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.cb COMMENTS ON DERTOUZOS PAPER


	I agree with Dertouzos' fundamental contention that information
processing technology will enable us %2"to reverse some of the
impersonal and dehumanizing consequences of the industrial revolution"%1.
- at least to reverse what are perceived as these consequences.  We
shall indeed have individually designed shoes and clothes at a
price close to that of the mass produced product.
On the other hand I find the detailed picture rather implausible
for reasons I can't always quite state.

	My basic problem is that Dertouzos sees the various marvels
as straightforward improvements of present trends.  Therefore, he
tends to project present ideas to the achievement of these goals.
I think we are at least one scientific revolution away from the
`level of artificial intelligence required to achieve many of the
objectives present in this paper.  Therefore, the future will be
more intellectually surprising than the paper suggests.

	Here are some specific disagreements, mostly minor:
.item←0;

	#. Like most writers, Dertouzos jumps to conclusions
about the relation between technology and employment.  Looking
at the past, American industrial productivity has grown by
more than an order of magnitude since 1900.  Unemployment
levels are similar, and their is no correlation between
specific advances in technology and the level of unemployment.
The economic servomechanisms governing employment have a much
shorter time-scale than technological advance.  They can handle
much faster rates of advance than are likely in this country.
For example, they can handle the ten percent per year advance
that Japan experienced during the 1960s.  The error is like
someone trying to predict the effect of a change in the gain
of a stage of a feedback amplifier on the output.  There is
an effect, but it is completely masked by the feedback loop.
Unfortunately, we don't yet know how to control the economic
feedback loop.

	#. Count me with those who believe there is nothing
qualitatively new in connecting computers together.  I think
one can prove mathematically that one computer can simulate
n-interacting computers at a speed of approximately 1/n
times real time.

	#. While "arithmetic atrophy" of some kind seems
plausible, I'll bet $50 that Dertouzos can't cite a study
actually observing it (written before December 1976).

	#. One false note in the shoe scenario is the card.
The home terminal and personal data files will almost certainly
precede the shoe-maker, so one's measurements will be stored
in one's home files and so will the results of new measurements.