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Comments on "The Scoial Framework of the Information Society: The
Coming Age of Communication and Control" - by Daniel Bell

Effects of information overload

Adequacy of materials

How does the future depend on specific technological facts

"Compunication" is a dirty word.

Bureaucracies that get too large develop internal interest groups.
Like his previous example of universities getting too large.

The protection against instability is diversity of political units.

The extent to which competitive success depends on good theories,
decision theory, etc. is alas not as great as Bell suggest.

The RR and time micronovel. illusion of progress, p.195

detailed facts about Arpanet.

what if we can do bureaucracy more efficiently?  The knowledge
industry has its diseases.  The social workers are more disaffected
than factory workers.

What about a division of the population into those whose livelihood
depends on someone buying their product and those whose services
are purchased by government compulsion.

illusion of progress

	It isn't made clear which social projections of the future are
considered to be founded on economic and sociological reasoning
and which depend on specific projections of likely technology.
Some of the conclusions seem to me to be founded on technological
projections which, while plausible, are not necessarily the way
technology will lead us:

Here are some examples:

	#. A major projection is that the relative importance of
information handling industries relative to manufacturing will
continue to increase.  It seems to me that this could be affected
by two kinds of development.  First, there could be a new expensive
desirable invention.  Thus suppose a reliable quiet personal flying
machine that could land anywhere were invented, and it cost α$75,000.
Suppose further that it was automatic so that children and other
non-drivers could use it, and it was fast enough to permit commuting
from 250 miles.  It could very quickly come to dominate the economy,
because peopple would strive to afford it, and millions would be
employed producing them.  On the other hand, the growth of the
"knowledge" industry could be reversed by new discoveries in automating
paper work.  Once firms and individuals keep all records in computers
and communicate electronically, there will be an enormous payoff in
making interfirm and interpersonal transactions automatically.  The
public will even demand that the government bureaucracy stop asking
citizens questions to which it already has the answer.