Pleasant@Rutgers (11/16/82)
HUMAN-NETS Digest Sunday, 14 Nov 1982 Volume 5 : Issue 104
Today's Topics:
Computers and People - Cable TV and the First Amendment (3 msgs) &
Unique Signatures (2 msgs),
Technology - WorldNet (2 msgs),
Publications - New Journal: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
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Date: 11 Nov 1982 1159-PST
From: Lynn Gold <FIGMO at KESTREL>
Subject: TV and censorship
I am personally against TV censorship, ESPECIALLY with regards to
children. Children shouldn't be sheltered from the seedier and less
pleasant parts of life; if they don't learn about things when
they're little, they get into a great deal of hassles when they're
older.
For those parents who do insist on being "moral majority" cretins to
their children and/or themselves, HBO has two channels in many
areas: one which broadcasts all kinds of material, regardless of
"rating", and another which transmits a censored subset of the
former channel. When I visited my folks in southern New Jersey last
spring, such a system existed. Fortunately, my folks were decent
enough to get the uncensored channel...
--Lynn
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Date: Friday, 12 November 1982 11:13-PST
From: Jonathan Alan Solomon <JSol at USC-ECLC>
Subject: home censoring of television
The only major problem (besides the fact that neither the
computer-controlled VCR/tuner nor the TV-guide-network is yet
available for consumers) would be that if parents are away the
children can visit a friend's house to consume their allocation
of TV hours then bring their friends home to consume their own
allocation, and thus get double allocation, or triple, etc.,
limited only by the number of children who can fit in a room and
want to watch the same program and the number of hours the
parents are away.
Considering how much socializing the children are getting, I really
don't see this as a problem!
[--JSol--]
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Date: 13 November 1982 07:46-EST
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM at MIT-MC>
Subject: home censoring of television
That's a good point. Although some parents think TV is bad, it's
really the aloneness, the child sitting alone watching TV for hours
by hirself, not relating to ay living human at all, that hurts the
child's psychological/social development. Thus parents should permit
the child all the TV heesh wants providing it's with some neighbor
kids, but limit TV viewing of a child (with or without siblings?) to
a certain number of hours. Then the unattended automatic TV set that
limits children's hours on a per-TV basis will do about the right
thing even if children "cheat" by visiting neighbors to share TV
viewing allocations.
Now, let's build the remote-controlled VCR/Tuner so we can do this!
Have a keylock on manual controls, and a password on the computer
port, so the children can't watch without either parent's personal
permission or computer scheduling/allocation permission.
On a related matter, how many hours a day should a child be allowed
to sit at the workstation sending and receiving network mail? I tend
to spend several hours a day myself and I think I'm spending too
much time! I'm not a kid, but if I'm prone to excess mail reading --
consider the child who can spend 6 hours a day playing PACMAN, such
a child would probably spend 20 hours a day corresponding by
computer, and burn his poor mind out!
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Date: 9-Nov-82 07:39:29-PST (Tue)
From: UCBVAX.floyd!stan@Berkeley
Subject: Electronic signatures
The Plato system allowed very personalized signatures because of its
dot matrix characters which could be written over each over.
Control sequences would let you do things like devils, beer steins,
etc.
@
Stan <-+-> King
|
_/ \_
(floyd!stan)
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From: "STEVE LIONEL AT STAR c/o" <DEC-HNT at DEC-MARLBORO>
Subject: Graphic signatures
If Obrien at RAND-UNIX hadn't beaten me to it, I too would have
mentioned the University of Illinois' PLATO IV system for its
ubiquity of unique graphic signatures. (I have no idea if this
spilled over into the PLATO systems that CDC now runs.) The
interesting thing about PLATO was not just that the flexible
graphics made it easy to do interesting signatures, but that just
about EVERYBODY had a "nom de plasma" (pseudonym). I don't think I
would be exaggerating if I said that most PLATO "authors" (those who
could more or less do anything they wanted to) were known ONLY by
their pseudonyms; few knew people's real names. One measure of this
was that almost every game and game-like program (such as
TALKOMATIC) prompted you for your pseudonym, which it then displayed
along with your more mundane "name and course".
