Pleasant@Rutgers.arpa (01/11/83)
HUMAN-NETS Digest Monday, 10 Jan 1983 Volume 6 : Issue 2
Today's Topics:
Queries - Where is Computing Going,
Computers and People - Human Memory Capacity (4 msgs),
Programming - Unix (5 msgs),
News Articles - Forbes Year-end Issue (2 msgs) &
Peninsula Times-Tribune
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Date: 3 Jan 1983 1636-EST
From: Ron <FISCHER at RUTGERS>
Subject: Re: Where is computing going?
["Don't ask me," he said stepping onto a nearby soapbox.]
Parallels:
Computing is moving into the hands of the masses in a way that
probably exactly parallels radio/audio hobby and or automobiles.
The bulk of people will want a model T average AM/FM tabletop home
computer. A few lucky fanatics will own the computing equivalent of
a Maserati (Xerox even named them similarly, "Dorado"). Just
because of the greater exposure more people will eventually become
hackers. The differences will remain: very few will build their own
cars/radios/computers out of individual components, a few more will
rebuild their cars/modify their radios/write complete software
systems, and many more will buy high performance car parts/set up
audio systems carefully/tweak software for best performance. The
largest groups will: perform regular maintenance/buy replacement
stylii when needed/read the manuals and try to understand, and
finally the largest group of all will: barely remember where the gas
filler is/know which one controls the volume/not remember if the
computer came with a book. Computers will eventually be as easy as
if not simpler to use than a video game. Ted Nelson has predicted
word processors with an "attract mode."
Looping magazines:
I have a feeling that magazines will come full circle too. Lately
some readers of Byte (and writer Sol Libes in his latest column there
for instance) have lamented that computing is becoming more mass
business oriented. Eventually serious hobby hackers will tire of what
magazines like Byte are becoming. Somewhere the computer hackers
equivalent of QST will spring up. Then we will come back to what Byte
was like early on.
Eventually businesses won't be so worried about how they buy
computers; when the market is mature enough they'll be treated like
typewriters and cabinets. When was the last time you saw a magazine
devoted to typewriters or cabinets? Business computing is a new fad
and the magazines of that fad will fade.
What we'll get from hobbyists:
Little work of interest to the average computer user will be done by
hobby types. For instance, I won't write a super high performance
accounts receivable package "for the fun of it." A game, I might
write though. Perhaps after the industry matures some breakthroughs
and interesting developments may still come out of hobbyists. We'll
see.
Generic computing:
Computing for everyman will probably come closest to looking like
radio/audio does now. Lots of users and a few fanatics.
Disclaimer:
Ah, and there it is, that little touch of enthusiasm that sets the
computing hobby apart. Car enthusiasts might stay up all night
working on their vehicles. Audio enthusiasts may wax poetic for a
moment when they hear a new component. "Computer people," however,
are insane. Read any account of a hackers' heaven: days without sleep
or food, single-minded drive, etc. There is something deeply
attractive about computing to the hobbyist. If anything will make
this revolution different from all the others it lies somewhere in
there.
[Stepping off of soap box...]
(ron)
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Date: 5 Jan 1983 0945-EST
From: Tim <WEINRICH at RUTGERS>
Subject: Re: Human Memory Capacity
DMRussell mentioned that "there are some psychologists that
believe that memory capacity is truly infinite!! I don't know what
rock they crawled out from...)".
I am curious. Now that you have essentially equated these
psychologists with salamanders, how would you go about formally
proving that human memory capacity is not infinite? Note that I am
not willing to make any assumptions at all about how memory works.
[By the way, please do not Reply to me, personally. Reply to
Human-Nets. I will mail a copy of the Interlisp manual to the first
person who replies to me.]
Twinerik
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Date: 3-Jan-83 12:45:34 PST (Monday)
From: CharlieLevy.es at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Human Memory Capacity
There are some branches of psychology and holistic health (Reichian
therapy, Radix therapy, Rolfing (Structural Integration), Postural
Integration) that believe that ALL the body cells store memories,
not just those of the brain. In fact, in the latter bodyworks,
working on muscles, etc., that have been affected by memories
(especially emotional traumas) can trigger the re-experiencing of
these traumas, with resultant emotional benefit.
