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C00002 00002	.TURN ON "α"
C00004 00003	.EVERY HEADING(Home Terminals, ,{DATE})
C00007 00004	.cb INTRODUCTION
C00041 00005	.cb HOW WE GET THERE FROM HERE
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.cb THE HOME INFORMATION TERMINAL
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.cb "John McCarthy, Stanford University"
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%3Abstract:%1 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 how we decide what to buy.

	The  technology for ⊗information ⊗utilities serving
home  computer terminals is  already here
and  cheap  enough  and will  get  much  cheaper,  but  the
organizational  problems  of  creating  new  public  utilities
are formidable.

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

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.cb INTRODUCTION


	There has been a scientific and technological "computer revolution",
but it hasn't much affected daily life except to improve living
standards by making goods and services with less labor.%51%1

.SEND FOOT ⊂ BEGIN SPACING 0; SELECT 7
	1. The prevalent belief that technology is
changing the world faster and faster, and people can't adapt to it -
is wrong.  In fact, the inventions brought into use
since World War II such as TV, jet travel and the pill
have affected daily life much less than those
adopted between 1890 and 1920 such as
electric lights, piped-in gas, telephones, automobiles, and
mechanical refrigeration affected the life of that time.
For most people, computers,
nuclear energy, lasers, and DNA are just names in the news, because
no-one cares whether his electric bill was prepared by a typist or
a computer or whether the light goes on because of burning coal
or fissioning uranium.

	Since people take health and prosperity as only their just
deserts, maybe the lack of technological innovation in daily life
contributes to the anti-technological intellectual fads.  This lack
is temporary, because cheap information processing will lead to
many more popular inventions than those discussed in this paper.
.END ⊃

	Since World War II, the technology of transforming information
has become ever cheaper and more powerful.
It will keep getting cheaper - if only because
the technology of integrated circuits is far from using up the
engineering possibilities offered by the science on which it is
based.  The advance in the qualitative possibilities of transforming
information is also large, but progress requires
continued conceptual advance.

	Computer technology now makes possible new services that will
give us new significant new options in our daily lives.

	Within the twenty years and beginning within the next five,
the home computer terminal will revolutionize the way we conduct our
personal business as much as the automobile revolutionized the way
we get around.  It will also revolutionize the way information is
distributed in our society, and this will have substantial
effects on politics and education.

	The terminal itself will be rather like those already in use
by computer programmers, airline and other reservation clerks, etc.
consisting of a typewriter keyboard and a display for text and
pictures.  The revolution will come not from the terminals themselves
but from the information services provided by the computers to which
the terminals are connected and by the access to nation-wide sources
of information.

	The purpose of this paper is to outline the services that
can be provided, identify some of the important effects, describe the
necessary technology, and identify the areas in which institutional
changes will be forced by the technology.  (By %2forced%1, I mean
that institutions not making the changes will go out of business
unless new ways of doing business are made illegal).

.SKIP 2
.cb HOME INFORMATION SERVICES

	Visionaries have often envisaged homes equipped  with
information  terminals each consisting of a typewriter keyboard and a
screen capable of displaying one or more pages of print and pictures.
The  terminal  would  be  connected  by  the  telephone  system to a
time-shared computer which in turn has access to files containing all
books,  magazines,  newspapers,  catalogs,  airline  schedules,  much
all government and commercial information subject to the Freedom of
Information Act and the like, together with any information the citizen
himself wishes to keep, e.g. his correspondence, bills paid, medical
records, insurance policies, and serial numbers of personal property.

	Through  the  terminal  the  subscriber  can get any information he
wants,  can  buy  and  sell,  can  communicate  with  persons   and
institutions, can receive and pay his bills and taxes,
and process information in other useful ways.

.ITEM←0;
.bb "#. Reading"

	We  can  start  with ordinary reading.  To get a newspaper or
book, I type its name or number and the first page appears.  The most
obvious benefits are:

	&. I can get any document instantly.
Since the desire to read a particular book or article is often fleeting,
much more will be read if access is guaranteed and immediate.

	&.  My  house  isn't  full  of  paper to be sorted and put on
shelves and dusted or put in the trash.  Trees aren't cut  down,  and
air pollution doesn't result from burning the stuff.

Some immediately apparent disadvantages are:

	&. The expense.  I'll deal with this later.