Combined with PLATO graphics, many people labored to come up with
interesting-looking signatures. One limiting factor was that many
programs only accepted 10 character pseudonyms, that being how many
6-bit characters fit in a 60-bit word. Shifted characters counted
as two places. Other programs, such as NEWS (sort of a BBOARD), had
no limitation. My personal graphic made use of PLATO's ability to
superscript and subscript by single pixels. My pseudonym was
HOLMES4 (taken from Heinlein's book, of course), and I would have
the letters "HOLMS4" race out from the left, stop, the letter E
come out, move up looking for its spot, the letters "S4" would then
move over and the "E" would move down into place. And that was one
of the simpler signatures.
Anyway, I think that personalized signatures in computerized
communication are as inevitable as vanity license plates - it gives
some essence of individuality to something that otherwise all looks
the same.
Steve
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Date: 9 November 1982 18:52-EST
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM at MIT-MC>
Subject: Amateur Packet Radio
You left out the other major reason why amateur packet radio isn't
the right model whereas packet-CB is: amateur radio forbids 90% of
the uses for which worldnet might be used, like electronic magazines
you subscribe to for money, information retrieval systems you pay
for usage of, conducting a business internally (bookkeeping,
inventory, interoffice memos), conducting business transactions with
customers (ordering, billing), electronic funds transfer, anything
of a political nature, anything encrypted or data-compressed, ...
need I go on?
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Date: 11 Nov 1982 1642-EST
From: ZALESKI at RU-GREEN (Michael Zaleski [doesn't eat quiche.])
Subject: AT&T (The defense rests)
Some last words in defense of the phone company, if I may...
Regarding the notion that World-Net would have to support a wide
variety of communications devices, I submit that AT&T, through its
work interfacing the different phone systems and through various
other experiments in communications techniques (both voice and data)
has a much richer variety of communications techniques at their
disposal than might be expected.
The criticism that AT&T does not provide cheap computer connections
network for long periods of time is correct. However, it is not
because of technology, only because of the cost of such services.
Such services could be supplied, but at a cost that would make the
average bill much too large.
Regarding the claim that "technical expertise isn't the issue", what
more can I say but that I disagree? Now please understand, that I
am not saying that AT&T is the ONLY candidate for World-Net, rather
I am saying that they seem like a good one. As for the claim that a
revolution in Poland was stopped by turning off the phones - well,
the National Rifle Association will claim that the revolution was
stopped because the government has disarmed its citizens. I believe
that both points, plus many others contributed to stopping the
revolution. Citing one single cause seems a bit superficial.
I agree that the power and control issue of any such network is
important, but I am hard pressed to imagine a system which cannot be
circumvented by local authorities in a given area. In fact, some
countries will probably demand this power before allowing World-Net
anywhere near their territory.
One person wrote complaining about his/her poor experience with New
England Bell and its paper record keeping. While I believe it is a
waste of time to discuss an individual case, this letter brings to
mind several facts about the AT&T that are worthy of mention.
First, New England Bell keeps paper records by its own choice.
Support programs are developed by AT&T to allow the local operating
companies to computerize their records and work. However...
Second, the cost of automating is high. For example, to set up one
database for New Jersey Bell, it is estimated that the cost will be
around two dollars per line. Multiply that by a few million lines
and you see why phone companies might be reluctant to use new
technology. The start up cost is great and there is no chance for
increased profit in a regulated business. But, should the project
go wrong and wind up costing money management will look bad. If you
were a manager, would you take the chance.
As for AT&T not providing MCI with the signaling to directly access
the network, I ask why should they? MCI starts out with all the
advantages of all the hard work being done, but has to absorb very
little of the actual cost of providing the network that they use.
