human-nets@ucbvax.ARPA (11/01/84)
From: Charles McGrew (The Moderator) <Human-Nets-Request@Rutgers>
HUMAN-NETS Digest Wednesday, 31 Oct 1984 Volume 7 : Issue 69
Today's Topics:
Administrivia - Reformatting Digests for UNIXers &
Happy Trails to Electronic Democracy,
Query - Bell Labs and Modems
Computers and People - USIA satellite broadcasting (2 msgs) &
Electronic Democracy,
Computer Networks - Recalling Email (2 msgs)
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Date: Wed, 31 Oct 84 15:52:12 est
From: Douglas Stumberger <des%bostonu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: human-nets reformatting
For those of you on Berkeley UNIX installations, there is a
program available which does the slight modifications to HUMAN-NETS
digest necessary to get it in the correct format for a "mail -f ...".
This allows using the UNIX mail system functionality to maintain your
digest files. You can also use the same program to reformat the
AILIST for similar purposes.
For a copy of the program, net to:
douglas stumberger
csnet: des@bostonu
bitnet: csc10304@bostonu
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Date: Wed, 31 Oct 84 17:30:00 EDT
From: Charles <mcgrew@rutgers>
Subject: Electronic Democracy discussion moves to Poli-Sci
The recent discussion on what we have come to call 'Electronic
Democracy' has been most interesting, but it really belongs on the
Poli-Sci digest (which was originally a spinoff of HN to handle
political issues, after all). I will remail all as-yet unpublished
articles to JoSH Hall, the moderator of Poli-Sci. If you want to get
on the digest list, send mail to poli-sci-request@rutgers, and
submissions for the digest itself to poli-sci@rutgers. I'd like to
thank all the participants of the discussion (so far), and hope to see
you all in the smoke and flame of Poli-Sci!
Charles
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Date: 29 Oct 1984 11:31-EST
Subject: Bell Labs and Modems
From: WTHOMPSON@BBNF.ARPA
While Codex does indeed have modems incorporating Trellis Coding, I
believe they are leasedline modems, rather than dial-ups. Am I
mistooken?
William Thompson
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Date: 29-Oct-84 15:40 PST
From: Kirk Kelley <KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA>
Subject: Re: effects of USIA satellite television broadcasting
To: Kahin@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
The major effect claimed for beaming Voice of "America" style
satellite TV into other countries (especially third world) is that it
will give the U.S. a very powerful means of cultural domination,
engendering "culturocide".
I have not been following the debates in the related international
arenas, but my impression is the third world countries emphatically do
not like having their cultures dominated in this way. Supporters
claim anyone should have a right to broadcast what ever they want.
That seems fair except that most third world countries do not have the
resources to compete with the US TV programming technology. It is not
unlike trying to hold class in a classroom where there is one person
with a megahorn constantly blasting deafening appeals for freedom of
speech and I Love Lucy reruns.
Thus, it would seem third world countries will continue to fight the
allocation of orbital arcs for such satellites. Who knows how
successful they will be?
I'm not sure who really cares if a little of this U.S. government
produced propaganda unavoidably gets beamed to U.S. citizens. We are
already so habituated to our brand name deoderants, drinks, and soap
operas, it wouldn't make any difference. Who in the U.S. would tune
it in, anyway? Of course the major broadcasting corporations may not
see it that way, but who are they to complain?
-- kirk
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Date: Mon, 29 Oct 84 06:34 EST
From: Kahin@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA
Subject: MIT Communications Forum
To: Telecom@USC-ECLC.ARPA
MIT COMMUNICATIONS FORUM: November 29, 1984 4-6 p.m. Room 37-252
"As satellite communications becomes increasingly effective and
commonplace, the United States Information Agency has moved boldly to
use the technology in its public diplomacy program. It has already
established its own private television network and has recently funded
a major feasibility study of direct satellite broadcasting for the
Voice of America.
"Although international shortwave radio broadcasting is an accepted
medium of public diplomacy, satellite broadcasting and television are
as controversial as they are powerful. What are the long-range
opportunities for using satellites and television? How will they
affect or be affected by international attitudes towards information
and communication? What will be the effect on Intelsat and on the
allocation of the orbital arc? How will it change the domestic
presence of the USIA, including the prohibition against domestic
distribution of Agency productions?
Dan Mica, Chairman, House Subcommittee on International Operations;
Michael Schneider, USIA; Hewson Ryan, Director, Murrow Center for
Public Diplomacy, The Fletcher School
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Date: 29 Oct 84 13:48:22 PST (Mon)
To: Dehn@mit-multics
Subject: Re: electronic democracy???
From: Martin D. Katz <katz@uci-750a>
the whole POINT of a tax system is to spend your money on things
that you don't want it spent on.
I agree with you, but would word it differently: I thought that the
whole point of a tax system is to charge everybody to support projects
for the common good. This includes many things which one might
support directly, but equalizes the contributions and reduces the
overall amount of decision making effort.
To expand on the issue: It is my belief that "republican" systems of
government (not party politics) is based on this reduction of effort.