	&. I  can't read  in bed.   The  book-size portable  terminal
will  come later.   A  household may  require several  terminals, and
until the  book-terminal  is  available,  we will  probably  have  to
compromise  with ecological sin  and  provide  a printer  until then.

	There are two other immediate negative reactions:

	&.  The average citizen is a TV  fan and doesn't read anyway.
In the  first place, a home terminal system  doesn't need more than a
small minority  of the population  as subscribers  to be  economical,
so if you read, you will benefit whether he does or not.
Secondly, after  I have described  all the  bells and whistles,   you
will see  that even the TV fan will be tempted, and you - oh socially
conscious reader -  may even want  to coerce him  into buying one  or
coerce the government into giving him one for free.

	&. How  can you  think of  one more  convenience and  comfort
when the world will  come to an end in ten years unless menaces A, B,
and C are dealt with immediately?  In the first place, I  don't think
the world  is about  to come  to an end  or even  that it  is getting
worse.  In the second  place, you  will see that  the new information
system will make the public more responsive to  the careful reasoning
of you good  guys and more immune to the  blatant propaganda of those
bad guys.

	In order to see some of the social effects of
the  new  information  system,
suppose  that all book and newspaper information were so distributed.
What changes would occur?

	At present, a newspaper, magazine or book is a package produced by  a
large  organization.  With the information utility, the physical production
and distribution
disappears, allowing a much smaller organization to put out the  same
packages  of  text  and pictures.  Moreover, the user does not face a
one shot decision to buy ⊗Time or ⊗Newsweek.  He will be able to  read  the
"cover"  or  table of contents of each, read such items as strike his
fancy, and the system will bill him  for  what  he  reads  from  each
source.   In fact, since the cost of keeping a file of information in
the computer and making it publicly available will be small,  even  a
high  school  student  could  compete with the ⊗New ⊗Yorker if he could
write well enough and if word  of  mouth  and  mention  by  reviewers
brought him to public attention.      What, then, is a magazine in
the information utility?

	A magazine is an organization that  puts  out  a  list  of
material  it  has edited and recommends to its readers.  It helps its
authors produce material that it thinks will suit the readers, and it
has a financial arrangement with them about splitting the proceeds.
It may or may not have its own computer, and it is
unlikely that it would be profitable for it to own the disk files from
which the "issues" are accessed by readers.  More likely, it
would rent space on public utility disk files
and pay the utility to bill its readers.

	There  can  be  a  wide  variety of magazines with different
standards of writing and editing and different budgets  for  carrying
out  these  activities.  However, they will be equally accessible
to readers, and an expensive editorial
organization will be profitable only if it
can produce a package that a large group of people prefers to
the bare output of the writers.  The
price of reading a package will be set by the publishers.

	Famous  authors  may not need publishers because their loyal
readers will have the system find their stuff automatically.

	A common complaint about newspapers from readers and reporters
alike is their shallowness.  This comes from the editorial necessity
of producing a general interest package every day.  The new form of
publication will permit a reporter specializing in a country or a
topic to produce articles as long as he pleases so long as he also
produces the short items for the casual reader.  The %2New York Times%1
correspondent in Constantinople will be able to fully satisfy
the fans of Byzantine politics, and there needn't be more than a few
hundred of them to pay his salary.

	A reader may feel that he  needs  help  in  finding  his  way
through  the totality of literature available to him.   People
will be eager to make a living providing it.      A  bookstore  or
library  is  a  program  that shows  the  "covers"  of
publications.    Reviewers will produce lists for him and make  money
when  he  reads  their  lists  or  by  kickbacks from the publishers.
⊗Reading ⊗advisers under some catchier name will  offer  to  generate
lists just for him according to a profile of his interests.
A more exotic possibility is that programs may be written to identify
writings that were liked by a large percentage of the few science
fiction fans who have read them and bring them to the attention
of a much larger science fiction public.  If a fraction of the science
fiction fans were willing to look at a random sample of the "slush pile" of new
writing, then the system could function without any official
editors at all.
Presumably people who thought they could tell writers how to write
better would offer their services directly to the writers.

	Advertising  in  the sense of something that can force itself
on the attention of a reader will disappear because it  will  be  too
easy  to  read  via  a program that screens out undesirable material.
However, people will still want to know what is  for  sale  and  will
still  want  to  see the seller's story about why they should buy it.
Probably, ⊗Time will still be able to get money from advertisers; many
people  will still want to know what is advertised in ⊗Time, but those
who don't want to know will be able to avoid it automatically.

