taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (06/17/86)
Computers and Society Digest, Number 1
Friday, October 18th 1985
Topics of discussion in this issue...
The Risks of Over-Automation
The Value of Information
Some Early Comments
Are big systems more reliable?
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From: Jeff Lichtman <ihnp4!amdahl!rtech!jeff%rtech>
Subject: The Risks of Over-Automation
I'll start off my first submissiom with an anecdote. The Safeway
near where I live has UPC scanners. I was shopping there late one night
when an announcement came over the PA saying that the machines were down,
and asking the customers to be patient. Fortunately, there weren't many
people in the store.
When I finally got to the register, I found out that the cash registers
were down as well as the UPC scanners. The checkers were using adding machines.
It took about an hour to get checked out, because none of the prices
were marked on the items, and the checkers didn't have most of the prices
memorized (before UPC, they had to know the prices of almost everything). They
had clerks running all over the store, finding the items and shouting the
prices. They were not able to give receipts because they had to keep the adding
machine tape to balance the books.
This experience made me think about what happens when people become too
dependent on computers. In this case, the people who set up the system had so
much confidence in it that they didn't bother to provide a backup (which, of
course, would cost money). Now, the cost to society of slow checkouts at a
Safeway for one night is pretty small, but I wonder what would happen if there
were a power failure over a wide area that lasted a long time (say, two days).
How many services are there that depend on computers (or other electronic or
electrical systems) and have no manual backup? For example, are there banks
that wouldn't be able to operate without a running computer system?
Another thing I worry about is the effect that computers will have on
the types and number of available jobs. As computers become more "intelligent",
some jobs will be eliminated and others will require less skill. For example,
a lot of automobile assembly jobs could be eliminated by industrial robots;
also, the job of supermarket checker requires less skill than it used to because
of UPC scanners (I have already noticed that the local supermarkets have
proportiately more very young employees than they used to, presumably because
the job is easier than it used to be, so they can hire young, unskilled
workers). Some people could be forced out of work, others could be forced to
accept lower pay than before because automation has reduced their jobs (which
used to require skill and training) to that of an automaton, and others will
find work that machines can't do. This last category seems to me to be the one
with the most dignity; will we as a society be able to increase the numbers of
these types of jobs to prevent a replay of the early decades of the industrial
revolution? Or will we move toward elitism, where only the owners of the means
of production and the ones who know how to build the machines will be able to
have a decent life?
---
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
"Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent..."
{amdahl, sun}!rtech!jeff
{ucbvax, decvax}!mtxinu!rtech!jeff
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Date: Thu, 10 Oct 85 16:28:28 MDT
From: Paul D. Bame <ihnp4!hpcfla!hp-lsd!paul>
Subject: The value of information
Several (7) years ago, a friend and I (at college) had an idea for a fiction
story (Science?) about information and society in the future. My friend (who
now lives in Philadelphia) was a liberal-arts type who was NOT a technophobe
(a rarity). I believe he's now into some type of business/economics job and
doing well.
Anyway, the setting for the story is in the future on a (of course) space
vessel.
Background:
Society has become information hungry - information is power and
is perceived as being valuable. To be afluent is to posess lots
of information.
Spaceflight is fairly commonplace.
In the quest for more information, [society|powerful group] has
sent many spacecraft out in "interesting" directions for the
sole purpose of collecting new facts and relaying them to
Earth.
These flights collect LOTS of information, (don't know what it is though -
electron fluxes or something) - so much in fact that it must be digested
before being relayed to Earth. This re-packaging is the task of a
high-powered computer(s) and a specially trained person who uses a mind-link
to this computer. 3-D graphs are a common presentation form and the
mind-link makes it easy to generate them since it stimulates the visual
cortex.
The rest of the story is pretty commonplace nowadays - the computer is
capable of rudimentary "learning" so that frequent tasks need not be spelled
out in detail each time (macros?) and the computer of course becomes somewhat
cognizant and influences it's operator to do strange things.
