perm filename NSF2.PRO[ESS,JMC]2 blob
sn#024485 filedate 1973-02-13 generic text, type T, neo UTF8
00100
00200
00300
00400
00500
00600
00700
00800 Proposal to
00900
01000 THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
01100
01200
01300
01400
01500
01600 for
01700
01800
01900
02000 RESEARCH AIMED AT HOME COMPUTER TERMINAL SYSTEMS
02100
02200
02300 by
02400
02500
02600 THE STANFORD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY
02700
02800
02900 John McCarthy, Professor of Computer Science
03000
03100 Principal Investigator
03200
03300
03400
03500
03600
03700
03800
03900
04000
04100
04200
04300 February 1973
04400
04500
04600
04700
04800
04900
05000
05100
05200 Computer Science Department
05300
05400 School of Humanities and Sciences
05500
05600 STANFORD UNIVERSITY
05700
05800 Stanford, California
00100 INTRODUCTION
00200
00300
00400 This is a request for a grant of $622,709 to enable the
00500 Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to carry out
00600 research aimed at the development of home computer terminals. The
00700 work is to run for three years starting 1 July 1973.
00800
00900 Even before the idea of computer time-sharing was worked out,
01000 much less actually developed, the idea of the home information
01100 terminal appeared. Some of the ideas go back to Vannevar Bush's "As
01200 We May Think" and some of them appeared even earlier in science
01300 fiction. The general idea is to give everyone immediate access to
01400 both permanent and temporary information, to computing services for
01500 transforming this information, and to computer aid in interacting
01600 with other people and institutions. Examples cited include immediate
01700 access to the whole of the world's literature, information about what
01800 is for sale and what entertainment is available, computer aided
01900 instruction and computer aids to the design and construction of
02000 individualized furniture and clothes, direct access to airline and
02100 other reservation systems, and buying programs that will help in
02200 getting the best buy. A rather full discussion of the benefits of a
02300 developed home terminal system is contained in a paper "Home
02400 Terminals" by John McCarthy reproduced as Appendix A to this
02500 proposal.
02600
02700 The ideas discussed in that paper have one common theme - the
02800 use of technology, in this case computer technology, to enhance the
02900 capabilities of the individual and strengthen him in his dealings
03000 with the institutions of our society. We see this as coming about in
03100 the following ways all of which are discussed more fully in the
03200 paper:
03300
03400 1. Anyone can create a file and make it publicly available,
03500 and this constitutes publication. This will not make all
03600 publications equal, but it will certainly strengthen individuals and
03700 small groups relative to large institutions.
03800
03900 2. The computer is a device that considers individual cases
04000 cheaply. To the extent that programs and program controlled devices
04100 are available, it permits attention to an individual's needs at costs
04200 now attainable only by mass production. This potentially applies to
04300 education, production, and even law.
04400
04500 Computer technology is now essentially ready to realize the
04600 home terminal, but there are a number of obstacles to be overcome,
04700 and the proposed research is intended to identify them and help
04800 overcome them. Here are those we see now:
04900
05000 1. The first obstacle is the cost of the terminals,
05100 communications, time-shared computers, and bulk information storage
05200 devices. In our opinion, home terminals will have a substantial
05300 market when the cost of a terminal and nominal services comes into
05400 the range of $50 to $100 per month. Electronics costs are reducing
05500 at a rate that will make this feasible in a few years, and we do not
05600 propose to work on this problem directly in this research. In fact,
05700 we expect to use quite flexible terminals which will therefore not be
05800 the cheapest available today.
05900
06000 2. The full development of the above facilities requires
06100 hundreds of thousands of man years of programming and institutional
06200 changes in our society. What can be done easily may not be useful
06300 enough to justify purchase of home terminals by enough people to make
06400 a viable system. We have already put much thought into determining a
06500 dozen or so applications that are feasible now and will add up to a
06600 worthwhile package. We will name some in this proposal, and we hope
06700 to think of more.
06800
06900 3. Home terminal applications will mostly be elaborate
07000 programs that interact with the user, file structures, and other
07100 programs. All programs with these characteristics that have been
07200 built so far have been tightly bound to the languages, time-sharing
07300 systems, and hardware of the institutions where they were developed,
07400 and transplanting them has been extremely difficult. On the other
07500 hand, it is very important that home terminal application programs
07600 become universally available as soon as they are developed. We
07700 believe that the key to making this possible technically is the
07800 identification of the basic semantic elements of interactive programs
07900 separated from their syntactic expression in programming languages
08000 and the details of their realization on particular hardware. We
08100 propose to study these issues from the standpoint of computer
08200 science.
08300
08400 Another computer science issue that arises is making the
08500 programs easily usable by infrequent users. Many present programs
08600 exhibit what might be called the instrument flying difficulty. If
08700 you haven't used it for six hours in the last six months, you are no
08800 longer qualified. We believe that it is possible to develop a uniform
08900 system for all kinds of programs that is reasonably self-documenting.
