due to the meagre budget we have to work with, we cannot return the recordings, so make a copy for yourself and send us the originals. Include written information about the landscape recorded and about the recording process itself. We will let you know if it gets included in a broadcast and when. We'll also send you a World Ear Poster, currently being printed. For more information, send me COM mail. In or next program, on March 25, we will be broadcasting the sounds of the streets of Tunis, a sunrise near Darwin, Australia, frogs and crickets at Harbin Hot Springs, in Northern California, the sounds of a hospital in Los ANgeles, etc etc. (Text 96800)------------------------------ (1 comment) ------------------------------ Date: 28 March 1985 02:32-EST From: Steven A. Swernofsky <SASW @ MIT-MC> Subject: [JOHN: Fredkin Seminar] MSG: *MSG 3856 Date: 03/27/85 17:23:43 From: JOHN at MIT-XX Re: Fredkin Seminar Date: Wed 27 Mar 85 17:27:12-EST From: John J. Doherty <JOHN@MIT-XX.ARPA> Subject: Fredkin Seminar To: bboard@MIT-MC.ARPA cc: john@MIT-XX.ARPA SEMINAR DATE: April 1, 1985 TIME: Refreshments 1:50 P.M. Seminar 2:00 P.M. PLACE: NE43-512A COMPUTER COMMUNITIES SEMINAR SERIES COMPUTATION AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS Prof. Edward Fredkin M.I.T. Chairman: Fredkin Enterprises, S.A. ABSTRACT The social organization of a country can have a great effect on the possible benefits that can be derived from modern computer technology. A case in point is the dilemma faced by the Soviet Union. They cannot move into the modern computer age while maintaining their current rigid controls on the flow of information within the USSR. This dilemma is made especially clear when one considers the consequences of millions of personal computers distributed throughout the Soviet Union. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Mar 85 21:43:57 pst From: allegra!princeton!down!daemon@Berkeley PROGRAM FOR MEETING OF SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY University of Toronto, Wednesday May 15 - Saturday May 18, 1985 For copy of symposium abstracts and more information about the program [note that there may still be room for some discussants or speakers], the usenet address for the Program Chairman, Stevan Harnad, is: bellcore!princeton!mind!srh or write to: Stevan Harnad, Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 20 Nassau Street, Suite 240, Princeton NJ 08540 For information about local arrangements, write to: David Olson, McLuhan Center, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA For information about the Society and attendance, write to: Owen Flanagan, Secretary/Treasurer, Society for Philosophy & Psychology, Philosophy Department, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02181 Program follows [participant lists are in several cases only partial; other contributors will also be on the program]: Workshop (2 full sessions) Ia & Ib. Artificial Intelligence Versus Neural Modeling in Psychological Theory Participants include: P. & P. Churchland, P.C. Dodwell, J. Feldman, A. Goldman, S. Grossberg, S.J. Hanson, A. Newell, A. Pellionisz, R. Schank. Symposia (10) II. Category Formation Participants include: S. Harnad, R. Jackendoff, N. Macmillan, C. Mervis, R. Millikan, R. Schank. III. Unconscious Processing Participants include: T. Carr, A. Marcel, P. Merikle. IV. Memory and Consciousness Participants include: K. Bowers, M. Moscovitch, D. Schacter, A. Marcel, R. Lockhart, E. Tulving. V. New Directions in Evolutionary Theory Participants include: A. Rosenberg, M. Ruse, E. Sober. VI. Paradoxical Neurological Syndromes Participants include: M. Gazzaniga, A. Kertesz, A. Marcel. VII. The Empirical Status of Psychoanalytic Theory Participants include: M. Eagle, E. Erwin, A. Grunbaum, J. Masling, B. von Eckardt. VIII. The Scientific Status of Parapsychological Research Participants include: J. Alcock, C. Honorton, R.L. Morris, M. Truzzi. IX. The Reality of the "G" (General) Factor in the Measurement and Modeling of Intelligence Participants include: A. Jensen, W. Rozeboom. X. The Ascription of Knowledge States to Children: Seeing, Believing and Knowing Participants include: D. Olson & J. Astington, J. Perner & H. Wimmer, M. Taylor & J. Flavell, F. Dretske, S. Kuczaj. XI. Psychology, Pictures and Drawing Participants include: J. Caron-Prague, S. Dennis, J. Kennedy, D. Pariser, S. Wilcox, J. Willats, S. Brison Contributed Paper Sessions (4): XII. Perception and Cognition XIII. Induction and Information XIV. Evolution of Cognitive and Social Structures XV. Inferences About the Mind ------------------------------ End of HUMAN-NETS Digest ************************