	Another effect is the possibility of  frequent  revisions  of
articles  and  books.    An author can take into account new facts or
other  people's  criticisms,  and  the  revision  will  take   effect
immediately.      This  raises  1984ish  possibilities, so it must be
provided that old versions remain available.  Those who  suspect  the
whole system will keep their own copies of favorite material in their
private files, on microfilm, or even on paper.

	Public controversy can be carried out more expeditiously than
at  present.  If I read something that seems controversial, I can ask
the system if anyone has filed a reply.     This,  together  with  an
author's  ability  to revise his original statement, will lead people
to converge on considered positions more quickly than at present even
if they do not come to actual agreement.

	This ability to answer immediately and
make that answer available immediately to any reader of the original
statement will improve both politics and journalism.
The controversial style of both public figures and journalists is
profoundly corrupted by their present ability to ⊗hit-and-run. 
(Everyone notices how much more reasonable politicians are in small groups
within which dissent can be expressed).
When they know their readers will be able to see an answer
from the target of their criticism they will have to put their
arguments in ways that will withstand criticism rather than merely
in ways that have the most immediate effect.


	Freedom of information can be made more effective.  The Freedom
of Information Act requires that certain government records be available
to the public.  However, economics dictates that this information is
available in reading rooms usually in Washington.  So far, the main
beneficiaries of the act have been organizations that can afford
full time researchers to dig out the information and legal staffs
experienced in putting judicial spokes in administrative wheels.
If all public information has to be kept in publically accessible
computer systems, then the information will be nationally available.
Even before home terminals become widespread, rather small organizations
and libraries will be able to afford computer terminals and small
amounts of long distance connect time.  Therefore, we advocate that
%3it should be required immediately that public information be stored
in remotely accessible computer systems%1.  Organizations will be
able to acquire suitable terminals in months while it will take a
few years for the government agencies to implement putting the
information in computer systems.

	The financial  aspect  of  writing  would  presumably  be  as
follows:     a  piece of written material has a price for reading it.
(This price may be zero for amateur  writing,  political  propaganda,
advertising,  and  for scientific journals).  The reader's account is
debited  and  the  account  to  which   the   material   belongs   is
automatically credited.  The reader will have the system balk at what
he considers overpriced material.

	To summarize:      the information utility  will  promote
intellectual  competition by reducing the price of entry, will permit
readers to be selective, and will allow authors  to  revise  material
until  they  are satisfied that it withstands criticism as well as it
ever will.  This should make intellectual life more interesting.

	The object of these remarks is not to make a precise prediction of
what will happen but rather to show that the new technology will
support a much wider variety of institutional arrangements than
presently exists.


.bb "#. Effects on commerce and bureaucracy"

	The new information system will have  a  profound  effect  on
buying  and  selling.      Sellers of movies, groceries, automobiles,
plumbing services and cures for baldness will find it advantageous to
list  their  wares  in  the  information system together with current
prices and availability.    The user can place an order  through  the
system as he can by telephone, but he can do much more:

	&. If bills are "mailed" through the information system and
saved away in the user's private files, when he is ready to pay, they
can be presented one at a time and he can type Y or N according to
whether he wants to pay the bill now and the money will be transferred
immediately to the payee, and all necessary records will be kept.

	&. He can deal with federal, state, local and business
bureaucracies through his terminal.  Thus he can get the rules
governing dog licenses, fill out the forms, and pay for the license
through the terminal.  Incidentally, instead of putting the same
information on dozens of forms each year, he can have common pieces
of information like his address entered automatically; i.e. when
the automated questionaire says ADDRESS, he types OK, and his program
transmits the address, and when the questionaire transmits "MOTHER'S
MAIDEN NAME", he types NO, and his program transmits "None of your
business!".

	&.    He can call on someone's program to scan the sellers of
sports cars and propose what it considers the best deal. This program
might even negotiate with programs representing the sellers.

	&.    He  can  tell  the  system whether last year's cure for
baldness worked and a get a summary of  the  opinions  of  those  who
bothered  to record their opinions of the cure he contemplates trying
now.

	&. He can  make  an  airplane  or  hotel  reservation  by
interacting  with  a program the airline or hotel reservation company
has written to tell him what is available. He  need  not  suffer  the
delays  you  now get when you call an airline or travel agent at peak
hours.