09000
09100
09200 4. Home terminal services are not a natural monopoly and it
09300 is important to allow access to programs that are not the property of
09400 the time-sharing service bureaus that provide the computation and
09500 also to allow a user to connect his terminal to whatever computer
09600 seems best to him at the time. (We emphasize this point, because
09700 some advocates of home information services via CATV seem to propose
09800 systems in which the information services would be monopolies of the
09900 local CATV companies.) We propose to put a small effort into working
10000 out the most desirable way of institutionalizing the provision of
10100 home terminal service.
10200
10300 In support of these goals, we propose the following
10400 activities which will be described in more detail in subsequent
10500 sections of the proposal:
10600
10700 1. We will acquire a number of remote display terminals and
10800 attach them to the PDP-10 based time-sharing system of the Stanford
10900 Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Some will be located in the
11000 homes of suitable users and others will be located in public places
11100 on the Stanford campus. (Public terminals will be more effective
11200 than home terminals for some experiments).
11300
11400 2. We will develop a package of applications, make them
11500 available, measure their use, and ask what the users think of them.
11600
11700 3. We will study the computer science problems involved in
11800 developing these highly interactive programs and in making them
11900 transportable.
12000
12100 4. We will study the problem of making application programs
12200 that are usable in a uniform and easily learnable way and are
12300 unobtrusively self-documenting.
12400
12500
12600 In all this, our emphasis will be on the application programs
12700 rather than on the terminal, communication, or computer hardware or
12800 the time-sharing operating system itself. In all these areas we will
12900 rely on existing facilities first, off-the-shelf purchasable
13000 facilities second, and home grown ad hoc solutions only when
13100 necessary.
13200
13300 It is necessary to recognize that this is a new area of
13400 computer science and engineering and that it will take time to
13500 develop real professionals. We hope that graduate students will find
13600 this a fruitful area for their initial scientific work.
00100 AN INITIAL SET OF HOME TERMINAL APPLICATIONS
00200
00300 We won't get all books and newspapers published as computer
00400 files or get all car dealers to advertise their chariots through the
00500 public information utility until there are enough home terminals to
00600 make a market, and the home terminal won't reach its full usefulness
00700 until these facilities are available. In fact, it is non-trivial to
00800 devise a set of applications that can be done now useful enough to
00900 justify anyone but a programmer tolerating a terminal in his house
01000 let alone paying for it. Nevertheless, we think we have a set of
01100 home terminal applications large enough to make a viable system and
01200 we hope to think of more. It wasn't easy, but here they are:
01300
01400 1. First of all, Martin Frost, one of our graduate students,
01500 has already programmed a news service based on the Associated Press
01600 national and international news wire and put it into our time-sharing
01700 system. The AP wire is connected to the computer, and the stories
01800 are classified and filed on the disk as they come in. The present
01900 classification is according to the presence of several hundred key
02000 words in the stories - e.g. the names of countries, states, cities,
02100 prominent people, and various topics. A user of the system gives a
02200 Boolean combination of key words (e.g. Nixon - Vietnam) and is told
02300 how many stories there are corresponding to this expression (e.g. he
02400 may be told there are 11 stories containing the word Nixon and not
02500 the word Vietnam). He can then see the first few lines of these
02600 stories and select which ones he wishes to read in full. The program
02700 has been available since August and is used about 1000 times per
02800 month, about half of the use is from our laboratory and about half
02900 over the ARPA network. With publicity, it would be more used which
03000 would not be to our advantage.
03100
03200 This preliminary experiment is the only one we have already
03300 done. We propose to improve it in various ways, and here are some of
03400 the possibilities: add more news, keep more than one day's worth,
03500 allow a keyword like "animal" to get all stories mentioning dogs,
03600 cats, etc., give the system some sophisticated question answering and
03700 information retrieval capability, and see what can be done by a human
03800 editor aided by the computer in producing a more useful computerized
03900 "newspaper". To tell the truth, the program has been so well
04000 accepted in its initial crude form that making it sophisticated may
04100 merely gild the lily, but we shall see.
04200
04300
04400 2. The second application is simply reading. Initially,
04500 there won't be much entertaining or educational reading in the
04600 system, but we can put some in for the purpose. It is necessary to
04700 determine what aids such as "subroutine jumps" to cross references
04800 will be helpful and how the advantages of such computer aids compare
04900 with the advantages of hard copy. We do not forsee a good individual
05000 hard copy device during the research period proposed here.
05100
05200 3. A local information system updated by a clerk. In this,
05300 it is not obvious how to compete with the local newspaper, but very
05400 likely there is enough information not kept in newspapers to be worth
05500 having one full time clerk putting it in. If there is, we'll employ
05600 the clerk.