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Date: 1 Jan 83 11:53:59-EST (Sat)
From: Henry Dreifus <dreifus@upenn>
Subject: HUMAN-NETS Digest V5 #113
Re: Memory Capacity
It matters not, as we cannot build proper indexing to retrieve all
of which we store throughout our lives.
Henry Dreifus
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Date: 1 Jan 83 15:34:16 EST (Sat)
From: Mark Weiser <mark@umcp-cs>
Subject: human memory capacity
The estimates of this always start with an estimated 6,000,000,000
neurons in the brain. From there, it used to be one would say:
"Each neuron can be firing or not firing, and therefore represents a
bit, so the human brain has a maximum capacity of 6 trillion bits."
Now it turns out that neuron activity is pulse-code modulated, so
each neuron is actually transmitting a rather complex signal and not
just "on" or "off". Furthermore, it has been discovered that
neurons interact not just at dendrite and axons ends but also at all
sorts of intermediate sites. Therefore, the potential for
interaction and parallelism even within a single neuron is also much
higher. Finally, neurons also talk (and presumably store) with
chemical signals (not just neurotransmitters), so this raises the
potential communication and storage even more. That's for an upper
bound, and I have never seen an estimate which takes all this more
recent information about neuron function into account.
>From all of the above must be subtracted presumed redundancy for
reliability, neurons which are not used for storage but only
processing, and the possibility that the neuron is not the basic
unit of processing at all but something like the "cell assembly" is
(cell assembly= group of neurons capable of self-sustaining
activity).
And last of all, human memory capacity really ought to include our
ability to manufacture paper and pencils and use language to extend
our brain's internal capacity. This ability is certainly part of
our human capacity. So the real answer is that human beings are
like Turing machines: our memory capacity is finite but unbounded.
------------------------------
Date: 6 January 1983 22:38-EST
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>
Subject: UNIX user interface
I find it strange that it would be better to provide a piece of shit
(virgin Unix) because it forces system maintainers to modify it to
their local preferences, instead of a halfway-decent system (Unix
with somebody else's mods) where the local system maintainers might
then get lazy and leave it as is instead of change it. First of all,
for those with a low budget and immediate needs to be productive,
what's wrong with somebody else's modified system. If you are lazy,
at least the system will be usable, and if not you'll eventually get
around to modifying it further. Of course the mods that somebody
else made shouldn't be frozen into it, and grungy incompatible
unstructured fragile mods shouldn't be distributed even if somebody
else loves them, because that kind of mod makes it hard to add
anything new without breaking something in obscure ways. But nice
clean mods that most customers like, like not having ctrl-D logout
immediately, really ought to be available in new systems as
purchased, providing they're reasonably compatible with most other
changes that might want to be made.
This is all my naive opinion, that most users will in the long run
be happier getting a good system and making it better or different
instead of getting a raw system with no niceties and being forced
from day one to modify it to get any use out of it all. I may be
wrong.
------------------------------
Date: 7 Jan 1983 10:54 EST
From: clark.wbst at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Re: UNIX user interface
O.K....What you say makes sense. Perhaps a good way to do it would
be to provide a system which is good by SOMEBODY'S standards and
point out exactly what has been done to make it that way, so that
the new UNIX user can see what there is to change. This provides an
immediately usable system, yet the new user, often confused and
overwhelmed by the countless details of a new system, will be able
to see what is easily changed and what is not. It would also
probably be a good tool for learning about the system, including
many of the things a new user needs to ask a guru at first, only
would be more complete than such ad-hoch questions and answers.
By the way Bob, could you send me a copy of the digest my remark
came out in ? My gateway was down and I never got it. Thanx.
--Ray
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Date: 7 Jan 1983 1721-PST
From: Dolata at SUMEX-KI10 at SU-SCO
Subject: VAX VMS vs UNIX
I need to find a good concise comparison between VAX VMS and UNIX.