	&. Individual design and construction services can be offered
through the system although this requires the development of computer
controlled manufacturing techniques for various types of article. The
idea  is  that  automated  design  programs  can  produce designs for
articles meeting individual specifications.  Either by himself or  in
consultation  with  an  expert, an individual would use the system to
produce a design and display how it would look and  possibly  how  it
would  perform.    Candidates for individual design include clothing,
furniture, boats, electronic equipment, houses, and even cars.    The
system  would  then  produce the instructions for controlling machine
tools, fabric cutters, and also printed  instructions  for  the  hand
parts  of  the  operation.  In general, it should be possible to make
single objects  at  little  more  cost  than  present  mass  produced
objects.     In some cases, there would even be savings, because mass
production  requires  estimates  of  demand  that  are  often   wrong
resulting  in  inventories that are expensive to sell or even have to
be sold at a loss; the cost of this is made up by a general  increase
in prices.

	Many  more  useful  services  can be offered
through the new information system and again the system is  conducive
to  competition.     Writing and storing a program and announcing its
availability can be a very low capital operation, and the system  can
collect whatever price has been set for its use.

.bb "#. Services that can be offered soon"

	We could go on listing services that would come to be offered
in a fully developed system, but now we shall list some  services  to
smaller  groups  of  users that are cheaper to provide and which will
help get the system started.

	&. Calculation  and  facilities  for  writing,  running,  and
debugging  computer  programs.      This doesn't interest the general
public much, but it is the present bread  and  butter  of  the  time-
sharing  service  bureaus  that  will  grow  into the new information
system.  At present, these service bureaus offer very convenient  way
of  doing  small  scientific and engineering calculations, but do not
offer reasonable prices for big computations, and are only  beginning
to offer useful services to business firms.

	&. Messages.  The cost of mail service is going steadily up
and its quality is going steadily down.  Already a letter costs more
to send than a local telephone call.  The ability to send a written
message that will be seen the next time a user sits down at his
computer terminal has proved very convenient to users of the
Defense Department sponsored ARPA net.  Already, if I type
"MAIL MINSKYα%MIT-AI When are you coming to California next?", the
message "When are you coming to California next?" will be received
by Minsky at M.I.T. the next time he uses his terminal.

	&.     Editing.      Anyone who writes (writers, journalists,
scientists, advertising men, engineers  and  students)  will  benefit
from  using  an editor program.  It allows easy revision, can be made
to  check  spelling,  grammar,  and  punctuation,  and  will  produce
justified or other forms of elegant output and also indexes.  This paper
was edited on the computer including the specification of
%3printing%1 ⊗in ⊗several %6type fonts%1.  The document is stored
on disk at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and
any user of the ARPA net can access the latest version using the
name HOTER.ESS[W76,JMC]@SU-AI.

	&.  Filing.  Keeping personal files in the computer has great
advantages, but some of them must await the ability to enter
other people's documents without  retyping  them.  If they have
been prepared in a computer readable form, it is easy, but someday
a suitable page reader will be available.

	&. Education.  Computer aided instruction (CAI) has  advanced
to  the point that a number of courses or aids to traditional courses
have been developed and have been shown to be useful.       The  main
obstacle   to  the  widespread  use  of  CAI  is  economic,  but  new
developments  in  display  technology  and  communications   give   a
reasonable  probability of cost-effective systems within this decade.
There is no special problem in having these systems available in  the
home  as  well  as  at  school.  This would be aided by standardizing
course writing languages.      Again,  we  should  try  to  stimulate
competition  by  encouraging  the  offering  of courses in particular
subjects independent of the schools.

	The development of information utilities is probably  inevitable
(unless  it  is  forbidden  by law) as soon as costs come down to the
point where it is profitable  for  time-sharing  service  bureaus  to
offer  services  to  individuals.   However,  favorable policies will
bring this about sooner and will make the effects better.

	Between  us  and  the home information system lie a number of
problems, some in developing suitable low  cost  terminals,  some  in
programming  technology  of  time-sharing,  some in the economics and
politics of communication systems, and some in the  attitude  of  the
public  and government towards innovation.  In the following sections
we shall discuss these problems.


