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\F0\CSTANFORD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY
\CDEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
\F1







						January 28, 1974






Mr. Daniel D. McCracken
4 Inningwood Road
Ossining, New York 10562

Dear Dan:

\J	Thank you for your recent letter of reply concerning my thoughts on
the ACM discussion on social issues in computing.
I am pleased that the ACM is not planning to take official 
positions on a number of the issues.  There remain two comments:

	1. As a contribution to the discussion of the general issue of the
social implications of computing, it seems to me that you should consider
in your article asking which of the issues are proper subjects of regulation.
As it stands, the article implies by default that any issue is appropriate
for regulation.  As an extreme case, suppose someone were to take seriously
the idea that home terminals are a bad idea because they might promote
fragmentation and propose banning them.  Must I fight him on the merits of
the issue?  I would hope that legislators with no particular interest in
home terminals or fragmentation would consider a ban inappropriate legislation
unless an extreme danger were proved.
Possible regulation of reporting results of polls and computer projections
is a more immediately controversial issue where I think, in probable contrast
to some of the committee members, that regulation is inappropriate even
if the polls affect the results they are trying to measure.
I would suggest that the committee attempt to sort out its views and at least
mention this meta-issue.

	2. On the other hand, the ACM as a scientific and professional
organization has a direct
interest in seeing that anti-trust activities of the Justice Department promote
the development of computer science and technology.  In this, its interests
are distinct from those of IBM, IBM's competitors, and the lawyers in the
Justice Department.  Do you think ACM might take a position at least to the
extent of looking into the matter and expressing its concerns?  I have no
clear idea what this position might be except that it should favor the existence
of strong research and engineering programs and should oppose secrecy.
Perhaps if ACM made these concerns known to the Justice Department, they
would factor it into their plan, whatever it might be.


	I am sending you the note on monopoly and home terminals which was
inadvertently left out of my last lettter.

	I hope that this letter finds you in better health.\.



						Best Regards,


						John McCarthy
						Professor of Computer Science
						Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory