taylor@hpdstma.hp.com (Dave Taylor) (07/22/88)
___________________________________________________________________________ | | | Computers & Thursday, June 16, 1988 | | Society Volume 3 | | Digest Number 16 | | | | Editor and Publisher: Dave Taylor, Hewlett-Packard Company | |___________________________________________________________________________| Contents: Note from the Editor ........................................... Dave Taylor An Inquiry Into Libraries of the Future ....................... Steve Cisler Computer Folklore .............................................. Scott Bayes More on aesthetics .......................................... Eugene N. Miya Optical technology fails in courtroom ............................. Rob Horn Paper versus Computer Monitors .............................. Espen Andersen The Ultimate Interface .......................................... Doug Salot Urban legends -- gyroscopic drum memory .................... Dennis Hamilton .......................................................... Mike Van Pelt ....................................................... Jonathan Eckrich what to do with all those MIPS ................................ Peter Nelson ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note from the Editor Dave Taylor (taylor@hplabs.HP.COM) Yes, as you can see, I've finally gotten enough time to create a new issue of the digest for your enjoyment. As it turns out I had a fair number of old, pending articles, so this represents all of them -- sorry if it is a bit hard to pick up the narrative thread! In any case, please consider the digest now up and alive, and feel free to submit articles to be included in future issues. We've had a considerable number of new people join the list since the last digest, and I'd like to also invite them to participate! As a possible topic of discussion, the latest issue of the Communications of the ACM has an interesting article by a group of people at the University of Illinois about a ``PC in the year 2000'' called TABLET. I'd welcome someone posting a brief description of the machine, and some comments from a societal impact point of view (for example, how does one *not* lose the magic stylus?) From the edges of reality, -- Dave Taylor ------------------------------ An Inquiry Into Libraries of the Future Steve Cisler (sac@well.UUCP) I am going to be working on a number of projects dealing with the concept of libraries of the future. I would like to have readers of this newsgroup discuss their ideas about what libraries will and will not be. If you post a response, it would be helpful if you state how you currently use or don't use libraries. Some information junkies satisfy their habit without ever stepping foot inside a library; others have people to find the information for them. Many of us visit and make use of libraries several times a week. To start this off I'll introduce myself: I am automation manager in a large county library in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I will be moving to a corporate library of a computer firm and will be dealing with both engineers and librarians involved in projects that will affect the future technology in libraries of all sorts: academic, school, public, private, and government. I also publish a newsletter called Connect: Libraries & Telecommunications. I am convinced there will be extraordinary gains in the areas of information retrieval, telecommunications, and expert systems. But with terabytes of text, images, and sounds available through fiber optic cable and manipulated by 'software agents' what will librarians be doing? How far down the economic ladder will these technologies penetrate? Will we maintain the idea of Free Public Libraries in the 21st century, or will it be pay-as-you go? Feel free to focus on your own special interest or raise more questions about the big (and still fuzzy) picture. Steve Cisler ------------------------------ Re: Computer Folklore Scott Bayes (bayes@hpfcdc.HP.COM) > "send us a copy of your disc in the post and we'll try to reproduce > the problem". Next morning in a nice envelope arrives... a lovely > photocopy of the floppy. This really happened with an HP Series 200 machine about 5 years ago. I was the lucky Support Engineer who received the photocopy (two-sided, as the disk was two-sided!!) from a to-remain-unnamed System Engineer out there in the real world. Not a legend, but valid folklore. Scott ------------------------------ Re: More on aesthetics Eugene N. Miya (eugene@pioneer.arc.nasa.gov) Last Tuesday, I briefly sat in on a discussion of the SIGGRAPH exhibit of computer graphics at the local De Anza Community College campus. It was an interesting discussion. Here's a brief summary of commentary: Lacking in any warmth or humanity. This is a problem not for the media, but for the people putting the stuff out (note: this includes works by the instructor of one of the classes which includes a classically trained artist) About interactive fiction and gaming: This is an area where the computer people in the audience were particularly proud. Comments: Not art. It's problem solving. Reminds people too much of work. Interfaces are poor (mice). There were a few other comments, but these were the significant ones. Eugene Miya ------------------------------ Optical technology fails in courtroom Rob Horn (rhorn@infinet.UUCP) The California courts recently abandoned an experimental effort to use digital scanners and optical disk technology for storing and retrieving legal documents. The primary problem was the unwillingness of witnesses to swear to the accuracy of documents presented to them on a screen. Under oath, with lots of money and perhaps criminal liability at stake, witnesses were faced with deciding whether that screen image really matched