.cb HOW WE GET THERE FROM HERE

.ITEM←0;
.bb "#. Terminals"

	The   quality  and  price  of  display  consoles  is  rapidly
improving. At present, one can add a display console with keyboard to
our  laboratory system for about α$500, and to add another port on the
system so that the number of consoles active at one time is increased
by  one  costs about α$1000.  A reasonable display console that can be
located at the end of a telephone line now costs about α$3,000. These
consoles  are  adequate  for  any  of  the  services mentioned in the
previous  sections,  although  for  reading  purposes,  it  would   be
desirable to be able to display more than 35 typed lines at a time.

	In  my opinion, the cost of a display terminal
adequate for  extensive reading that
can be located at the end of a telephone line will be in the α$500  to
α$1000  range  by  1980  even  without  a  market  of  the size of the
potential home terminal  market.     The  business,  engineering,
science,  and  government  markets  will  be  large  enough and price
sensitive enough to bring this about.


.bb "#. Communications"

	Facilities   for  digital
communications are growing rapidly but in  a  disorderly  way
because   of  the  multiplicity  of  requirements  of  the  different
applications.   Thus credit verification requires
very low cost short communications with turn around times of seconds.
Other uses require very low cost per bit but can stand delays of  minutes
and  hence  are  candidates  for  low  performance  store and forward
systems.   Terminal systems need  long  holding  times,  short
response  times, and much higher transmission rates from computer
to user than in the other direction.

	The  speeds  of
transmission  over  present  unconditioned voice grade circuits are lower
than one would like for reading.  1200 bits  per  second takes
20 seconds to transmit a typed page and four times
that for a page of a dictionary.  9600 bits per second  is  obtained
over  conditioned  voice  grade  lines,  and  this  may  be
adequate.   Another posibility is the transmission technology planned
for the Picturephone service, but
the  cost  of  this  service  for  long  holding  times  is  not clear.
The most economical system might be a specially designed
store and forward system configured to  give  fast  turn  around  for
short messages.


.bb "#. Computer technology"

	Computer  technology  can now offer  the  services
required for  the  home  terminal  at  a  reasonable  cost,  provided
computer  configurations  are  optimized  for  the  purpose, provided
reasonable load factors can  be  obtained,  and  provided  there  are
reasonable  economies  of  scale.    Unfortunately, IBM computers are
organized in such a way that time sharing is very  expensive  because
of  their interrupt structure, their expensive terminal multiplexors,
and  their  dedication  to  the  archaic  half   duplex   method   of
communication, and their giant, inefficient and almost unchangable
operating systems.   The  other major computer manufacturers such as CDC,
General Electric, and Univac are not in much better shape since  they
offer  for  time-sharing,  machines  that  were  optimized for other
purposes.   Smaller companies like  DEC  are  in  a  somewhat  better
position.    However,  none  of these difficulties are permanent, and
better organized computers  may  be  expected  once  the  factors  in
computer  design  that make for good cost-performance in time sharing
become clearer to the manufacturers.
(The non-technical reader is warned that the above views are most likely
controversial).

	Present magnetic disk storage units are
cost-effective for information utilities serving home
terminals.  A cheap imitation of the
IBM 3330/11 disk costs about α$16.00 at the margin for storing a book
using two-to-one information compression.  This is fine for personal
files and for libraries provided we can make one on-line copy replace several
paper copies.  This is still rather expensive for private copies of books.

	Disk files are continuing to increase in cost-effectiveness,
and much larger storage media are being promoted.


.bb "#. Computer programming"

	The  basic  technology  of time-sharing  is
reasonably well developed, and cost-effective  systems  have  been
written,  but there is still a lot of chasing of will-o'-the-wisps, and
bad  time-sharing  systems  are  often  produced  by  otherwise
competent  organizations.  The costs of the  programming   to offer the
services  mentioned  in  the  first  part  of  this  paper   can   be
much reduced by further advances in programming such as:

	&.  The interactive and file reference aspects of programming
languages and time-sharing systems need to be standardized so that an
interactive system written in one system can be used in another  that
uses  different hardware and a different time sharing system. Without
this it will be very expensive for new user  services  to  get  large
markets unless some particular time sharing system gets a monopoly.

	&.  A system needs to be developed for representing text in a
computer that will include the full variety of alphabets, type  fonts
and  character  sizes and also be adaptable to diagrams, drawings and
photographs.  The consoles also have to be adapted to this variety of
styles.  This is an ultimate requirement; much can be done with texts
that are just regarded as sequences of latin letters.