05700
05800 4. Connection to institutional computer systems.
05900 Possibilities are airline reservation systems, ticket booking
06000 systems, and the University's administrative computer system. The
06100 idea is to make interfaces that are uniform to the home terminal user
06200 and give him the facilities that the proprietor of the computer
06300 system is willing for individuals to have. A way of having the user
06400 identify himself may be necessary. It may be possible to get at one
06500 blow access to systems residing in a local time-sharing service
06600 bureau. In general, we will explore the possibilities of
06700 co-operating with them and perhaps having them take over the services
06800 when this is reasonable.
06900
07000 Another possibility in this direction arises in connection
07100 with the fact that financial institutions are studying electronic
07200 transfer of funds. We would like to consider this question in
07300 connection with the home terminal and see how this facility might be
07400 integrated into the larger set of services that a home terminal might
07500 provide. We suspect that the financial institutions might have too
07600 specialized interests to do this right and might welcome some
07700 interaction.
07800
07900 5. CAI. We propose to make this an exercise in
08000 transplantation. The idea is not to make our own
08100 computer-aided-instruction system but rather solve the problem of
08200 transplanting an already developed system to our machine.
08300
08400 6. Desk calculation with extensions. This is straightforward
08500 and of limited usefulness to most people, but we'll do it.
08600
08700 7. A discussion system based on the articles in a magazine.
08800 This would require having a number of users interested in reacting in
08900 writing to discussion on a topic. It may or may not be feasible.
09000
09100 8. Other applications that have been suggested include
09200 finding the best route for driving to an address, some amusements and
09300 games, and some kind of clothing design system. We don't promise to
09400 do all those mentioned and will undoubtedly do some not mentioned.
09500
09600 It is not clear how difficult it is to do these applications
09700 or how long it will take to get people to take a professional
09800 interest in them.
00100 QUESTIONS OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
00200
00300
00400 The main questions of computer science that we have
00500 identified so far are:
00600
00700 1. How to make programs that interact with people, files, and
00800 computers portable. The key to this seems to lie in identifying the
00900 semantics of the interactions and separating it from syntax and
01000 hardware.
01100
01200 2. A second problem is to develop a language for expressing
01300 the kinds of things computer programs belonging to different
01400 institutions or individuals might say to each other. These include
01500 price and other inquiries, purchase orders, etc. This problem goes
01600 beyond the home terminal application.
01700
01800 3. A uniform system for making the facilities of a program
01900 available to an inexperienced user - distinguishing a user who is
02000 inexperienced with the particular program from the user who is
02100 inexperienced with interactive programs altogether. The latter needs
02200 some tutoring, but the former can probably do a lot without reading
02300 or formal instruction if things work in a uniform and
02400 self-documenting way. This is especially important in the home
02500 terminal context, because we envisage that when home terminals are
02600 well developed, there will be literally thousands of services
02700 available, and the utility of any particular service will depend on
02800 how easy it is to start using it.
02900
03000 4. One idea we shall explore is that of non-hierarchical
03100 control systems which allow a user to get at any facility of the
03200 system whatever he has just been doing without losing the state of
03300 his current activity.
03400
03500 5. We shall work on the problems of security and privacy
03600 presented by home terminals to assure both the privacy of the
03700 individual and the security of the systems that he uses.
03800
03900 6. Home terminals raise a number of problems in display
04000 generation and maintenance. Present systems are far from ideal.
04100
04200 7. The widespread sharing of interactive programs will
04300 probably require a number of software and hardware standards. We
04400 propose to study the requirements for a standard general purpose
04500 terminal (only those features required to make services work
04600 everywhere would be standardized), a standardizable set of display
04700 commands, a standardizable set of operations for human interaction
04800 and interaction with files, a file description system that would
04900 permit any file on a mass storage device in the country to be
05000 described so that data could be obtained from it over
05100 telecommunication networks, and standards for documents in arbitrary
05200 character sets and with pictures.
05300
05400 The object of these standardizability efforts is not to get
05500 the standards accepted, although this might happen if we design them
05600 well enough. All we really propose to do is to study the problems
05700 from a non-parochial point of view and make proposals that could be a
05800 basis for discussion of standards.
00100 QUALIFICATIONS OF THE STANFORD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY
00200
00300
00400 The Laboratory has operated a time-sharing system since 1966,
00500 now equipped with a PDP-10 processor, 256K 36 bit words of core, a
00600 swapping disk, an IBM 3330 based file system with 600,000,000 bytes
00700 of storage and about 60 display terminals. About 45 users are
00800 supported by the current system which is mainly limited by CPU power.
