Human-Nets-Request%rutgers@brl-bmd.UUCP (08/12/83)
HUMAN-NETS Digest Thursday, 11 Aug 1983 Volume 6 : Issue 45
Today's Topics:
Query - New Law: 80 Character Limit for Company Names?,
Proposal - Query List on InterNet,
Computers and People - ICONS and Intelligent Systems &
The Worth of Technology (3 msgs)
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Date: 9 Aug 1983 14:29:11-EDT
From: csin!cjh@CCA-UNIX
Subject: system limits & people
I don't recall seeing anything about this previously, which
surprises me (my memory may just be off).
I've finally gotten as far as last April in journals in my in-box
and discovered therein the April 1983 ASIS Bulletin. The editorial of
this issue says
As of 1 July, designers of corporate names will have to
yield to the fact that most terminal display screens and the
software that drives them work in 80-character lines.
Georgia's General Assembly passed legislation this spring that
limits the length of organization titles to 80 characters,
including spaces and punctuation.
and flames about this at some length, in such terms as
Funny though it is, what makes the vote in the Georgia
legislature frightening is that an institution intended to
represent human needs has subordinated them to the
requirements of machines.
Is anyone in a position to verify this? It sounds like a good story on
the order of the Indiana legislature voting to set pi equal to 3, with
potentially about the same amount of truth. If true it's appalling,
but. . . .
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Date: 9 August 1983 15:05 edt
From: Schauble.HIS_Guest at MIT-MULTICS
Subject: Finding your way in the InterNet
The WorldNet assumes a network containing a very large number of
people. The Internet we have now is a good approximation and presents
many of the same problems.
For instance, I know there are people on this network that have
information I need. How do I find them?
As an experiment, I propose the creation of a new mailing list,
proposed title "Calling channel", to be used for queries. This should
be a moderated list so that someone can look at the queries and bounce
those that can reasonably be answered in a good library. This is not a
lazy man's way to find information, it's a way at information that is
too current to have found its way into the libraries.
As an example of the kind of queries I think appropriate
"I am working on the application of <technique> to <problem>.
Is anyone know if <strange hack> has been used before?"
"I need to talk to someone has knows about <research area> to
find out if <problem> has a known solution."
This will have to be a moderated list to prevent it from sinking
under trivial questions. Anyone with mailing list capability care
to try the experiment?
If so, the question I have that started this is:
"Is there a Japanese language newspaper published in the San
Francisco area? If so, I need mail subscription information." Anyone
who know, please mail to me.
Thanks,
Paul
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Date: Mon 8 Aug 83 11:36:20-PDT
From: Ken Laws <Laws@SRI-AI.ARPA>
Subject: Intelligent Systems
I appreciate Mike Williams' well-reasoned response to my "icon"
message, but I disagree with some of his views. In particular:
Opacity -- Low-level command drivers are, by definition, very
clear. The user can, and must, see what is happening
step-by-step. Intelligent systems do try to hide this level
of detail from the user, but this does not necessarily make
them opaque. Existing systems generally have very simple
control structures that manipulate user-accessible knowledge
bases. Future systems will have more complex control structures,
but will also have better explanation and tutorial capabilities.
Programability -- As long as expert systems are written in computer
code, it will be possible to insert new operators or new operator
sequences to accomplish new tasks. The difficulty in specifying
such operators depends on the implementation language and internal
structure. A good expert system has a structure that parallels
its application domain; the same is true of a user-friendly
interface. Adding new routines to an intelligent system should not
be harder than adding them to an iconic interface.
Negotiation -- There is no reason why intelligent systems cannot
negotiate a task specification. There is current research into
both negotiation with the user and negotiation with internal
routines as part of the control structure.
I stand by my original contention that iconic interfaces are a
temporary step on the way to more automated systems. Any interface is
concerned with I/O functions. I am glad that someone is working on
such things, and intelligent systems will no doubt find it easier to
drive well-structured low-level systems than to deal with unfriendly
interfaces. My own interest, though, is in what can be done with
information inside the computer -- analysis, hypothesis formation,
problem solving, learning, belief maintenance, etc.
One final point. Mike stated that
In some sense the smart machine paradigm is a excuse for
infinite research and a ready account for any problems
encountered with systems build under its umbrella. The
standard senario, the system fails in some pretty awful
ways, the builders say, "Aha, we need to make it smarter."
I do not see that this is any different from saying that if the user
can't accomplish his goals, "Aha, we need to make it more friendly."
-- Ken Laws
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Date: Mon 8 Aug 83 15:55:52-PDT
From: WYLAND@SRI-KL.ARPA
Subject: Impact of the computer on our culture
Date: 6 Aug 83 6:24 EDT
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>
RE: Intellegence allows us to escape the death of the
sun.
Date: 5 Aug 83 23:59:58-PDT
From: Robert P. Cunningham<cunningh@Nosc>
RE: Culture must grow in maturity to match the growth
in the power of its machines.
I think that these two viewpoints are valid but miss the
importance and direction of the contribution of the computer
(assuming that the computer is one of the implied subjects of
these comments). The computer is not simply another machine: it
will change our cultures as profoundly as the invention of
phonetic writing and the printing press. This is because it
provides a radical change/improvement in the capabilities of
public, cultural memory.
