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C00005 00003		Dan McCracken's December column exhibits that form of social
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	Much of what passes for social consciousness these days
is harmful, because it is guided by the %2regulatory ethic%1 which
likes to plan other people's lives.  The computer community seems
especially susceptible to this disease, perhaps because computer
people often regard society as a program to be debugged by ACM
members.  The regulatory ethic ignores the fact that each parallel
processor (person) in this distributed system is entitled to
program itself, and delegates only minimal authority to social
programmers.  They always try to exceed their authority and have
to be given a shock occasionally.  ACM provides many examples of
beserk social consciousness.

	In his column entitled "Technology, Boon or Bane?", Dan McCracken
quotes me as saying that Henry Ford could not have been expected to
anticipate the full consequences of the automobile.  That is only a tiny
part of what I said.

	Not only couldn't Ford anticipate the all the consequences of
automobiles, he was right not to try.  In not presuming to judge for each
individual whether he would win or lose from buying a car, Ford was on a
higher moral level than SIGCAS, which presumes to judge whether I will
benefit from electronic funds transfer.

	The Chairman of SIGCAS, xxxx, told me about how SIGCAS is
obstructing the legalization of electronic funds transfer on social grounds.
One excuse is that errors may wipe out someone's balance.  Surely SIGCAS
doesn't intend to help debug the electronic funds transfer programs
and help design a system of backup files and transaction record tapes.
	Dan McCracken's December column exhibits that form of social
consciousness whose main expression is obstructionism.  Such
social consciousness is prevalent and prominent in the ACM and
has already done considerable harm; for example SIGCAS has obstructed
electronic funds transfer and according to its Chairman, plans
to continue this indefinitely.

	McCracken's column presupposes without justification that
the parties to the controversy about any new technology are the
innovators, especially the manufacturers of the innovation or
the proprietors of systems, and the public interest as represented
by "public interest organizations".  There are other parties.
First we have the potential users of the new technology.  SIGCAS
has taken on itself to decide that I may not transfer my personal
funds electronically, because someone else may not understand that
transfers are irrevocable and pay electronically rather than by
a check that may be stopped.  To put the matter more generally,
SIGCAS meddles in my private affairs, for two reasons, both
illegitimate.  First, it presumes to understand my interests
better than I will at the time I have to decide whether to
patronise an electronic bank.  Second, it thinks it has the
right to prevent me from using a technology, because it thinks
someone else may make a mistake.