00900 The time-sharing system is quite stable. The Laboratory has been
01000 mainly supported by a research contract with the Defense Advanced
01100 Research Projects Agency's Office of Information Processing
01200 Techniques. The research has concerned artificial intelligence,
01300 picture processing, robotics, speech recognition, and mathematical
01400 theory of computation. The Laboratory has good capability in
01500 time-sharing system design, programming languages, and in the design
01600 and fabrication of computer hardware.
01700
01800 We also have extensive experience in using the computer for
01900 composing, editing and printing documents. Most of our reports are
02000 prepared directly at a display terminal and we are putting into
02100 service a printer that can put out arbitrary character texts and line
02200 drawings. This gives us extensive experience in the use of computers
02300 for interactive tasks other than programming and in writing
02400 interactive programs that make this easy.
00100 NEW EQUIPMENT NEEDED FOR THE RESEARCH
00200
00300 1. About 7 remote terminals. The type is not yet
00400 determined, but we believe that they should be capable of displaying
00500 a good fraction of a page of arbitrary character set text plus
00600 pictures. Such terminals will be economical by the time the other
00700 aspects are worked out and the utility of many of the applications of
00800 home terminals depend on good quality terminals. We only wish it
00900 were feasible to include a fast, silent, fully capable hard copy
01000 device with the terminal. Perhaps a telephone based facsimile
01100 machine will do for experiments in spite of its slowness. If we can
01200 get them soon enough, a single terminal version of the display system
01300 devised by Peter Wiener at Yale would be good.
01400
01500 2. Communication. For our experimental remote terminals, we
01600 expect to use private lines leased from the telephone company. They
01700 are available and reasonably economical.
01800
01900 3. An increase in processing power - a KI10 or part of
02000 Foonly. The KI10 is D.E.C.'s higher speed version of the PDP-10
02100 processor, and Foonly is a much higher speed processor being designed
02200 in our laboratory,but whether Foonly will be built is presently
02300 uncertain. In either case, this grant would bear only about a quarter
02400 of the cost of the increased processing speed required.
02500
02600 4. A new multiplexor for our computer to handle low speed
02700 communication channels.
00100 BUDGET DETAIL
00200
00300 RESEARCH GRANT PROPOSAL BUDGET
00400 THREE YEARS BEGINNING 1 JULY 1973
00500
00600 YEAR 1 YEAR 2 YEAR 3
00700 BUDGET CATEGORY ('73-'74) ('74-'75) ('75-'76)
00800 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
00900
01000 A.SALARIES & WAGES:
01100
01200 1. Senior Personnel:
01300
01400 a. Principal Investigator,
01500 J. McCarthy, Professor,
01600 Acad. Yr., (.9 mos. FTE) $ 2,350 $ 2,350 $ 2,350
01700 Summer, (.6 mos FTE) 1,567 1,567 1,567
01800
01900 b. Visiting Ass't. Professor,
02000 T. Winograd
02100 Acad. Yr., (2.2 mos FTE) 3,500 3,500 3,500
02200 Summer, (.75 mos FTE) 1,167 1,167 1,167
02300
02400 2. OTHER PERSONNEL:
02500 a. Research Computer Scientist,
02600 L. Earnest, (2.4 mos FTE) 5,393 5,393 5,393
02700
02800 b. Research Associate
02900 (1)______, (12 mos. FTE) 14,400 14,400 14,400
03000
03100 c. Graduate Students:
03200 (2) 50% Acad. Yr., (9 mos. FTE) 5.850
03300 (2) 100% Summer, (6 mos FTE) 4,290
03400
03500 (3) 50% Acad.Yr.(13.5 mos. FTE) 9,045 9,180
03600 (3) 100% Summer, (9 mos. FTE) 6,645 6,750
03700
03800 d. Research Programmer:
03900 (1) ____, (12 mos FTE) 10,800
04000 (2) ____,____,(24 mos FTE) 21,600 21,600
04100
04200 e. Electronics/Hardware Technician:
04300 (1) ____, (12 mos FTE) 9,000 9,000 9,000
04400
04500 f. Secretarial-Administrative:
04600 (1)____, Secretary (6 mos. FTE) 3,600 3,600 3,600
04700 (1)____, Clerk (12 mos. FTE) 5,400 5,400 5,400
04800
04900 g. Reserve for Salary Increases
05000 @ 5% per year 3,368 8,367 12,586
05100 _______ _______ ________
05200
05300 TOTAL SALARIES & WAGES $ 70,685 $ 92,034 $ 96,493
05400
05500 B. FRINGE BENEFITS:
05600
05700 16% 7-1-73 to 8-31-73,
05800 17.3% 9-1-73 to 8-31-74,
05900 18.3% 9-1-74 to 8-31-75,
06000 19.3% 9-1-75 to 6-30-76. 12,075 16,689 18,462
06100
06200 C. PERMANENT EQUIPMENT:
06300
06400 1. 7 Remote Terminals 70,000
06500 2. KI10 Processor (25%) 50,000
06600 3. Multiplexor 20,000
06700 ______
06800 TOTAL PERMANENT EQUIPMENT 140,000
06900
07000 D. EXPENDABLE MATERIALS & EQUIPMENT 1,500 1,500 1,500
07100
07200 E. TRAVEL:
07300 1. DOMESTIC-
07400 Local 300
07500 East Coast 1,350
07600 _____ 1,650 1,650 1,650
07700
07800 F. PUBLICATIONS: 800 800 800
07900
08000 G. OTHER COSTS:
08100
08200 1. Communications 2,820 3,102 3,412
08300 2. Equipment Maintenance 1,000 1,000 1,000
08400 _______ _______ ________
08500
08600 H. TOTAL DIRECT COSTS (A THROUGH G) $230,530 $116,775 $123,317
08700
08800 I. INDIRECT COSTS:
08900
09000 1. On campus: 46% of 90,530 41,644
09100 46% of 116,775 53,717
09200 46% of 123,317 56,726
09300 _______ _______ _______
09400 H. TOTAL COST (H + I) $272,174 $170,492 $180,043
09500 ________ ________ ________
09600 ________ ________ ________
00100
00200
00300
00400 COGNIZANT PERSONNEL
00500
00600
00700 For contractual matters:
00800
00900 Office of the Research Administrator
01000 Stanford University
01100 Stanford, California 94305
01200
01300 Telephone: (415) 321-2300, ext. 2883
01400
01500 For technical and scientific matters regarding this proposal:
01600
01700 Prof. John McCarthy
01800 Computer Science Department
01900 Stanford University
02000 Stanford, California 94305
02100
02200 Telephone: (415) 321-2300, ext. 4971
02300
02400 For administrative matters, including questions relating
02500 to the budget or property acquisition:
02600
02700 Mr. Lester D. Earnest
02800 Computer Science Department
02900 Stanford University
03000 Stanford, California 94305
03100
03200 Telephone: (415) 321-2300, ext. 4971
00100 REFERENCES
00200
00300
00400 1. Bush, Vannevar, As We May Think, Atlantic Monthly, 1945. In this
00500 article, Bush proposes an information terminal with direct access to
00600 published information.
00700
00800 2. Baran, Paul et. al., The Market for Information Services in the
00900 Home. This article is a Delphi study polling 'expert' opinion on
01000 when various services would achieve given market penetrations. In
01100 our opinion the experts were not ingenious enough in devising
01200 services and were over-optimistic about the market for the services
01300 they did think of.
01400
00100 Appendix A
00200
00300
00400 This paper was given at a conference on "Man and the Computer"
00500 sponsored by Institut de la Vie of Paris and held in Bordeaux in
00600 June 1970. Regrettably, the proceedings of the conference have not
00700 appeared almost three years later.
00800
00900 THE HOME INFORMATION TERMINAL
01000
01100 by John McCarthy
01200
01300 Visionaries have often proposed that homes be equipped with
01400 information terminals each consisting of a typewriter keyboard and a
01500 screen capable of displaying one or more pages of print and pictures.
01600 The terminal is to be connected by the telephone system to a
01700 time-shared computer which in turn has access to files containing all
01800 books, magazines, newspapers, catalogs, airline schedules, much
01900 additional public information not now kept, and various files
02000 personal to the user.
02100
02200 Through the terminal the user can get any information he
02300 wants, can buy and sell, could communicate with persons and
02400 institutions, and process information in other useful ways. Such a
02500 system has never come about because it costs too much, but with each
02600 advance in technology, it becomes more feasible. I think that the
02700 technology of computers, time-sharing, terminals, and application
02800 programming has advanced to the point where realistic estimates are
02900 possible of the remaining advances necessary to make home consoles
03000 feasible and useful. In this paper, I shall discuss the uses of the
03100 home terminal, some potential beneficial effects on society, estimate
03200 how far we are from a system people will pay for, and advocate some
03300 pilot projects, some standardization efforts, and some laws and
03400 regulations to prevent monopoly and secure adequate competition.
03500
03600 We can start with ordinary reading. To get a newspaper or
03700 book, I type its name or number and the first page appears. The most
03800 obvious benefits are:
03900
04000 1. I can get any document instantly.
04100
04200 2. My house isn't full of paper to be sorted and put on
04300 shelves and dusted or put in the trash. Trees aren't cut down, and
04400 air pollution doesn't result from burning the stuff.
04500
04600 Some immediately apparent disadvantages are:
04700
04800 1. The expense. I'll deal with this later.
04900
05000 2. I can't read in bed. The book size portable terminal will
05100 come later. A household may require several terminals or perhaps we
05200 may have to compromise with sin and provide a hard copy terminal
05300 after all.
05400
05500 There are two other immediate negative reactions:
05600
05700 1. The average citizen is a TV fan and doesn't read anyway.
