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 68
Today's Topics:
Administrivia - Message for an unreachable user
Computer Networks - Cancelling electronic mail (4 msgs),
Computers and People - USIA satellite television (2 msgs) &
Electronic Democracy (3 msgs)
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Date: Wed, 31 Oct 84 13:48:05 est
From: ECN.davy@Purdue.ARPA (Dave Curry)
Subject: Famous Bugs Paper
Michael D'Alessandro - I can't reach you by mail because
someone's mailer along the way keeps deleting the
apostrophe from your name. Could you please send
me a different path to you, or perhaps you can
FTP the file from RUTGERS (I don't know the path
to it, but I know it's there somewhere).
Sorry to bother the whole list with this.
--Dave Curry
ecn.davy@purdue
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Date: Sat 27 Oct 84 10:47:33-PDT
From: Tom Dietterich <DIETTERICH@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: Cancelling electronic mail
To: mrc@SU-SCORE.ARPA
An alternative to allowing cancellation of electronic mail would be to
provide the ability to post an addendum to a message. When the
recipient read his mail, he would see the addendums in
most-recent-first order. That way, if you sent an erroneous or
offensive message, you couldn't retract it, but you could soften the
blow by sending a message saying: "Please ignore the following
message. I sent it in haste, and it contains errors." This would be
especially helpful for correcting factual errors. Often, someone
sends me a message containing the time and place of some meeting. I
read the message and immediately get on the phone and rearrange my
schedule. Then I notice that I have another message at the end of my
mail file correcting the first message. [Actually, after making this
mistake twice, I now skim all of my messages first, and then act on
each of them.]
A generalization of this idea would be to permit remote editing of a
message that I have sent. Suppose I send a message and then realize
that it contains an error. I could then send an "edit" message
containing editor commands to correct the original message. When the
recipient displayed the message, the edit commands would be applied to
the original message, and he would see something like:
"Received from ..."
"Edit message received at ..."
The recipient's mail reading program could have a command to display
the unedited message as well.
The underlying principle here is that you can't "take back" any
action--a full "audit trail" would always be available. But, we can
make the medium more forgiving. People make mistakes, after all.
--Tom
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Date: 27 Oct 84 15:12:51 EDT (Sat)
From: Nathaniel Mishkin <mfci!mishkin%UUCP@YALE.ARPA>
Subject: Retrievability of Electronic Mail
Many times you send a message you want to retrieve, you realize that
you want to retrieve it rather soon after having sent it. One simple
and obvious way to satisfy people's desire to have retrievability in
this sort of situation is to not actually send the mail until, say,
the user exits the mail user interface program. This is analogous to
the way some mail UIs don't actually delete messages until you exit.
Presumably you'd offer the user a "send them all now" command,
analogous to the EXPUNGE command for deleted messages. Ideally,
sent-but-undelivered messages should look just like messages you've
received except that the latter have a flag that says "I'm an outgoing
message". OZ, the Yale TOPS-20 mail user interface has part of this
functionality. When you say SAVE-DRAFT (yes, OZ does have some
similarities to MM), the message gets put in your MAIL.TXT file and
gets the DRAFT message flag. All that would need to be changed to
allow for this proposed level of retrievability would be to rename
SAVE-DRAFT to SEND and add a DELIVER command that sends all draft
messages. (Well, you probably want a flag that says "I'm really a
draft, don't send me", but that's just a twiddle.)
-- Nat
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Date: Sat 27 Oct 84 12:40:08-PDT
From: Rich Zellich <ZELLICH@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
Subject: Cancelling Electronic Mail
When thinking about cancelling messages, remember that they may have
multiple recipients, and great confusion could be caused if delivery
to some of them takes place, but delivery to others is aborted due to
the cancel request. I'm, in general, pro-cancellation but it has to
be implemented very carefully.
-Rich
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Date: 27 Oct 84 20:55:26 EDT
From: Louis Steinberg <STEINBERG@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: recalling e-mail
Since it's relevant to the discussion of recalling e-mail, I thought
I'd recount an incident that recently happened to me.
Someone sent a message to one of the mailing lists saying he was
interested in finding a new academic position. One of the other
faculty members in my department is on this mailing list, and saw this
message. Since we are looking for new faculty members, he remailed it
to members of the executive committee of the department, including me.
I used the REPLY command in MM to make my response, expecting that my
response would go to the other recipients of the remailed message,
i.e. the other members of the exec committee. Well, suprise! If you
REPLY to a REMAILed message, the reply goes to the addressees of the
original message. In this case, that was the mailing list. This
particular list is an automatic redistribution list, with no screening
and no digesting, so my comments about hiring this guy, meant for
internal distribution, went to the entire mailing list!
Actually, the folks here at Rutgers and those at Stanford (the
redistribution point) did try to stop it, and may have caught it
before it got to everyone on the list, but it got to a lot of them,
and was most embarassing.
The moral of this story is that it is an awful lot easier with e-mail
to send a message by accident than it is with physical mail, so there
is more reason to allow someon to recall an e-mail message. The other
moral is be careful with REPLY.
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Date: Tue, 30 Oct 84 16:56 EST
From: "James J. Lippard" <Lippard@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA>
Subject: Re: effects of USIA satellite television broadcasting
To: KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA
Your analogy is flawed. Students in a classroom being blared at
through a megaphone have little or no control over what they hear,
television and radio can always be switched off.
------------------------------
Date: 30-Oct-84 16:09 PST
From: Kirk Kelley <KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA>
Subject: Re: effects of USIA satellite television broadcasting
To: "James J. Lippard" <Lippard@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA>
From: {"James J. Lippard" <Lippard@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA>}DDN
Your analogy is flawed. Students in a classroom being blared at
through a megaphone have little or no control over what they hear,
television and radio can always be switched off.
Sure, anyone can also walk away from the one guy with the megaphone.
I dont want to stretch the analogy too far. A little thought, I'm
sure, could produce a better one. The point is, the megaphone, like
satellite TV, is a unique medium for transmitting information. If an
outsider from a foreign culture is the only one who has a megaphone
and all the kids find the megaphone attractive to listen to (like TV)
just because of the status of the medium even though the contents and
presence is destroying the culture, the cultural authorities will do
whatever they can to get rid of that megaphone.
Does anyone deny that one of the main effects of USIA satellite TV
broadcasts would be cultural domination by the U.S. over cultures that
do not have the programming and broadcasting resources to compete?
Just what sort of programming is envisioned for this project?
-- kirk
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Date: 23 Oct 84 0807 PDT
From: Robert Maas <REM@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Electronic proxy republic
To: RALPHW@MIT-XX.ARPA, WYLAND@SRI-KL.ARPA
Date: Thu 18 Oct 84 03:03:07-EDT
From: Ralph W. Hyre Jr. <RALPHW@MIT-XX.ARPA>
Subject: Electronic Democracy proposal (V7 #62)
The proxy system bothers me, since it has the potential give less
service for more money. ...
The proxy system also doesn't seem to be that great of
a change from our current system. Senators and Congressman are
nothing but proxies, in a sense.
I agree, but the present system has some problems: (1) Unless the
electorate is totally unamimous as to who their best representative
is, somebody must lose. Whoever didn't vote for the winner is not
represented until either another election switches to that person's
favorite (thus disenfranchising those who wanted the current
representative) or that person changes hir mind. (2) Anyone who
originally voted for the winner but later changes mind becomes
disenfranchised (no longer represented) until the next election or
longer. (3) Because of devious drawing of boundaries (called
"Gerrymandering"), the amount of harm in classes (1) and (2) is
increased beyond what would be expected by chance. A proxy system
would remedy (1) since even teensy minorities can have their teensy
proxies in the House of Representatives, and would remedy (3) since
boundaries are logical rather than physical and determined by the
voters directly, you can be in any district you want in effect. If
anybody can change hir mind at any time and immediately cause the
weighting of votes in the House to change, (2) would also be remedied.
Thus a proxy system basically makes the current
House-of-Representatives system more fair without changing its basic
character. As for the Senate, I see no easy remedy except maybe a
proxy system within each state for selecting the two senators, where
at any time the two biggest proxy-gatherers are the senators.
I would rather see parts of your proposal implemented on a small
scale, and gradually expanded to include larger groups if people
are happy with the results.
I agree. It's got to be a high-technology area where the
technology/people ratio is high enough that this idea can be
implemented at low enough unit cost to be practical. After it's been
tried out in such an area, the technology can be mass-produced at
lower cost to be practical in other areas.
What should change is that you should be able to write your
congressman for 'free'. After all, you're paying for them to be
able to write you for free.
It takes me an hour or two to draft a letter even with word
processing. That is worth tens of dollars of my time if I could have
been working for pay at the same time. It takes additional time to
purchase stamps and pick up the hardcopy listing and stuff the envelop
and address it and find a mailbox and mail it. It costs only $0.20 to
buy the stamp, which as far as I'm concerned is virtually free by
comparison.
Maybe MCI Mail will try do this for the PR value.
If MCI Mail or any other service-organization would interface my EMACS
word-proccessing either to the postal system or directly to an online
EMAIL system in Congress or in individual congresscritters' local
offices, that would save me a lot of hassle, and I'd welcome it,
whether it were free or cost $1.00 per letter. But if it cost $2.00
per thousand characters, forget it!! This simple Human-Nets note is
already over 3000 characters, and a letter to Congress would probably
be longer. I wouldn't be willing to pay $10 for simply interfacing
one email-letter to the snail-mail system. (But I can see that others
whose time is more valuable would be glad to pay that amount to save
15 minutes of hassle-time.)
Date: Thu 18 Oct 84 11:30:24-PDT
From: WYLAND@SRI-KL.ARPA
Subject: Electronic Democracy by Proxy
David Booth's proposal for electronic democracy by proxy is
interesting. The point that information overload leads to some
form of representative system is important.
I agree. The terminology has changed (one never heard of "information
overload" 200 years ago) but the principle is still valid.
The proposed proxy system seems to me to be a minor variation on the
standard representative system. I think this is good: it is something
that is possible, a social change we could grow into rather than a
fundamental scrap-and-start-over revolution.
Yes, and you said it more eloquently than I did. Let's save the above
quote for when we're trying to talk people into trying the proxy system.
The proxy system has another advantage: it has been tried and is in
successful use in corporations for representation of the shareholders.
But have any automated proxy systems been tried, where a computer
keeps track of things? I think we will be breaking some new ground
even if our method is similar to the corporation system.
Proxy representatives need not be
restricted to particular geographical districts (or states) as they
now are. (Note: here is a secondary problem, i.e. preventing the
"tyranny of the majority" from destroying a local environment
populated by a minority for a minor advantage to the majority.)
Even if the minority can't win anything, they can at least get their
proportional voice in congress if we make sure speaking time is
required to be proportional to proxy count. A teensy minority will get
to speak once in a while briefly to at least bring up points in need
of considering, while a substantial minority would be able to offer
substantial debate as well. Under the current system, unless a
minority can succeed in electing at least one representative or
convincing some existing representative to "be nice to it" by
mentionning the minority's view point on the floor of Congress (fat
chance!), the minority is totally disenfranchised. With the proxy
system it could be guaranteed some (small) voice in Congress to be
used (sparingly) on those particular questions that seem most urgent
to that minority.
There are still some problems, of course. The argument against "mob
rule" is valid: if the system is too quick to act, a popular emotional
surge could lead to bad results: a lynch mob can hang the wrong man.
Yes, we need to experiment with a small system and work out this kind
of bug before expanding to a major body, and we must be willing to
scrap the whole idea if in practice it turns out to be a disaster,
even if we invested years of work in designing and implementing it;
this is a very difficult thing to do.
Now for a *radical* proposal. How about giving our proxy the direct
power to vote our taxes? Specifically, how about assigning part or
all of our individual tax dollars directly to the proxy for assignment
by him to worthy projects?
One problem is people simply passing the money back to themselves in
the form of grants or tax-refunds etc., thus defeating the whole idea
of taxation which is to keep the government running and keep
generally-useful programs funded by equal contributions from everyone
who can afford it. Libertarians might like your proposal more, giving
them the choice of not paying any taxes at all, but I think the
government would collapse if we allowed that option. Perhaps we should
have some mix of required and optional taxes, so that for example I
could pay my optional taxes to NASA but I'd still have to pay my share
of basic governmental expenses. Can somebody flesh out a workable system?
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 25 Oct 84 16:32:40 EDT
From: Brint <abc@BRL-TGR.ARPA>
Subject: Electronic Democracy
I like the idea in today's digest of Members of Congress and U.S.
Senators polling their contituents electronically. The next logical
step is for the MC or Senator to circulate, in newsgroup fashion, a
weekly summary of his/her activities and voting record. Sure, there'd
be a lot of BS initially, but his/her political adversaries wouldn't
let him/her get away with too much. Sunshine is a good thing.
Brint
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Date: Fri, 26 Oct 84 00:37:22 PDT
From: David Booth <booth@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA>
Subject: Electronic Democracy -- Eliminate the president?; Rumours
Re: Eliminate the president? Some decisions can't wait.
Some one or few would have to be given authority over the armed forces
for emergency situations -- but *only* emergencies. This aspect of
the president's role cannot be eliminated.
However, the president currently has far broader power than just
commanding the armed forces in emergencies -- he controls an entire
administration. Supreme court justices are appointed, funds for
programs are controlled, heads of agencies are hired and fired, and
laws are selectively enforced or ignored, all under the president's
direction. There is no need for the president to retain all these
powers under a proxy system.
Re: A proxy system may lead to "a very small number of
excellent decisions, arrived at after a great deal of time."
A hierarchical discussion system would allow rapid discussion, and a
proxy voting system would encourage correct decisions. This would be
far better than wrong decisions, rapidly made under one
administration, which must be undone with either by the next
administration or by the people, at the ballot box.
Re: "Proxies being instantly recallable: all it takes is one
nasty rumour ... and an otherwise good and useful [proxy] can
lose most of their power in a day or two...."
This is similar to the situation political candidates currently face,
but there's a difference: a proxy can regain this power as soon as the
rumour is proved false, but a candidate cannot call another election
if he/she lost because of the rumour.
Furthermore, what if the rumours are true, as they were with Nixon?
We certainly should not be forced to continue with a representative
who no longer holds our confidence.
-- David Booth
{sdcrdcf,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!booth booth@ucla-locus.ARPA
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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