The relevent part (I think) is the way in which information flowed through
various channels. For example, massive amounts of raw data pour into this
spacecraft where it is digested and sent to Earth where it is presumably
distilled even further until it reaches its audience. In fact, there will
probably be different audiences along the whole process. It can be thought
of as a continium where the axis is amount of information and inversely
proportional to that is a continium where the axis is number of people
consuming that information.
Large Information Quanity Small
<<--------------------------------------------->>
Small Number of Consumers Large
This is fairly similar to, say, scientific research today. Lots of raw data
is collected and summarized in a technical report. Some folks read the
report in technical journals. Omni magazine then gets hold of the journal
and writes it's own article with lots more generalization for a wider
audience. Finally, some newspaper service reads Omni (and/or the journal)
and publishes one paragraph on the subject. This model feels like it is the
way things are and must continue to be in order to handle information
overload.
It is interesting (and correlates my conclusions) to note that those of us
who strive to keep up with lots of things (net.* every day :-)) think about
and/or create intelligent mail and news readers to pre-digest the mountains
of information. Some companies are founded on principles similar to this
(they'll prepare interest-based outlines of current publications for a fee)
and I think we'll see lots of money made in the future in this way. What an
opportunity for high-speed database and AI applications!
--Paul Bame
UUCP: {hplabs,ihnp4!hpfcla}!hp-lsd!paul
CSNET: hp-lsd!paul@hp-labs.csnet
ARPA: hp-lsd!paul%hp-labs@csnet-relay.arpa
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Date: Mon, 14 Oct 85 16:07:39 mst
From: ihnp4!terak!doug (Doug Pardee)
Subject: Some Early Comments
Dave,
Some comments:
Are we move towards a classed society: Those that have the
information and those that don't?
I think not. The value of raw information has been highly overrated.
Especially if we're talking about "just living", as opposed to running a
business or a country.
A couple of years ago, I subscribed to both CompuServe and Dow Jones
News Service. For about a year I spent a fair amount of money "keeping
on top" of a variety of subjects. Then came the realization that
having the latest "scoop" on things didn't make me any better off than
I had been. In fact, the time that I was spending in the process of
gathering and sorting information was seriously cutting into the time
that I had available to *use* any of it.
Unused information is indistinguishable from useless information.
We are rapidly becoming a society of non-doers. If a company is losing
money, then management holds more meetings, requires more progress
reports, and has more schedule reviews. None of these "information
gathering" activities increases productivity; in fact they will decrease
productivity.
----
How far is society from the Orwellian vision of 1984?
An interesting topic, primarily because even though Orwell never wrote
anything about computers, people still make a connection.
The question is, why do they make such a connection?
Doug Pardee -- CalComp -- {calcom1,savax,seismo,decvax,ihnp4}!terak!doug
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Date: Thu, 17 Oct 85 15:09:36 edt
From: hplabs!ihnp4!uvacs!hsd (Harry S. Delugach)
Subject: C & S mailing list - Are big systems more reliable?
I have noticed that everyone talks about how scared the Russians are of
our superior technical prowess. It seems that all we have to do is *build*
a big system, publicize lots of supposed "tests", and then everyone (including
Americans) will think that this system will protect us. Even though we all
encounter computer failures in everyday life (from misprinted payroll checks
to lost airline reservations), there is an irrational trust that somehow big
systems such as SDI, which will be heavily dependent upon software
will perform correctly, just because anything so BIG, so EXPENSIVE,
and so long in development will surely be reliable.
Hardly anyone questions the mentality that whatever we set out to control
with computers, with enough effort we can do it. The public is not aware of
some fundamental limitations (at present) of current software. After all,
isn't engineering just a matter of getting the right amounts of the right
things in the right place?
Other forums are discussing the risks involved in our reliance on
computer systems. My question is: why have we come to believe that *BIG*
systems are more reliable than the *small* ones with which we interact
every day?
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End of Computers and Society Digest
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