05800 In the first place, our system doesn't need so many subscribers to be
05900 economical. Secondly, after I have described all the bells and
06000 whistles, you will see that even the TV fan will be tempted, and you
06100 - oh socially conscious reader - may even want to coerce him into
06200 buying one or coerce the government into giving him one for free.
06300
06400 2. How can you think of one more convenience and comfort when
06500 the world will come to an end in ten years unless menaces A, B, and C
06600 are dealt with immediately. In the first place, I don't think the
06700 world is about to come to an end or even that it is getting worse,
06800 and we Americans like new gadgets. In the second place, you will see
06900 that the new information system will make the public more responsive
07000 to the careful reasoning of you good guys and more immune to the
07100 blatant propaganda of those bad guys.
07200
07300 In order to see the effects of the new information system,
07400 suppose that all book and newspaper information were so distributed.
07500 What changes would occur?
07600
07700 At present, a newspaper or a book is a package produced by a
07800 large organization. In our new system, the physical production
07900 disappears, allowing a much smaller organization to put out the same
08000 packages of text and pictures. Moreover, the user does not face a
08100 one shot decision to buy Life or Look. He will be able to read the
08200 "cover" or table of contents of each, read such items as strike his
08300 fancy, and the system will bill him for what he reads from each
08400 source. In fact, since the cost of keeping a file of information in
08500 the computer and making it publicly available will be small, even a
08600 high school student could compete with the New Yorker if he could
08700 write well enough and if word of mouth and mention by reviewers
08800 brought him to public attention. What, then, is a publication in
08900 the new information system?
09000
09100 A publication is an organization that puts out a list of
09200 material it has edited and recommends to its readers. It helps its
09300 authors produce material that it thinks will suit the readers, and it
09400 has a financial arrangement with them about splitting the proceeds.
09500
09600 There can be a wide variety of publications of different
09700 standards of writing and editing and different budgets for carrying
09800 out these activities. However, they will all be equally accessible
09900 to all readers, and the only justification for an expensive editorial
10000 organization will be that it can produce a more popular package. The
10100 price of reading a package can be set by the publishers.
10200
10300 A reader may feel that he needs help in finding his way
10400 through the totality of literature available to him. Various people
10500 will be eager to make a living by providing it. A bookstore or
10600 library is a program that when called shows the "covers" of
10700 publications. Reviewers will produce lists for him and make money
10800 when he reads their lists or by kickbacks from the publishers.
10900 "Reading advisers" under some catchier name will offer to generate
11000 lists just for him according to a profile of his interests.
11100
11200 Advertising in the sense of something that can force itself
11300 on the attention of a reader will disappear because it will be too
11400 easy to read via a program that screens out undesirable material.
11500 However, people will still want to know what is for sale and will
11600 still want to see the seller's story about why they should buy it.
11700 Probably, Life will still be able to get money from advertisers; many
11800 people will still want to know what is advertised in Life, but those
11900 who don't want to know will be able to avoid it automatically.
12000
12100 Another effect is the possibility of frequent revisions of
12200 articles and books. An author can take into account new facts or
12300 other people's criticisms, and the revision will take effect
12400 immediately. This raises 1984ish possibilities, so it must be
12500 provided that old versions remain available. Those who suspect the
12600 whole system will keep their own copies of favorite material in their
12700 private files, on microfilm, or even on paper.
12800
12900 Public controversy can be carried out more expeditiously than
13000 at present. If I read something that seems controversial, I can ask
13100 the system if anyone has filed a reply. This, together with an
13200 author's ability to revise his original statement, will lead people
13300 to converge on considered positions more quickly than at present even
13400 if they do not come to actual agreement.
13500
13600 Famous authors will not need publishers because their loyal
13700 readers will have the system find their stuff automatically.
13800
13900 To summarize: the new information system will promote
14000 intellectual competition by reducing the price of entry, will permit
14100 readers to be selective, and will allow authors to revise material
14200 until they are satisfied that it withstands criticism as well as it
14300 ever will. This should make intellectual life more interesting.
14400
14500 The financial aspect of writing would presumably be as
14600 follows: a piece of written material has a price for reading it.
14700 (This price may be zero for amateur writing, political propaganda,
14800 advertising, and for scientific journals). The reader's account is
14900 debited and the account to which the material belongs is
15000 automatically credited. The reader will have the system balk at what
15100 he considers overpriced material.
15200
15300 The new information system will have a profound effect on
15400 buying and selling. Sellers of movies, groceries, automobiles,
15500 plumbing services and cures for baldness will find it advantageous to
15600 list their wares in the information system together with current
15700 prices and availability. The user can place an order through the
15800 system as he can by telephone, but he can do much more:
15900
16000 1. He can call on someone's program to scan the sellers of
16100 sports cars and propose what it considers the best deal. This program
16200 might even negotiate with programs representing the sellers.