	&.  The biggest task, however, is the application programming
itself.


.bb "#. Commercial organization"

	Fortunately, time-sharing services are not a natural
monopoly.      Communication  is  cheap  enough  for  teletype  based
time-sharing  so  that  with local multiplexors, time-sharing bureaus
can compete all over the United States.  In principal, it  should  be
possible  to have world wide competition.  The major developments that may
reduce competition are (i) if the terminals are supplied by the
information utility and cannot be used with that utility's competitors;
and (ii) if the utility only allows its subscribers to use its
own programs and data files.
Therefore, the users should own their own terminals, and the
ownership of programs performing services should be separate
from the ownership  of  the
service  bureaus  themselves.  It is important to
have enough compatibility
between different time-sharing systems so that the owner of a service
program  can  provide  it  on  a  number  of machines.   It is also
important that important files  be  accessible  and  modifiable  with
suitable  protections by actions initiated on other machines than the
one that maintains the file.


.bb "#. Needs for research and development"

	The hardware required for home consoles will be too expensive
for extensive systems for  probably  another  five  years.    In  the
meantime,  research  and  development  should  be  undertaken  in the
following areas:

	&.  Standardization of the interfaces of time-sharing systems
and their languages.

	&.   Experimentation  with services.   At present, it is very
difficult to get support for development of generally useful services
unless  either  it  can  be  claimed  that  disaster will result from
failure to support the activity or that the  supporting  organization
will itself make a profit.  This political fact is one of the reasons
for the concentration on military technology in the recent past.

	&. Research aimed at devising ways of co-ordinating the great
variety  of  time-sharing  services  into  a  mutually  communicating
network.    Neither sufficient understanding nor sufficient political
or  commercial  force  is  available  to  cause  the  development  of
time-sharing  services  to  proceed  according  to  a  unified  plan.
Nevertheless,  computers  are  flexible  enough  so  that  originally
incompatible systems can be made to communicate and use each  other's
services.      Experiments   with  the  ARPA  network  that  provides
communication among Defense Department sponsored  research  computers
are providing useful information.


.bb "#. Social issues"

&. Government created monopoly - most likely inadvertent.
If government regulations remain as they are in May 1976,
home terminals can develop in a freely competitive manner.
The famous Carterphone decision and its extensions permitting
connection of arbitrary devices meeting non-interference standards
to the telephone system is exactly what is required for
home terminals.
However, there are several dangers.  First the new communication
companies want to get a share of the data communication business
from ATα&T, and this may well take the form of separating a share
of the present market legally, and prescribing who may offer what
services.  Since home terminal services don't exist yet, it may
turn out that no-one is allowed to offer the communications they
require.  Second, some planners have a limited view of what
services are possible, and want to provide them through a system
based on CATV which has the side effect of making home terminals
a local monopoly of the CATV operator.  Thirdly, there are proposals
(%2New York Times%1 editorial of April  , 1976), to make
electronic mail a monopoly of the Postal Service.
This is the most pernicious of all, because it requires splitting
off a service analogous to present mail service and preventing
anyone except the assigned monopolist from offering any service
that includes it.

	Not everyone will agree with the picture of home terminal
services given in this paper, but I hope we can agree that
this and similar ideas shouldn't be precluded by creating new
monopolies.


&. Who will get it first?  I think it must be accepted that the
first subscribers of information utilities will be well-to-do
people with particular inclinations in that direction.  Fortunately,
a telephone based system doesn't need a large fraction of the
households in an area as subscribers in order to make money.
Moreover, the costs of the services in a mature technology will
be low enough so that after the rich have paid the start-up
costs, everyone at an economic level to afford a car will also
be able to afford home terminal service.

&. Privacy and security.  It is easy to have fantasies about the
government or other large organizations establishing a dictatorship
through their access to everyone's personal data and people doing
each other in with information gained from computerized spying.
In my opinion, the source of dictatorship isn't information but
a monopoly on force and the will to use it.  In time-sharing systems
in which security measures have been installed only in response
to actual misuse, rather little has been required.

	However, much higher degrees of privacy and security can be
achieved with computerized systems than with manual information systems.
People can encrypt their private information, each use of a file
containing personal data can be recorded in the file, and the systems
that ensure all this can be subject to audit by any organization
concerned with protecting privacy.

