00100	                     COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
00200	
00300	                         STANFORD UNIVERSITY
00400	
00500	                     Stanford, California 94305
00600	
00650	                           August 15, 1971
00700	
00710	
00720	Dr. Dennis Gabor
00730	CBS Laboratories
00740	Stamford, Connecticut
00750	
00800	Dear Dr. Gabor:
00900	
01000		I  am  afraid it is lack of imagination on your part when you
01100	assert that there are no more inventions of  the  importance  of  the
01200	telephone  to  be  made.  (I take this to be the import of the phrase
01300	"exhaustion of primitive desires by past inventions") Let me  list  a
01400	few  fundamental inventions left to be made and reasons why they will
01500	have as much effect on human life as the telephone:
01600	
01700		1.  A universal automatic transportation system for  material
01800	goods.   Thus, when you order something from the store, it appears in
01900	a port in the wall of your apartment after a while.   Its realization
02000	requires  mainly  a  reduction  in  the cost of mechanical devices in
02100	human labor plus computer control plus a good design.
02200	
02300		2.  Computer driven automobiles which can go to a  keyboarded
02400	destination  without  any  human  control.    This will give children
02500	freedom of motion in the suburbs, reduce  the  need  for  new  super-
02600	highways  by  increasing the capacity of the present ones, and reduce
02700	accidents.
02800	
02900		3.  The private flying machine that can  fly  door  to  door.
03000	This  can  probably be done with a computer-flown airplane that takes
03100	off and lands from a catapult (to reach 64 feet per  second  velocity
03200	in  16 feet requires that the passengers withstand 4g for 1/2 second)
03300	and which  uses  the  Lockheed  developed  techniques  of  low  noise
03400	airplanes.
03500	
03600		4. A public safety system that will permit children and women
03700	to go anywhere at any time without  fear  of  attack.   It  would  be
03800	better  to  achieve  this  by social means, but it can be achieved by
03900	ubiquitous surveillance recording TV cameras whose records are looked
04000	at only in case of crime.
04100	
04200		5.  The  home  computer  console  that gives everyone instant
04300	access to all the world's information plus other services.
04400	
04500		6.  The individualization of design via computers  that  will
04600	permit  individually  designed  articles at the present cost of mass-
04700	produced ones.
04800	
04900		7.  Finally, the household robot will make women's liberation
05000	really possible.
05100	
05200		A  burst  of  mechanical  invention  affecting  everyday life
05300	terminated  mainly  in  the  1920s  by   exhausting   most   of   the
05400	possibilities  of simple mechanical devices without computer control.
05500	The main effect of mechanical invention since this time has  been  to
05600	extend  the  previous  goodies  to larger sections of the population.
05700	This makes the upper classes restless since they don't see the spread
05800	of  refrigerators and color TV to the blacks as progress.  However, a
05900	new wave of goodies like those mentioned above will start soon.
06000	
06100		I was really shocked at the  introduction  to  your  book  on
06200	innovation;  I  would  not  have  expected so much cliche pessimistic
06300	rhetoric from the author of "Inventing the Future".   You  must  have
06400	attended  too  many  symposia  with literary types. Let me give a few
06500	examples:
06600	
06700		1.  "How long can it take before the toll of air traffic will
06800	approach  the level of road deaths?" 1970 was the first year in which
06900	there were no deaths on scheduled airliners in  the  U.S.  There  are
07000	many ways in which collisions can be avoided in the air even if there
07100	were as many planes in the air as there are cars on the ground.   The
07200	problem  gets easier all the time, and eventually it will get so easy
07300	that even the clowns in the FAA will solve it.
07400	
07500		2. The problem you quote from de Jouvenel has always existed.
07600	Its precise formulation is new, and, as you quote it, it is teachable
07700	to high school students.
07800	
07900		3.  Your assertion "The most important and urgent problems of
08000	the  technology  of  today  are no longer the satisfaction of primary
08100	needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of  the  evils  and
08200	damages  wrought  by  the technology of yesterday." Perhaps you might
08300	say that the  need  for  birth  control  technology  in  India  is  a
08400	consequence  of  the  technology  of  disease control.   However, the
08500	biggest famine in world history according to the Britannica  occurred
08600	in  India  in 1769.  The difference is that in 1769, Americans didn't
08700	even hear of the famine, let alone  feel  any  responsibility  to  do
08800	something about it.
08900	
09000		4.  "...most  thinking Americans are filled with grave doubts
09100	about the sanity of their society." Society is not a  person  with  a
09200	mind that can be sane or insane.  True, like a person, it can be said
09300	to make decisions which are often bad.  However, to  use  words  like
09400	"sanity"  in  referring  to society only muddles thought and makes it
09500	harder to formulate the problem of making correct  social  decisions.
09600	To  put  it  bluntly, it seems to me that when you use such language,
09700	you are merely currying favor with the literati; it can't be  natural
09800	to you as a scientist.
09900	
10000		5.  "...the insane quantitative growth must stop".  Does this
10100	mean that India must not be allowed to produce  100,000,000  tons  of
10200	steel a year, for example?  How do you propose to stop them?
10300	
10400		The  predictions  in the book that involve computers were not
10500	very good because the right questions weren't asked.  The  effect  of
10600	the  Delphi  technique is to average opinions, and the average expert
10700	in the current way of doing things hasn't really  thought  about  the
10800	future  in  an imaginative way.  When I received the Institute of the
10900	Future questionnaire on computers, I could  hardly  bring  myself  to
11000	answer the questions, they were so unimaginative.
11100	
11200		I  should  finally  mention that the survey of innovations in
11300	your book is quite useful even if it  is  not  comprehensive  in  the
11400	sense it was intended to be.
11500	
11600	
11700						Sincerely yours,
11800	
11900	
12000	
12100						John McCarthy
12200	
12300	P.S.  I hope you can bring yourself to answer this letter in spite of
12400	its complete lack of tact. I enclose printouts of two essays in order
12500	to show what I mean, and if your are agreeable  to  discussing  these
12600	issues  personally, the time will surely come when you are in my part
12700	of the country or I am in yours.