the documents they worked with a few years ago. Had a line been missed? Were there any portions illegible that should not have been? Witnesses were not sure, and generally refused to swear that the documents were accurate. When presented with a paper copy, they could read it, hold it, and were confident in testifying that it was indeed the same document. A secondary problem was that the lawyers were not sure what to expect, so they always had plenty of paper versions on hand in case something went wrong. Between these two effects, the court found that the digitized documents were useless. I have not seen the system that was used, but from what I have seen of other document scanning systems, I expect that the reproduction quality was excellent. The key difficulty is witness uncertainty. Consider how would you react if you faced huge fines and bankruptcy if you made a mistake in assessing whether a scanned picture really matched a document that you worked on several years ago. Rob Horn ------------------------------ Re: Paper versus Computer Monitors Espen Andersen (EDB85007@NOBIVM.BITNET) David Paulsen outlined a cross between a CRT (or, rather, a flexible flatscreen) and a book in the Digest, Volume 3 No. 14. I have always dreamt of a cross between an office desk and a CRT. Imagine the Macintosh user interface expanded up to 6 feet by 3 and put flat out in front of you like the normal desktop surface - with a touch-sensitive screen or a ligthpen instead of a mouse. With an operating system resembling the MultiFinder you could write memos, spreadsheets and books directly "on the desk". The telephone would be on the screen as well - with a loudspeaker. The paper basket (it would have to be a basket - Apple "owns" the bin :-) would be on the screen. In fact - the only thing "physical" would be the coffee mug.... Of course the resolution would have to be fantastic, the colour choices unlimited and the harddisk enormous. Not to mention the UPS system - imagine somebody pulling the cord and erasing your entire office... Espen ------------------------------ Technology and People with Disabilities (AEB_BEVAN%VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU) [Note: this is a copy of a newsletter sent to the digest by a member of the ABLENET group -- the format is a bit different from C&S Digest, but it seems quite interesting. Immediately below is a list of contact addresses for those of you interested in contacting the studies group in the UK. -- Dave] ABLENET Disabilities Studies Group Gardiner Building The OPEN UNIVERSITY Milton Keynes MK7 6AA United Kingdom JANET: ABLENET@UK.AC.OPEN.ACS.VAX BITNET/EARN: ABLENET@VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK (or): ABLENET%VAX.ACS.OPEN.AC.UK@AC.UK UUCP : .....!mcvax!ukc!ouacs!ablenet _________________________________________________ ABLENET newsletter No.1 21 December 1987 Contents: 1/ ABLENET. A brief description 2/ INFORMATION AND POWER 3/ THE DISABILITIES STUDIES GROUP PROJECT 4/ DATABASE PROJECT background information needed for database 5/ REQUEST FOR INFORMATION 6/ SUMMARY 7/ CONTRIBUTIONS WELCOME! ___________________________________________________ 1/ ABLENET ABLENET is an information exchange which the disability studies group at the Open University hopes to establish as a resource for disabled people around the world. At present it is an experiment in the use of the academic computing networks, principally the JANET/BITNET/NETNORTH/EARN group. The aim of the ABLENET project is to help locate information resources around the world that could be of value to disabled people and help establish the pathways by which disabled people can access that information for themselves and incorporate it into their own projects. We hope in particular to provide an information service for the growing movement of organisations controlled by disabled people. If you are interested in this project please contact us. Please also pass on information to others who may be interested. To subscribe to ABLENET send a mail message including the line SUBSCRIBE ABLENET YOURADDRESS ABLENET is hosted on the Open University Academic Computing Service VAX cluster in Milton Keynes. It is linked to the Joint Academic Network (JANET) of the United Kingdom Universities. The electronic address of ABLENET as seen from various networks is as shown in the header section. You can also contact the list editor by mailing AEB_BEVAN at the same node address. Please note that we do not have Listserve software installed at this site, so this network is being manually edited at present EDIS BEVAN (AEB_BEVAN@UK.AC.OU.ACS.VAX) Please note that the form of address as seen from the United Kingdom can differ from the address forms needed for messages from your site. ***************************************************************************** 2/ INFORMATION AND POWER Many marginalised minority groups are handicapped by their restricted access to the information that concerns them. Existing power and economic relationships and the nature of existing service provision means that disabled people are often on the periphery of information networks. Disabled people need to be able to organise facilities to collect, store and distribute information relevant to their own perceived needs. Within the movement of disabled people the greatest emphasis is on the need to find effective ways of removing social barriers. This encourages disabled people to take an active and leading role in our own affairs. The search for appropriate ways of activating disabled people and removing barriers has led to the creation of centres for the provision of services in which disabled people have a direct role. These are variously known as centres for Independent living or centres for integrated living. The major point is that these centres are under the control of disabled people and professional services are deployed according to the wishes of disabled people. 