&. Who will convert the existing literature?  Some
writings  are have  current copyrights,  and some  are in  the public
domain.  It would seem that copyright owners should have the option of
converting their  property and  owning the result.   Material  in the
public  domain  could either  be converted  by  the government  or by
whoever thinks  the public will  pay to  look at  what he chooses  to
convert.   I will  confess a preference  for a systematic  project to
convert everything.

&. What about unauthorized copying?  It is very difficult even  today
to prevent unauthorized copying of very high  priced material.  Below
a certain  level of price, it  is cheaper to pay  the price of access
each time  a  document  is read  than  to  pay the  storage  cost  of
maintaining a copy.   Eventually the cost of storage  compared to the
socially  desirable  rewards  of authorship  may  get  so  small that
storing unauthorized  copies  may become  profitable.   The  limiting
situation is one in which authors have to be paid like scientists for
their work  in producing  the material  after which  the results  are
freely distributed.  I think this day should  be postponed as long as
possible but not at the cost of snooping in people's private files or
preventing home terminals.

&. Banking today combines two  functions: The first is recording  who
has what money and transferring  it on properly authenticated demand,
and  the second  end is  borrowing money  and prudently relending it  at higher
interest.  The  first function may well  be a natural monopoly  in an
electronic system and the second definitely is not.  Therefore it may
become necessary to separate these functions.  Once they are separated,
the competition in borrowing and relending money can become
more effectively nationwide.
Legislative action will be necessary to separate these two functions.

.SKIP 2
.cb SOME RELEVANT EXPERIENCE AND EXPERIMENTS

	The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has had a
time-sharing computer system since 1965.  Since 1971 we have had
keyboard and display terminals in all offices including those of
secretaries and our business manager; this is still rather uncommon,
because most organizations are committed to unnecessarily expensive
technologies.  Since 1972 our computer has been part of the ARPA
Network that connects about 60 laboratories and other installations
supported by the Defense Department.

	The main use of the Laboratory's computer system is
research programming in artificial intelligence which is not what
most citizens will use their home terminals for.
However, we also use it for writing, editing and storing reports,
for exchanging messages, and as an aid in administering our project
and facilities, and some of this experience is relevant to home
terminal use.  Here are some of our conclusions:

.ITEM←0;

#. Office and home use of computers will depend decisively on convenience,
and a terminal in each office is an absolute necessity.

#. Inexperience in typing is a psychological hazard for people contemplating
using a computer, but it is not a practical barrier even for people who
have never touched a typewriter.

#. The human engineering of the time-sharing system and especially
the editor program very important if the facilities are to be used
casually by non-computer people.  Having an adequate small set of
commands is very important, but additional commands for expert
use are fine provided beginners and casual users don't have to
learn them.  It is especially important to keep down the number of concepts
that have to be learned.
Having done all this, we find that temporary secretaries filling in
while the regular secretaries are on vacation can use the editor
to prepare documents with help from regular secretaries.

#. The ARPA net has a facility for sending messages to users of the
same or other computers on the net.  The user is notified of his
message immediately if he is logged into his terminal and the next
time he logs in otherwise.  The time required to send a message is
about 10 seconds plus the time required to type it.  It is not clear
why, but the written message system is often preferred to the telephone,
to visiting the other person's office or to written notes.  Maybe
the reason is that each of the other procedures may be frustrating,
while sending the computer message is always completed promptly, even
though the recipient won't get it unless he logs in.
I receive about 100 messages per month.

#. We have an experimental news service using the national news wires
of the Associated Press and the %2New York Times%1 news services.
A user can type an expression like "kissinger-moscow" and be told that
there are 10 stories containing the word "Kissinger" and not containing
the word "Moscow" in today's news.  The user can then look at whatever
stories he wants to.  The service is popular in times of crisis, but
the computer is heavily loaded, so the waits between
stories are often unacceptably long.  Experience with the service
emphasizes the shallowness of a news coverage in which reporters file
only stories likely to be chosen for a limited news space that must
contain only items judged to be of general interest.

#. We also have two novels stored on disk, and it is quite feasible to
read them on the terminals.  The quality is about like bad pulp paper,
and two novels is not much of a library.  In compensation, the computer
remembers your place.
.SKIP 2
.ONCE CENTER
(this draft compiled at {TIME} on {DATE})
.BEGIN VERBATIM

John McCarthy
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305
.END