[117] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Computerspeak
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Public-Access Computer Systems For)
Wed Apr 29 15:13:34 1992
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1992 13:47:12 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
From: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS%UHUPVM1.BITNET@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.BITNET>
4 Messages, 148 Lines
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From: Rita <rita@eff.org>
Subject: Re: Computerspeak
>At the risk of starting a flame war, I'd like to point out a couple of recent
>titles that assess the risk of technology altering culture, specifically the
>technology of computers.
Comp.risks is a terrific source, and is far more up-to-date than
a book can be. It is moderated, and comes in digested form.
>Neil Postman's _Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology_ (Alfred
>A. Knopf, 1992) attempts to refute the machine-as-life or machine as
>human metaphor and to warn of the dangers of trusting the judgment of
>data displayed, printed, spoken by or otherwise disseminated by computers. He
>mentions the ARPANET worm incident of November 4, 1988 as "the most chilling
>case of how deepy our language is absorbing the 'machine as human' metaphor"
>(p. 113). Postman, however, appears to have missed the significance of the
>Internet and public-access computer systems as a viable and relevant form of
>communication.
I have a hard time taking seriously someone who hasn't realized
that the ARPANET was already the Internet by 1988. That's a really big
leap in computer-based communications that he's completely missed: the
transformation from a primarily military and research-based network
to one that is used for other purposes as well. This was well underway
by the time the worm was released and was indeed a factor in the incident.
Czarina
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From: "Elizabeth H. Wood" <ewood@phad.hsc.usc.edu>
Subject: RE: Computerspeak
Another thought about chaining computers to the desk the way books used to be
chained: we still protect books with tattle-tapes et al. Doesn't this mean
that the information is VALUABLE and worth protecting. If we are the
"guardians" of information, doesn't make us valuable too?
Elizabeth H. Wood
Head, Reference Section
University of Southern California
Norris Medical Library
(213) 342-1483
FAX (213) 221-1235
ewood@phad.hsc.usc.edu
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From: MJENSEN@CHARLIE.USD.EDU (Mary Brandt Jensen)
Subject: RE: Computerspeak
Lee,
Years ago, maybe centuries ago, the books really were chained down
like the computers are today. As the computers become as integrated in our
lives as books have, the chains will disappear just as they did with the
books and just as copy protection disappeared from a lot of software. The
customer just won't stand for it. If we want the industry and the technology
to respond to our needs, we must be far sighted enough to recognize those
needs, and communicate them. What we often see as new developments is what
the technology suggests to the engineers. It doesn't satisfy our wants or
desires because those engineers don't understand us well enough to crystal
ball gaze and see what we want. We often don't even know ourselves. We
all know that current displays can't substitute for the readibility of
paper. We can tell them that displays weigh too much, have too much glare
and can't be toted to bed like a book, but so far as I know we haven't told
them what would satisfy us or make us use displays for recreational reading
as we do paper books. I'm not even sure we have any idea of what would
be acceptable. If we can't communicate our desires on something as universal
as the readability of a paperback, how can we expect the engineers to
understand what technology will inspire an artist to use a computer to
create or what technology will help us master the universe of information.
Given time, we will learn enough about the technology to do our own crystal
ball gazing and tell the engineers of what we dream. Just as given time
enough people in the world learned to read, learned to buy books and learned
to communicate to the publishing world what kinds of books they like to read
and what kind they don't like and thus won't buy. It took several centuries
with books. I don't think we should be too upset at a few decades with
computers. We've come a long way in the past decade. Have a little patience,
and I think you will find that we will go even further in the next. Have
a little patience with the technology and the industry.
Mary Brandt Jensen University of South Dakota
Director of the Law Library School of Law
Associate Professor of Law 414 E. Clark St.
MJENSEN@CHARLIE.USD.EDU Vermillion, SD 57069-2390
(605) 677 6363 Fax (605) 677 5417
*----
From: I_M_Dierks%MWCORP1@mwmgate1.MITRE.ORG
Subject: RE: Computerspeak
I too was at first enraged by the analogy, but when I calmed
down and gave it some thought I could see that it was apt.
Networking information resources is exciting and does
provide greater access -- to those with computers and
modems. I can see a day when most information sources will
be in electronic format. I can see a day when the public
library as we know it will be obsolete. How will people who
have no access to networks obtain information? There will
be even greater distances between the rich and powerful
(those with access to information) and the poor who have no
voice and no acess to resources that can empower them. Then
we will again be living in the Dark Ages when only a small
segment of the society was literate and when information
resources were closely guarded. That's what the "chained
PCs" analogy brought to my mind.
Ingrid Dierks
idierks@mitre.org
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From: cjg@stubbs.ucop.edu (Czeslaw Jan Grycz, UC Office of the President)
Subject: RE: Computerspeak
One of the cultural differences between the early book and the contemporary
computer is that the early book was not readily sharable. The cost of
materials, the labor of painstakingly copying it, the very nature of its
physicality restricted its use to a single location. As a resource, it was
so valuable that its being chained to the table was an understandable
development.
The book evolved, however, from that quite elite artifact, to a form loaded
into racks in airports: an almost throwaway commodity.
The microcomputer unconsciously incorporates much of the historical
development of the book. Proponents of computers are predisposed to
ubiquitous access and maximum flexibility of use wherever one happens to be
(witness the enthusiastic response to laptops). The idea of chaining a
computer to a table in an educational environment is, accordingly,
regressive and anathama in that view.
However, two factors inhibit improved "performance" of the media. (1)
Social adaptability takes considerably longer than technological
adaptability. (2) Software lags behind hardware.
(1) It will take longer for administrators and teachers to consider the
computers in their schools as expense line items rather than capital line
items. With the rate of improvement and development of hardware, one can
no longer expect that a computer purchased today will still be suitable in
1997. Yet we budget and plan for their purchase as if they were capital
items, and are disappointed at the fact that they never quite seem to be as
good as what we hear computers can do.
(2) Until we develop truly responsive and useful programs to help students
get what _they_ want and need, we will be condemned to promoting
infotainment, which is really unsatisfactory to everyone.
Until these two characteristics change, "performance", is apt to continue
to be desultory.
Chet Grycz