3/ THE DISABILITY STUDIES GROUP PROJECT Inspired by the work of organisations such as Disabled Peoples' International, the disability studied group at the Open University (in Great Britain) has initiated a research project. We hope to identify information resources around the world that could be of value for disabled people and to make this information available to disabled people in accessible forms. The centre at the Open University sees its task as presenting a view of the mass of available data which will enable representative groups of disabled people to operate more effectively, to reinforce their efforts towards making disabled people around the world equal citizens in their own societies.The task of the centre is to build up a resource base that can assist disabled people participate in choices and create for themselves information and research facilities that meet their needs as they see them. The task ultimately is to empower people with disabilities by assisting them to obtain the information needed to carry through sound and innovative research on their own behalf. We shall explore the concept of participative research and hope to make contacts with people who support this concept. This enquiry is being pursued regardless of whether or not the focus of the participative research is on disability related matters. The thesis here is that people in minority groups who are in the weak role in power relationships are often further rendered powerless by obstacles and restrictions in access to information. There have been many examples of groups trying to carry out grassroots research and their experiences are of great potential value for disabled people setting out to undertake the same tasks. We shall attempt to carry through practical projects on making information available for development projects. The centre's projects will include working with other international networks concerned with development issues that share our perspectives. We hope to link up with many electronic conferences, lists and billboards around the world. 4/ DATABASE PROJECT One purpose of the ABLENET network is to facilitate the search for information that can be incorporated in proposed databases on development projects related to the needs of disabled people. These databases will we hope include details of organisations and projects controlled by disabled people around the world. Also to be included in this database are details of other projects and organisations of potential value to disabled people who are acting as agents for change in their own societies. Background to project Existing information sources are overwhelmingly orientated towards the traditional views of disabled people as dependent and passive receivers of services. In the main they are concerned with medical and rehabilitation approaches . However disabled people around the world are beginning to reject the role of helpless receiver of services and are demanding the right to make their own decisions about their own lives.The basic focus of attention for the centre's research will be on the relationship between the world as designed for able-bodied living and people with various bodily and mental impairments. At present this relationship is ill researched and knowledge of it fragmentary. We hope to provide a resource that will empower disabled people to construct for themselves information and research facilities that meet their needs as they themselves define them. Information needed for database In order to make concrete decisions that lead to changes in the relationship between disabled people and the able-bodied world disabled people need reliable and accessible information sources including data on: 1/ The existing sources of information, how to access them and how relevant they are to the work of disabled people in general and change agents in particular. This will include details of existing information sources relating to disability issues which incorporate traditional views of disabled people. 2/ Organisations and individuals who can provide support for appropriate action that assists disabled people to participate as full citizens in their own societies. These organisations include the various world development networks, computer conferences with special interest sections on relevant topics, and groups supporting participative research projects. It is clear that much work is being done by organisations and groups that do not have a specialised interest in disabled people but do have an interest in the support and development of grassroots initiatives. 3/ Development approaches that have worked for disabled people and which incorporate the new worldviews outlined above. Information also on how to make contact with the people responsible for the relevant projects so that others can share their experiences and avoid needlessly repeating work done elsewhere. It is expected that this will be the core information service provided by the database at the Open University when fully developed. ****************************************************************** *********************************************** 5/ REQUEST FOR INFORMATION We would be most grateful for any information on relevant projects or initiatives. The basic information required is: 1* the title of the organisation concerned, 2* contact address of the organisation, 3* any electronic mail or conference facilities, 4* online computer access facilities, 5* documentation collections held 6* advisory services 7* whether the facilities are accessible to disabled people, 8* name of a contact person where possible, 9* a brief indication of the scope of the organisations work. Relevant publications are