I have used UNIX on a PDP11/70, but have never used VMS. Among the
points I need to consider are; utility for the hacker, ease of use
for the non-hacker, utility programs available, etc...
I directed this query to HUMAN-NETS because I remember such a
discussion took place here several years ago. If this information
is archived, I would appreciate a pointer. Please send this
directly to me as I am not a HUMAN-NETS subscriber any longer.
Thanks
Dan (dolata@sumex-ki10)
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Date: 31 Dec 82 11:34:17 EST (Fri)
From: Andrew Scott Beals <andrew@umcp-cs>
Subject: UNIX(tm) vs TOPS-20
I, too am guilty of `it isn't unix(tm)', but I do have other
objections to bottoms-20.
Firstoff, C is the best systems implementations language that I've
seen. It is clean and concise (I'm also an APL fan...).
Personally, the handiest thing about unix(tm) (I'm trying to beat
this joke into the ground...) is that I have the COMPLETE system
source code at my fingertips. I can easily write spies of any
nature (providing that I can read kmem), and modify any systems
program to work more to my liking, and have no problems in using it.
I was started on unix(tm) and bottoms-20 in the same manner - here's
how you login, go. I find the unix(tm) programmers' manual (man)
entries to be much more helpful than bottoms-20's help function.
Unix(tm) is only flakey if you don't know what to expect, and do
stupid things.
-andy
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Date: 1 Jan 83 15:48:31 EST (Sat)
From: Mark Weiser <mark@umcp-cs>
Subject: Unix Initial State
To respond to the complaint about the Unix initial state being bad
and that is an argument against Unix: Many things have poor
initial state, and their great strength is their customizability.
In the computer world there is Emacs, elsewhere there are human
babies. You'll have to use a better argument than this against
Unix.
Also, Unix is NOT slow. Comparisons of the latest Berkeley release
against VMS show they are approximately equal.
------------------------------
Date: 30 Dec 1982 9:57-PST
From: dietz.usc-cse at UDel-Relay
Subject: Forbes Year-end Issue
Reply-to: dietz at Usc-Ecl
The year-end issue of Forbes magazine has a series of short (one to
two page) summaries of what's happening in the various areas of the
economy. I found the electronics and computer summaries very
interesting. Some things that stick in my mind:
(1) The computer business is no longer driving electronics because
chip density is increasing so fast. What used to take 50 to 100
chips now only takes a few.
(2) The computer industry is about to enter a new phase in which the
price of cycles will drop dramatically. A Bell Labs person
forecasts that the price will be down to one dollar per MIPS by the
end of the decade! This is something like a four (five?) order of
magnitude decrease in price.
(3) Prices of personal computers (and soon others?) are already
being driven down very fast. Computers are becoming a commodity.
The article included a graph showing the recent steep decline in PC
prices, especially in the low end of the market.
If true, the implications are profound. What could we do with, say,
1 GIPS of personal computing power? Voice understanding, image
understanding/synthesis, high power CAD, simulation, really smart
robots...
------------------------------
Date: 4 Jan 1983 11:33-PST
From: dietz.usc-cse at UDEL-RELAY
Subject: Previous message...
Arg! That Forbes article actually said that the price/performance
ratio will improve by one order of magnitude, not four. Sorry for
the error.
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Date: 5 January 1983 01:46-EST
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC>
Subject: Personal computers used now in newspaper writing
In today's (Jan 04) Peninsula Times-Tribune (on page E1) there's an
article by Freiberger/Markoff (I don't know which of them wrote this
particular article) telling how soon computers will be embedded in
other devices, especially the telephone, and describing the kinds of
modems presently available. At the end it says:
'This column was begun on a portable Osborne computer, sent by
telephone to an IBM personal computer where it was edited and then
retransmitted to a computer at the Times Tribune. Maybe that's what
they mean when they say, "Let your fingers do the walking."'
This would seem to go one step beyond what we heard about a couple
years ago about some big newspaper on the East Coast, where the
reporter on the West Coast transmitted stories via telephone
directly to the newspaper's computer.
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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