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.bb Computers and Automation by Michael L. Dertouzos

	I agree with the picture presented in this paper except for
some secondary issues which, however, seem to me important in getting
an accurate picture:

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	#. The shoe-making scenario shows too many distinct machines
to be economically feasible.  If the made-to-order shoes are to be
available while the customer waits, then there must be a great
excess of production capacity, because demand concentrates on certain
days and at certain hours.  Therefore, the machinery serving a customer
must be inexpensive.  This can be achieved, but it will require that
the same manipulator do the cutting as does the sewing or other
fastening.  It may even have to be the same machine that gets the
materials from the boxe∂ in which they are stored.  Thus it will
have to be closer to the general-purpose robot than is shown in
the illustratons and text of the article.

It may be appropriate for the shoe making to take place in a
shop that can make other items, e.g. clothes as well.  Incidentally,
home computer terminals and keeping personal files in public
computer systems will come before automatic manufacture so that
your foot dimensions will be kept in your private files, and you
needn't carry a special shoe card.

	#. The heterarchical systems predicted seem too ⊗sociomorphic (if
one may use that word for a structure modeled on human society).
The part about each traffic control computer being connected precisely
to its four neighbors reminds one of Phe Illiac 4 disaster.

	#. The intuition that distributed computers can do more
than a single computer of equivalent total power seems disprovable.
On the other hand, it can probably be shown that some tasks cannot
be divided among a number of processors without arbitrarily large
losses of efficiency.

	#. The results of Julesz using random dot stereograms shows
that edges, etc. can be perceived after the images from the two
eyes are fused.

	#. There is a qualitative difference between servo-mechanisms
and problem solving programs.  The latter can decide to go in the
opposite direction from the goal if analysis shows that this is
required.

	#. The postulated arithmetic atrophy seems plausible, but
the article reads as if it has been actually observed.  Has it?

	#. Unless an innovation actually displaces labor, it shouldn't
be adopted and usually isn't.  With so many people working harder
than they wish and getting less pay than they wish, the saving
of human labor is still the most desirable goal for society as
a whole.  Of course, an individual whose skills are made obsolete
by an innovation may be adversely affected and may bargain for
a share of the benefits of the innovation to compensate.
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.bb Noyce

	There is one dimension of possible improvement of integrated
circuit technology not mentioned in this paper.  This is the possibiliy
of a technology that will reduce the time necessary to make a small
number of integrated circuits, the cost of a small run, and the
capital required to make them.  The extreme would be a computer controlled
device using (say) electron beam technology that would permit the
production of a single integrated circuit in a few minutes according
to a computer prepared design.  Let us suppose that such a device were
within the financial resources of a laboratory.

	How far can one forsee going in this direction?