For example, AT&T provides connections to all locations and does not
charge in proportion to the cost of providing some of these
services. (Have you ever considered what the cost per connection is
in rural areas where phones are miles apart?) MCI uses low cost
lines along the most profitable routes to lure away some of the
business that AT&T uses to try to spread the cost of the whole
network out with. (In short, I think the federal government would
have been better off telling MCI, et al to go away and telling AT&T
that they could not go into the computer business.)
Oh yes, it turns out that I was wrong about not being able to use an
MCI number from distant locations.
-- Michael "Zaleski@Green"@Rutgers or mhtsa!mzal
P.S. RM(*), in any combination of spacing and upper or lower case is
a syntax error on UNIX, not a command.
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Date: 11 Nov 1982 12:27 PST
From: Moran at PARC-MAXC
Subject: New Journal: HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
Announcing a new journal . . .
HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION
Theoretical, Empirical, and Methodological Issues
of User Psychology and of System Design
Human-Computer Interaction is an interdisciplinary journal concerned
with theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues of (1) user
psychology and (2) computer system design as it affects the user.
The goal of HCI is to be a high-quality journal coalescing the best
research and design work from diverse fields into a distinct new
field of human-computer interaction.
User Psychology. HCI seeks to foster a scientific understanding of
the behavior of computer users, especially the cognitive aspects.
"Users" include both programmers and non-programmers and both experts
and novices. HCI is primarily concerned with the individual user
and with small working groups of users (and not with social,
institutional, organizational, or political issues). Theoretical
papers will deal with psychological models of user learning and
performance. Empirical papers will range from rigorous laboratory
experimentation to field observation. Methodological papers will be
concerned with the issues of how to analyze tasks and discover the
structure of user behavior.
System Design. HCI seeks to foster rational discussion of and
methods for the design of new computer systems and the evaluation of
existing systems. HCI is interested in user-interface design
techniques, including the incorporation of intelligence into the
interface. HCI is also concerned with the process of design (i.e.,
not only the "what", but also the "how" and the "why" of design).
Theoretical papers will cover the structure and process of
human-computer interaction. Empirical papers will investigate
existing and novel interaction techniques; they will also study the
design process itself. Methodological papers will be concerned with
design principles, the rationalization of design alternatives, and
the role of empirical methods in the design process.
This announcement is not a call for papers, but the following gives
the flavor of the journal: HCI is interested in original papers of
high quality and broad relevance that fit in the above thematic
framework. Papers may cover any domain in which computers are
involved, such as programming, office systems, databases,
instruction and training, games, design, text-editing, and other
interactive computer tools. Being an interdisciplinary journal, all
papers should have both scientific (i.e. theoretical or empirical)
content and practical relevance to how systems should be designed or
how they are actually used. HCI favors substantial papers, which
deal with substantial pieces of research and/or design, over smaller
or narrower papers, which focus on issues of interest to only a
specialized audience. Review papers should develop new conceptual
views or codifications of existing material.
The Editorial Board of HCI includes distinguished members in the
computer science, psychology, artificial intelligence, human
factors, and man-machine systems communities: John Anderson (CMU),
Ruven Brooks (ITT), John Seely Brown (Xerox), Stuart Card (Xerox),
Bill Curtis (ITT), John Gould (IBM), J. C. R. Licklider (MIT),
William Newman (Queen Mary College), Allen Newell (CMU), Donald
Norman (UCSD), Richard Pew (BBN), Rudy Ramsey (ITT), William Rouse
(Georgia Tech), Elliot Soloway (Yale), Richard Young (APU
Cambridge), plus others to be announced. Comments about editorial
matters should be sent to the Editor:
Thomas P. Moran
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
3333 Coyote Hill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(or to MORAN@PARC-MAXC).
To keep informed about the new journal, HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION,
mail your name and address to:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers
365 Broadway, Suite 102
Hillsdale, NJ 07642
(Current plans are for HCI to appear quarterly, beginning January
1984, and to cost about $25 per year for personal subscriptions.)
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End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
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