It turns out that concentration of decision making effort reduces the
total amount of decision making and the total communication necessary.
Some quantitative political models indicate that the size of a
representative body should be about P^(2/3) for an adult population of
P in order to minimize the communication problems in government.
With electronic communication, it becomes possible for each of us to
have more input because the communication costs are reduced. The
problem is that the communication costs for debate increase with the
square of the number of representatives. It might be possible to
double the size of the house of Representatives, but a much larger
body would find it very difficult to communicate internally.
Other possibilities, such as questionaires are practical. If there
are issues which each of us has an opinion on, then we can each notify
our representatives of our views. The problem is cost: Assuming that
it takes only one hour a week for me to peruse the important news, an
additional hour to peruse the important governmental questions, and a
quarter hour to vote, this is a total of a quarter billion hours each
week for 100 million people to run the country. On the other hand,
with our representative system, the federal government policy level
(senate, house, the immediate staffs of senators and representatives,
and assistant secretaries and up in executive branch) is only
2000-3000 people, for a total of less than 125000 hours, a savings of
a factor of 2000 over direct democracy.
In California we have 20 or 30 ballot measures put before the public
each year. For the most part, these are poorly drafted, and
complicated. Many of them are placed on the ballot by petition and
opposed by the state legislature. I oppose those who want to
eliminate the initiatives, but feel that there has to be a better way.
The problem is that most voters have too little time and training to
properly study these measures before voting. The result is private
interests spending tens of millions of dollars in advertising to
coerce the public into voting one way or the other. I don't see much
success in expanding this system.
I aggree that a proxy system would give the individual more clout, but
relative to the automatically assigned proxies, this clout is not
significant. In fact, you probably have about 5000 times as much
clout now (if you consistently write your representatives) as you
would with a proxy system.
As to the individual assigning the fraction of his (or her) tax
dollars to go to each program, this could become like the California
propositions. Can you imagine DoD running television ads: "Vote for a
Strong US -- put all of your tax money into defense." We would wind
up spending Billions on advertising to try to convince the public that
various services require funding. On top of that, just think of the
effort to decide where to put the money ... It's hard enough to fill
out our taxes now, any serious attempt at deciding how much to pay for
each of dozens of programs would take weeks.
One final point (I have been too long winded already): paying taxes to
an organization which then doles them out to programs is exactly what
we are doing now, except that we can't individually decide on the
organization. In practice proxy system would probably be very similar
to this scheme.
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Date: Sat, 27 Oct 84 12:53:27 edt
From: ulysses!watmath!looking!brad@Berkeley
Subject: Recalling EMAIL is good.
On one of the mail systems at waterloo, they allow the recall of
electronic mail. And it's very, very useful. I wish it could be
extended to net mail as well, and many people wish it on unix mail. I
have used it for many purposes including saving my ass because of a
silly mail message, and saving the other person the trouble of reading
an out of date mail message.
After all what's bette - two messages, one that is in error and one
that makes a correction, or one correct message? Most people DON'T
read all their mail first and then reply, so it's quite often that the
recipient acts on the first message before seing the correction?
The whole point is you are drawing a (somewhat) arbitrary line when
the person hits that final CR. None of you would advocate that once I
type "mail human-nets" and am put in the editor that I MUST send a
message to human nets. You'll all agree that I should be able to
break out and not send a message, or go up and correct a previous
line. Why can't I do the same thing, if it's possible, after the
message is "sent." I know that it does add a slight bit of luck, but
it's really worth it. Can anbody really care that a message to them
got cancelled if they know the sender wanted to correct it? Do you
have a "right" to a message just because somebody wanted to send it to
you once?
Brad Templeton
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Date: Tue, 30 Oct 84 00:34:11 PST
From: Matthew J Weinstein <matt@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA>
To: human-nets@rutgers
Subject: Re: cancelling electronic mail
Mail systems generally forward electronic letters to their recipients
immediately after they are sent. As has been pointed out, this
sometimes leads to problems; permitting cancellation of mail has been
suggested as a solution.
A solution that does not involve cancellation of mail that has been
delivered, nor is enroute, comes to mind; the solution would be to
more closely model existing `real' mail services.
Typically, `real' mail is only picked up at certain times of the day,
at specific intervals. In a similar fashion, the electronic mailer
could be changed to forward mail only at certain times, or after a
certain interval had elapsed (i.e. 1/2 hour, excluding lunch
breaks...). Before that time, the mail would be the sender's
property, as if it were sitting on his `desk'. After that time,
tracking down the letter would be difficult or impossible (as it is
now).
Of course, certain letters could be marked `Urgent', and these would
be dispatched immediately. Other letters could be marked with
specific delivery times (relative or absolute).
I believe this technique is used in voice-mail systems, but it seems
to have been overlooked in many conventional mail systems.
- Matt
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UUCP: {ucbvax,ihnp4,randvax,trwrb!trwspp,ism780}!ucla-cs!matt
ARPA: matt@ucla-locus
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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