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.cb Comments on Licklider's paper.

	Licklider is right that the new technologies of computers,
communication and databases provide great opportunities to improve
government and its interaction with other institutions and with
individuals.  His proposed vehicle is a government organized
%2"Multinet"%1 combining communication, data bases, transaction monitoring,
and computation.  Unfortunately, the %2Multinet%1 idea
misses major opportunities to benefit citizens that can be implemented
much more quickly than %2Multinet%1, and the proposals
overemphasize government, require co-ordination
of activities that can better be developed separately, create unnecessary
and harmful monopolies, and stifle individual and business initiative.  I
also disagree with some of its technological judgments.

	Licklider seems to envisage government as embodying the collective wisdom
of society and setting up institutions and laws that once %2"cast into both
legislation and software, ... may come to be regarded the same way as
physical laws are regarded now: irresistable, inviolable, inescapable,
part of nature, invariably enforced, not the kind of thing one complains
about"%1.  For good or ill, government plays quite a different role in
every society in the world.  Influencing law and its interpretation is
a major means of struggle for group advantage and individual
wealth, power and prestige.  Therefore, government law is
unlikely to resemble natural law in impartiality and constancy in the
forseeable future.

	A consumer is better served when manufacturers compete
for his dollar than when their lawyers compete for the favor of Congressmen,
regulators, or judges trying to act on his behalf.  Unfortunately, some
services are natural monopolies and require regulation.  When
a complex of new technologies becomes available, it is important to
distinguish what are the natural monopolies and what can be provided
by competing servers.  The %2Multinet%1 proposal them all together.

	Thus communication of raw information may remain a natural monopoly,
but devices connected to the communication network are not.
The operation of particular public databases such as a national
library, the airline guide or a national telephone directory
seem to be new natural monopolies, although different databases can
have different proprietors, and methods of accessing the database
can sometimes compete.
Computation services and much so-called value-added communication are
not natural monopolies.

	Here are some detailed comments:

	#. The stated assumption about programation that %2"unless it is
wisely planned and well executed, it will be disastrous in the long run"%1
is unsupported by any example of what bad things will happen if
data-processing and communication continue unplanned.  To be a bit rude,
it sounds like self-serving nonsense on behalf of the "public policy
community" and people who want the authority to regulate.  Certainly
Licklider's %2Scenario 1%1 can't be called a disaster.  It just depicts some
opportunities missed if the government doesn't take them.  Since
co-ordination requires the authority to forbid independent initiative in
the area to be co-ordinated, statements that co-ordination is required
must be very well justified.

	I suppose the statement, %2"recognizing the potential
significance of computer communication, the government organizes
all the capabilities of the society to develop and exploit networking
in socially as well as economically productive dimensions"%1 is not
intended to be taken literally.  No-one has shown that networking
has potentials justifying government powers that were hardly
asserted even during World War II.  Licklider should say precisely
what powers he wants the government to have, making explicit
the cost to society of giving the goverment such power.

	#. We have in Scenario 2, %2"The Multinet has supplanted the
postal system for letters, the dial telephone system for conversations
and teleconferences, stand-alone batch processing and time-sharing
systems for computation, and most filing cabinets, microfilm repositories,
document rooms, and libraries for information storage and retrieval"%1.
Some activities, like telephone communication, are natural
monopolies, and others, like providing computation services, are not.
Experience seems to show that when an activity is a natural monopoly,
it is better operated as a private monopoly regulated by the government.
Government monopoly is worse and so is a government regulated cartel
(like the airlines or interstate commerce).  The reason why the latter
two work out badly is again political struggle for advantage rewarding
the best lawyers and the best politicians.

	Several recent events raise fears of the cartelization of
computation and communication.  First, Atα&T turned over the %2Teletype%1
network to Western Union and agreed not to compete.  Second, IBM settled
the CDC anti-trust suit by
by giving CDC the Service Bureau Corporation and agreeing not
to compete in the area.  Third, the Government's anti-trust suit
against IBM may result in a non-competitive division of the computer
business.  Fourth, the specialized communication carriers are
trying to persuade the government to protect them from competition
by regulating the services ATα&T and others may offer.
Worse than all the above was a %2New York Times%1 editorial
proposing to give electronic mail to the Postal Service.
Electronic mail is not a natural monopoly at all,
because a mail terminal is an ordinary product.
A terminal that dials a recipient's similar terminal can be marketed today
at less than α$1000, the cost of a local telephone call is already less
than that of a stamp, and the cost of a coast-to-coast call after 11pm is
21 cents.  If the Postal Service achieves its goal of a 35 cent charge by
1985 for a first class letter, they will be wiped out by α$500 terminals.
Of course, through the wonders of government planning,
individuals may be forbidden to communicate in this way.
Moreover, electronic mail is most useful in connection with
other services performed by the same computer, and these services
depend on the particular circumstances of the individual or organization.

	The article suggests that home computers require government
"fostering".  Notice that as soon as cheap microprocessors made it
possible, a private home computer industry arose that offers dozens of
products through hundreds of stores and supports more than five
magazines - all before Government even contemplated fostering it.

	#. The article shares the common system programmer's
self-important obsession with secrecy and
privacy and exaggerates the possibilities for crime and other
misbehavior that inadequate secrecy creates.
It also puts the emphasis on preventing more and more tenuous
evils rather than on how to do positive good.  Thus
the Multics effort produced a non-cost-effective
system because of its obsession with security.

	#. Packet switching is a worthwhile technology, and ARPA
deserves much credit for developing it, but ARPA's natural tendency
to overestimate what it has sponsored has led to a neglect of
possibilities for using the already ubiquitous dial network.
Elsewhere I have proposed that much useful computer-computer
communication, including messages, file transfer and login
capabilities of ARPAnet can be achieved for a few thousand dollars
capital cost if ARPAnet like protocols for using a telephone
dialer are developed.  This proposal is called %2Dialnet%1.

	#. The greatest opportunities for improvement in government
that computers permit is to make government more accessible to
citizens.  Here are some proposals:

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		&. Every government document that is required by
the %2Freedom of Information Act%1 to be publically accessible
should be kept in computer files accessible nationwide by telephone.
This includes the Federal Register, the Congressional Record, the
files on the status of bills (already kept by Congress
for its own use in computers),
court decisions and the status of court cases, environmental
impact statements, and other rationalizations of government decisions
and regulations.
%3Implementation of this should begin right away,%1
because organizations and individuals can acquire computer terminals
much faster than the Government can create the data bases.

	&. Licklider proposes to improve the Government's
ability to extract information from businesses and individuals
by putting monitoring functions in %2Multinet%1.  I think this has
great beneficial possibilities provided the information is not abused,
and burdensome requirements of keeping information in the
government's preferred form are not imposed.  But how about
not allowing the Government to require an individual or business
to furnish information the Government already has in its files?

		&. A much greater long range opportunity
is much harder to realize.  Every policy generating
and regulation generating organization should keep active a
question answering program about the content and rationale of
its policies.  The object is to answer automatically those questions
that can be so answered automatically and therefore make the policy
makers more accessible to people with questions that can't.
Each person responsible for policies should spend
a few percent of his time dealing with the questions not answered
automatically.  %2The ultimate goal would be that a person confronted
with a regulation whose application is unjust in his
particular case should always be able to reach a person with
the authority to make an exception.%1  The full achievement of
this goal will require major advances in artificial intelligence.