also welcomed, as is information on conferences and seminars. ********************************************************* 6/ SUMMARY We are particularly interested in building up working relationships for information exchange with existing databases and documentation centres in overlapping and parallel fields. As a starting point we need to find out where the existing information resources are, and what initiatives have already been taken. We also need to investigate the experiences of organisations and projects working from the perspective of appropriate development, community action and other approaches to grassroots action. We shall seek to identify networks such as the International Federation for Development Action "Third System Project" and the CONTACT-0 net in Latin America. Such networks could offer disabled people pathways to action which are at present not clearly available. We can then make this information available to all those who can make use of it to change the present situation, whether they are disabled people or human services professionals of a new breed. We must look to information technology to help us in this world-wide search and to make the information available in an accessible manner. Making accessible includes the establishment and support of local or specialised information networks. I stress again that a prime aim of the project is to assist the growth of an information and research capacity responsible directly to organisations of disabled people. From time to time we must expect these resources to be employed to criticise academic efforts in this field, including the work of the centre at the Open University. 7/ CONTRIBUTIONS WELCOME Contributions, comments, suggestions for names to be added to the list are all welcome! Edis Bevan ------------------------------ Re: The Ultimate Interface Doug Salot (doug@feedme.UUCP) Rob Jellinghaus wrote: > Perhaps something like William Gibson's "cyberspace" will become the > prevailing metaphor; you'll move through shimmering spaces of data on > your screen... Screen? I don't need no stinking screen. I want a real *user* interface, you know, like a DB-25 in my forehead. Of course, the gender of the connector would match the gender of the user, so that sex would still be fun. All seriousness aside, they make hearing aids that connect to the auditory nerve, don't they. Heck, I'd settle for an optical nerve gateway. But what would Nancy Reagan and Tipper Gore think? Doug Salot ------------------------------ Re: Urban legends -- gyroscopic drum memory Dennis Hamilton (deh0654@sjfc.UUCP) Jonathan Eckrich wrote: > Larry Kollar wrote about a CDC disk flipping over a trailer truck... > I don't believe it. Here's why. > In order for the truck to tip over in a turn due to the spinning disks, > there is only ONE axis in which the disks could be spinning. That > axis would have to be lateral to the dimensions of the truck. Prior to the development of compact removable disk packs (with the introduction of the IBM System/360, essentially), disk stacks were large *and* non-removable. Although the first one was vertical (the IBM RAMAC unit), there were also some large units designed with horizontal axis of rotation. However, the story about disk stacks doesn't sound too credible: the moment of inertia of a disk stack is not nearly so impressive as that of a horizontally-axised *drum* with its large outer surface. The Fastrand I and II drum units were much more imposing in this regard, and the problem of shipboard use not something to be taken lightly. Concerning the story about shipboard 1108's, that is a mix of the wrong technology. Fastrand may have been considered for use aboard ship, though I can't imagine their placement on anything smaller than a cruiser or aircraft carrier. The computer technology would have been defense equipment out of Univac St. Paul, probably something between the CDC 1604 and Univac 49x in architecture. Although there is certainly a high degree of "urban legend" to these stories, the shipboard case is actually quite plausible. Whether the problem of gyroscopic effect was very difficult to remedy or not is a different matter. Someone who knows the masses involved in gyrostabilizers might want to indicate how hard or easy it is to interfere with the steering of a vessel. It would certainly be the case that motion of the ship would be a problem for the drive unit, and some sort of steps would have to be taken to minimize the resulting stresses. Fortunately, disk technology was revolutionized before there would have been much need to solve such problems on a regular basis. The current vertical-axis units must still present problems with respect to roll of the ship. I wonder what kind of special measures are taken, especially to prevent head crashes as the result of such forces interacting with the drive unit. Dennis E. Hamilton ------------------------------ Re: Urban legends Mike Van Pelt (vanpelt@unisv.UUCP) The story Larry Kollar wrote about CDC disks in a truck sounds very similar to a Univac legend, which I've been told was true. They put a Univac 1108 on a destroyer, complete with Fastrand drums. (A Fastrand drum is defined in "The Devil's DP Dictionary" as "A non-floppy rotating medium for the storage of angular momentum.") As in the CDC 18-wheeler story, everything was just fine until they tried to turn. There are two versions of the results: (1) They turned the wheel over, but the destroyer just kept going straight, and (2) the Fastrand drum cabinet ripped up out of the floor and rolled through a bulkhead. This really does have that "Urban Legend" sound to it... Mike Van Pelt ------------------------------ Re: Urban legends Jonathan Eckrich (johne@astroatc.UUCP) Larry Kollar wrote about a CDC disk flipping over a trailer truck... I don't believe