16300
16400 2. He can tell the system whether last year's cure for
16500 baldness worked and a get a summary of the opinions of those who
16600 bothered to record their opinions of the cure he contemplates trying
16700 now.
16800
16900 3. He can make an airplane or hotel reservation by
17000 interacting with a program the airline or hotel reservation company
17100 has written to tell him what is available. He need not suffer the
17200 delays you now get when you call an airline or travel agent at peak
17300 hours.
17400
17500 4. Individual design and construction services can be offered
17600 through the system although this requires the development of computer
17700 controlled manufacturing techniques for various types of article. The
17800 idea is that automated design programs can produce designs for
17900 articles meeting individual specifications. Either by himself or in
18000 consultation with an expert, an individual would use the system to
18100 produce a design and display how it would look and possibly how it
18200 would perform. Candidates for individual design include clothing,
18300 furniture, boats, electronic equipment, houses, and even cars. The
18400 system would then produce the instructions for controlling machine
18500 tools, fabric cutters, and also printed instructions for the hand
18600 parts of the operation. In general, it should be possible to make
18700 single objects at little more cost than present mass produced
18800 objects. In some cases, there would even be savings, because mass
18900 production requires estimates of demand that are often wrong
19000 resulting in inventories that are expensive to sell or even have to
19100 be sold at a loss; the cost of this is made up by a general increase
19200 in prices.
19300
19400 There are many more useful services that can be offered
19500 through the new information system and again the system is conducive
19600 to competition. Writing and storing a program and announcing its
19700 availability can be a very low capital operation, and the system can
19800 collect whatever price has been set for its use.
19900
20000 We could go on listing services that would come to be offered
20100 in a fully developed system, but now we shall list some services to
20200 smaller groups of users that are cheaper to provide and which will
20300 help get the system started.
20400
20500 1. Calculation and facilities for writing, running, and
20600 debugging computer programs. This doesn't interest the general
20700 public much, but it is the present bread and butter of the time-
20800 sharing service bureaus that will grow into the new information
20900 system. At present, these service bureaus offer very convenient way
21000 of doing small scientific and engineering calculations, but do not
21100 offer reasonable prices for big computations, and are only beginning
21200 to offer useful services to business firms.
21300
21400 2. Editing. Anyone who writes (writers, journalists,
21500 scientists, advertising men, engineers and students) will benefit
21600 from using an editor program. It allows easy revision, can be made
21700 to check spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and will produce
21800 justified or other forms of elegant output and also indexes.
21900
22000 3. Filing. Keeping personal files in the computer has great
22100 advantages once documents can be entered without retyping them,
22200 either because they have been prepared in a computer readable form or
22300 because a suitable page reader is available. Namely, one can
22400 retrieve any document on the basis of its characteristics without
22500 having taken the trouble to file it properly in the first place.
22600
22700 4. Education. Computer aided instruction (CAI) has advanced
22800 to the point that a number of courses or aids to traditional courses
22900 have been developed and have been shown to be useful. The main
23000 obstacle to the widespread use of CAI is economic, but new
23100 developments in display technology and communications give a
23200 reasonable probability of cost-effective systems within this decade.
23300 There is no special problem in having these systems available in the
23400 home as well as at school. This would be aided by standardizing
23500 course writing languages. Again, we should try to stimulate
23600 competition by encouraging the offering of courses in particular
23700 subjects independent of the schools.
23800
23900 The development of such a system is probably inevitable
24000 (unless it is forbidden by law) as soon as costs come down to the
24100 point where it is profitable for time-sharing service bureaus to
24200 offer services to individuals. However, favorable policies will
24300 bring this about sooner and will make the effects better.
24400
24500 The main danger to be avoided is the creation of services of
24600 limited scope that through some avoidable feature cannot be expanded
24700 to provide the services mentioned here and many more. Another
24800 problem is to avoid monopolies; the intrinsic nature of the system
24900 permits any person who can write computer programs to compete with
25000 large organizations in inventing and offering imaginative services,
25100 but one can worry that the system might develop commercially in some
25200 way that would prevent that. In general, we should try to develop
25300 information services in such a way as will enhance the individuality
25400 of its users.
25500
25600 Between us and the home information system lie a number of
25700 problems, some in developing suitable low cost terminals, some in
25800 programming technology of time-sharing, some in the economics and
25900 politics of communication systems, and some in the attitude of the
26000 public and government towards innovation. In the following sections
26100 we shall discuss these problems.
26200
26300
26400 How we get there from here.
26500
26600 1. Consoles.
