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C00002 00002	Abstract: The real "computer revolution" hasn't happened yet, because
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C00016 00005	ENDING INFORMATION MONOPOLY
C00017 00006	#. News Service
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Abstract: The real "computer revolution" hasn't happened yet, because
people  don't yet  use computers  in  their daily  lives.   When most
people have home  computer terminals with access  to all the  world's
public  information, it  will revolutionize  the way  we conduct  our
personal business,  the way we learn new skills, the way we read, the
way information is published  and sold, the conduct of  political and
other controversy, and the way people decide what to buy.

	The  technology for home  computer terminals is  already here
and  cheap  enough  although  it  will  get  much  cheaper,  but  the
organizational  problems  of  creating  new  public  utilities  whose
functions overlap present ones are formidable.

	This  paper  treats the  services  that can  be  offered, why
people will  want  them, why  they  are revolutionary,  the  relevant
technology and  its costs, some  social problems associated  with the
new  technology - especially the problem  of minimizing monopoly, and
some experimental facilities developed at Stanford University.

PRECURSORS


	The technology of the home terminal will develop from present
time-sharing technology.  In this section, we will describe the relevant
features of the present advanced time-sharing systems and also some
experimental facilities at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.


TIME-SHARING COMPUTER SYSTEMS


	A %2time-sharing monitor%1 on a computer allows each user
to behave independently of the others - as though he had a computer
of his own.  The monitor program does this by keeping track of what
users currently require service and serving the first in line until
it either finishes or until it has received a quantum of computer
time.  Since the quantum time is usually a small fraction of a second,
a computer can give effectively instant service to a small request
provided it is not too heavily loaded.

	Most time-sharing systems are special purpose and can only do
specific tasks for their users like reserving an airline seat.
A general purpose system gives a user the following services:

	1. He can create text files using an ⊗editor program.  These
files can be computer programs or ordinary text like this article or
a book. 
An editor is much more convenient than a typewriter, because mistakes
are readily corrected and changes made.  New text can be inserted
anywhere, and old text can be moved around or deleted.  Occurrences
of particular words or phrases can be found and systematically changed
if this is wanted.


	2. Files created using the editor or generated by the computer
are kept in the machine until deleted - for years
if necessary.  At any time they can be read by their owner or anyone
else he allows access to them.  They can be modified by using the
same editor program and printed copies can be made.  This article was
composed using an editor, modified many times, and the printed
copy was produced on a Xerox Graphics Printer that allows arbitrary
type fonts.
Our computer has about one billion characters of file storage - enough
for 2000 average size books.

	3.  Today most of the use of most general purpose time-sharing
systems is for computer programming.  Files of programs and data are
created, the programs are translated from various programming languages
into machine language, and the programs are debugged and run.  However,
the non-programming use of time-sharing systems is increasing, and
eventually it will dominate.

	Here are some of these uses:

	1. Correspondence.  Letters are prepared on the computer
with fewer mistakes and these are more easily corrected.  They are
automatically filed.  Fewer secretaries are required, because many
people do their own letters and the remaining secretaries are more
productive.

	2. Messages.  
Notes on inclusions:

1. All non-secret government proceedings should be on-line
for citizen inspection.  This includes Congressional and
regulatory hearings, the rationalizations of regulations,
who can be asked for an exception to a regulation, and all
government books and pamphlets.

2. Remember to badmouth science reporting both in the article
and at the press conference.

3. ns, read, comment,message from Sarah.
what about badmouthing ibm with putting cards in cardreader
ENDING INFORMATION MONOPOLY


	
#. News Service

	We have subscribed to the Associated Press (A-wire) and
New York Times news services and connected the wires that normally
operate a teletype from these services to the computer.  The computer
hardware regards these news sources as teletypes.  A program in the
computer - sharing time with the other uses - receives the stories
as they come in, indexes them by all non-trivial words that occur in
the stories and files them on the disk.  The program keeps two weeks'
stories organized by days.

	Any user of the computer can give the command NS to the
monitor after which he is typing to the News Service program which
asks him for a %2keyword expression%1.  An example of such an
expression is MOSCOW-KISSINGER which would give stories from or
containing the word MOSCOW that did not contain the word KISSINGER.
(A reasonable command if you already know all you want to about
Kissinger's current trip to Moscow).  The program might type "12
stories found" and display as much of the first story as fits on
the screen.  The user can then read the first story or go on to
other stories.  If it says there are 75 stories, the user might
refine his request before looking at more actual stories.  Facilities
are provided for copying stories into files, printing them on
the line printer, asking to be notified when stories come in
satisfying particular keyword expression.  The default option is to
look at only the current day's stories.

	In its present state, the program is rather crude.  Whether
a person prefers it to a newspaper depends on whether his news interests
are narrow or broad, whether he has a terminal in his office,
and whether the computer is lightly enough loaded so that
the waits are not annoying.  Currently, the computer is too heavily
loaded for much use of the news service.