The essence of the computer is electronic memory. It is what
makes a computer different from an electronic calculator, an
automatic machine (i.e., washing machine, etc.), or a telephone
exchange. Our computer networks (Aha, self reference!) are
different from telephone/telegraph/mail/newspaper systems because
of the capability to store and manipulate messages: to select and
abstract the information. A human may be doing the selecting and
abstracting, but he/she is using the computer as the tool to do
it.
The is changing human culture by changing the characteristics of
its cultural memory. The computer, like paper, provides long
term, public (cultural) memory. This memory is different in that
the information it contains can be accessed and manipulated at
speeds approximately 100,000 faster than the human/paper
combination. Culture (from an information processing point of
view) is based on the existance of cultural memory, including the
rules for understanding and manipulating the information it
contains. Increasing the speed of cultural memory increases the
amount that can be absorbed and understood in the lifetime of the
members of the culture, potentially by the same amount. THIS is
why the computer is so important! If this analysis is valid,
human culture is in the process of being radically transformed
toward a much more aware, knowledgeable, subtle, and mature
organism.
The computer should be a truly radical source of cultural
transformation. The invention of writing and the printing press
are examples of inventions which radically changed cultures for
centuries after their introduction. Writing made the cultural
memory permanent, reliable, and impartial, replacing the oral
tradition. The printing press provided a major increase in the
ability of the culture to process information in the cultural
memory: many more people had simultaneous access to the contents
of the cultural memory. The computer should provide a major
increase in the ability of the culture to both absorb and process
cultural information: more information can be absorbed per unit
time, and more extensive analyses can be performed per unit time.
If the analogy holds, the computer should have a major cultural
impact.
It is interesting to note that many people have a fear of the
computer as the instrument of an Orwellian, 1984 world. This is
exactly wrong because the usefulness of computers goes up in
proportion to their numbers, not their size. Individual people
have individual problems regardless of the context, working for
themselves or for an organization. If these problems can be
solved on a computer, it doesn't matter whether it is a big,
central, timeshared machine or a personal computer if there are
no other considerations. The personal computer (i.e. the other
end of the spectrum from the central timeshared computer) is the
long term choice because:
* You do not have the problems of timesharing:
- expensive phone lines that go down
- crashes
- poor response time at heavy loading (i.e., when
everyone else wants to work too)
- improvements (i.e., your program doesn't work now)
- being subject to a group which has direct authority
over your "computer" but indirect responsibility to you
* There will be little speed advantage to the "big" machine
* There will be little, if any, cost advantage to the "big"
machine. The cost of a computer with useable, respectable
performance and disk space is approaching commodity levels.
* Your files and programs will be truly secure
* Your computer will be custom tailored by you, for you: you
are in control of your computing environment
The 1984 style central computer will give way to individual,
personal machines, as the railroad gave way to the car and the
truck: the individual, personal machine can be most readily
adapted to the unique local requirements of the user's local
problem. Previous major innovations like the invention of
writing and the printing press have expanded the culture and
increased the importance of the individual, because more
individuals could bring their intellegence to bear on cultural
problems. The computer should continue this trend. The fear of
the big computer has some specific, short term validity: credit
checking and fail-safe horror stories are real. They are the
product of the first, big, central computer systems when
computers cost a lot and were few in number.
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Date: Tue 9 Aug 83 13:02:06-PDT
From: Rene Bach <BACH@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
Subject: The influence of technology to our well being
I am shocked by all the answers to that question saying that
technology has made us(?) and life better. I agree that for a very
small proportion of humans on this planet, things are going better
than they used to be. But this is not true for most of the rest of
humanity : the progress in medicine has generated overpopulations in
most third world countries with the effect that millions are dying
from hunger : didn't technology help actually reduce their standard of
living ?
What about weaponry and the nuclear arsenal ?
What about the huge crime problem in this country, doesn't technology
advancements play an important role here too ?
What about the poor people in this country ? Technology is certainly
not helping them out of their situations! Those people have still to
fight to get their daily bread.
I agree that technology has helped "me" live a better life, but I am
certainly convinced that there are a lot of drawbacks and very serious
negative side effects for most of the others and even for myself : I
would certainly not want to live in Los Angeles, you can't even breath
down there !
But I am also convinced that humanity is not better than 2000 years
ago. I think that J.C. (would he be reborn today) would still have
the same commandments to give us. Man is still the same old animal,
except that He got better at disguising himself.
Rene (Bach@sumex)
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Date: 10 Aug 83 17:02-EST (Wed)
From: Steven Gutfreund <gutfreund%umass-cs@UDel-Relay>
Subject: Technology warps World view
On the Op-Ed page of the NYT yesterday there was a letter by a women
giving concrete evidence that technology does affect our world views.
She was trying to explain something to her bright seven year old son,
when she realized that he did not understand because he did not
know what clockwise motion was. He had only seen digital watches.
Rotary motion is not often found in nature. If the trend toward
digital movements, non-spinning disks (scanned by a laser in a
crt-like pattern) etc. continues and we completely abandoned rotary
motion, I wonder what would happen to metaphors like "the wheels of
progress"
- Speculatively yours,
Gutfreund.umass@udel-relay
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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