it. Here's why. In order for the truck to tip over in a turn due to the spinning disks, there is only ONE axis in which the disks could be spinning. That axis would have to be lateral to the dimensions of the truck. I am not familiar with the drives that CDC used but I suspect that they spun on a vertical axis? The gyroscopic effect, refered to above, is called precesion. When a force is applied to the side of a spinning gyro, the gyro responds as if the force was actually applied at a position that is 90 deg. in the direction of the spin. If the axes of the disks where lateral with respect to the truck, and the direction of spin was counter clockwise (if viewed from standing to the left of the truck), then maybe, just maybe, it could happen. This would require extremely heavy platters AND very fast rotation, then the driver would have to make a fairly fast rate of turn. I'm cross posting this to rec.aviation, because gyros are commonly used in airplanes. <-------. __________ \ Rotation is counter clockwise. / \ / \ | . | |/ + | /\ / / \ . / / ^____|_____^ / | Apply force here. | Gyro responds as if force was applied here. Jonathan ------------------------------ what to do with all those MIPS Peter Nelson (nelson_p@apollo.UUCP) I wanted to raise a question about how rapid increases in compute power available to individual users will affect the way we use computers. Just lately, the amount of sheer compute power available to an individual user has been taking huge leaps. While noting that MIPS is a poorly defined term (some say Meaningless Indicator of Performance / Second), there is no doubt that there are about to be a lot of them out there. My company (Apollo) recently announced a workstation that will offer 40 - 100+ MIPS, depending on configuration. Startups Ardent and Stellar have also announced high-performance products and we may reasonably expect that Sun, HP, and Silicon-Graphics will have competing products on the market. Currently prices for these machines are in the $70K - $90K range but competition and a growing market will, no doubt, lower them. Modern workstations also allow the programmer to treat the network as a virtual computer. Paging across the network, subroutine calls to other nodes, and distributed processing are all common to architectures such as Apollo's. If I want to do a 'build' or 'make' involving dozens of compiles, I can distribute them accross the net so they will take little more time than one or two compiles on a single machine. Furthermore, the disk resources of the network, which may be many 10's or 100's of gigabytes are all transparently accessable to me. I suspect that ('the network is the computer') Sun may offer something along the same lines, and while I think that our other major competitors are still trying catch up in this area, clearly this is the way of the future. A few years ago the compute resources available to a single user may have been 1 or 2 MIPS and a few 10's of megabytes of virtual address space. A few years from now a typical user will have 100 MIPS and a seamless virtual address space of gigabytes, not to mention decent graphics, for a change. A transparent heterogeneous CPU-environment will round out the improvements I was wondering whether any of this will change the way we use com- puters or the kinds of things we do with them. Most of what I've seen so far is people doing the Same Old Things, just faster. Now we can ray-trace an image in 5 minutes that used to take an hour; now we can do a circuit simulation in an hour that used to run overnight; now we can do a 75-compile 'build' in 5 minutes that used to take hours, etc. I'm concerned that we (or I, anyway) may lack imagination. The basic tools of my trade (software engineer) are compilers, linkers, interactive debuggers and software control products (DSEE, in this case). I've used things like this for years. The ones I have now are faster, and fancier than what I had a few years ago but they're not fundamentally different in concept. CAD packages allow the user to enter a schematic, say, and do a simulation or do the routing and ultimately even the chip geometry, but except that they can do it faster now, and handle more gates, tighter design rules, etc, they are not fundamentally different in concept than what engineers were using 5 years ago. Database systems still do similar things to what they've always done as well, just faster, with more data, and better pie-charts (or whatever). Does anyone have any thoughts about whether (of if or when) huge leaps in compute resources might result in fundamentally *different* ways of using computers? We always used to worry about being 'disk-bound' or 'CPU-bound' or 'network-bound'. Are we in any danger of becoming 'imagination bound'? Peter Nelson ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: Until further notice, the info server info@atom will not be available. We're working on restoring service, but it might be a while, so please bear with us. Articles for submission to the digest should be sent to the editor, Dave Taylor, at either of the following electronic addresses: comp-soc@hplabs.hp.com ...!hplabs!comp-soc This digest is published approximately weekly, the articles representing the views of the authors, not the Computers and Society Digest editorial staff, Hewlett-Packard, or anyone else. The copyright to each article is owned by the author, the copyright of the entire digest (including format) is (C) Copyright 1988 Dave Taylor. Unless otherwise explicitly stated, any article can be retransmitted as long as an appropriate citation of the source is included. ___________________________________________________________________________ | | | End of Computers & Society Digest | |___________________________________________________________________________|