26700
26800 The quality and price of display consoles is rapidly
26900 improving. At present, one can add a display console with keyboard to
27000 our laboratory system for about $700, but to add another port on the
27100 system so that the number of consoles active at one time is increased
27200 by one costs about $2500. A reasonable display console that can be
27300 located at the end of a telephone line now costs about $10,000. These
27400 consoles are adequate for any of the services mentioned in the
27500 previous section, although for reading purposes, it would be
27600 desirable to be able to display more than 35 typed lines at a time.
27700
27800 In my opinion, the cost of an adequate display terminal that
27900 can be located at the end of a telephone line will be in the $500 to
28000 $1000 range by 1975 even without a market of the size of the
28100 potential home terminal market. The business, engineering and
28200 science, and government markets will be large enough and price
28300 sensitive enough to bring this about.
28400
28500 Another contender as a terminal is the plasma panel, but the
28600 above estimates are based on CRT terminals with a mini-computer and
28700 an integrated circuit memory.
28800
28900
29000 2. Communications.
29100
29200 In the United States, the facilities for digital
29300 communications are growing rapidly but in a rather disorderly way
29400 because of the multiplicity of requirements of the different
29500 applications. Some applications such as credit verification require
29600 very low cost short communications with turn around times of seconds.
29700 Others require very low cost per bit but can stand delays of minutes
29800 and hence are candidates for low performance store and forward
29900 systems. The terminal systems require long holding times, short
30000 response times, and much higher transmission rates from the computer
30100 to the user than in the other direction.
30200
30300 For the purposes of the home terminal, the speeds of
30400 transmission over present unconditioned voice grade circuits are a
30500 bit too low for such applications as reading. 1200 bits per second
30600 would take 20 seconds to transmit a typed page and about four times
30700 that for a page of a dictionary. Eight times this rate is obtained
30800 over conditioned voice grade lines, and this might be barely
30900 adequate. Perhaps a better bet is the transmission facility planned
31000 for the Picturephone service now being introduced experimentally, but
31100 the cost of this service for long holding times is not yet
31200 determined. The most economical system might be a specially designed
31300 store and forward system configured to give fast turn around for
31400 short messages.
31500
31600 Whether such a service will be made available depends on
31700 political as well as technical factors. For example, if on the basis
31800 of present plans, the digital communication market is divided by
31900 regulatory action among AT&T and its potential competitors, it might
32000 turn out that no-one is obliged or even allowed to offer the service
32100 required for home terminals at a reasonable cost.
32200
32300
32400 3. Computer technology.
32500
32600 At present, computer technology can offer the services
32700 required for the home terminal at a reasonable cost, provided
32800 computer configurations are optimized for the purpose, provided
32900 reasonable load factors can be obtained, and provided there are
33000 reasonable economies of scale. Unfortunately, IBM computers are
33100 organized in such a way that time sharing is very expensive because
33200 of their interrupt structure, their expensive terminal multiplexors,
33300 and their dedication to the archaic half duplex method of
33400 communication. The other major computer manufacturers such as CDC,
33500 General Electric, and Univac are not in much better shape since they
33600 offer for time sharing, machines that were optimized for other
33700 purposes. Smaller companies like DEC are in a somewhat better
33800 position. However, none of these difficulties are permanent, and
33900 better organized computers may be expected once the factors in
34000 computer design that make for good cost-performance in time sharing
34100 become clearer to the manufacturers.
34200
34300 The present magnetic disk storage units are a bit marginal in
34400 cost effectiveness for use with home terminals. Thus storage on the
34500 new IBM 3330 disk would cost a user about $.03 per month to store a
34600 typewritten page making storage of extensive personal files expensive
34700 and private copies of books at $5 to$10 per month prohibitively
34800 expensive. This would not be too expensive for national libraries,
34900 but it would be economically very difficult to get enough readers to
35000 support the storage of books on magnetic disk files in the near
35100 future.
35200
35300 Fortunately, much larger files are becoming available. The
35400 laser file made by Precision Instruments Inc. is claimed to store a
35500 trillion bits and costs $1,000,000. This comes to about $4 per book
35600 which is reasonable even for single copies. Mass production of such
35700 files will reduce the cost even further.
35800
35900
36000 4. Computer programming.
36100
36200 The basic technology of writing time sharing technology is
36300 reasonably well developed in that cost effective systems have been
36400 written, but there is still a lot of chasing of will-o'-the-wisps and
36500 quite bad time-sharing systems are often produced by otherwise
36600 competent firms. Before the programming required to offer the
36700 services mentioned in the first part of this paper can be
36800 accomplished some further advances need to be made including at least
36900 the following:
37000
37100 1. The interactive and file reference aspects of programming
37200 languages and time sharing systems need to be standardized so that an
37300 interactive system written in one system can be used in another that
37400 uses different hardware and a different time sharing system. Without
37500 this it will be very expensive for new user services to get large
37600 markets unless some particular time sharing system gets a monopoly.
37700
37800 2. A system needs to be developed for representing text in a
37900 computer that will include the full variety of alphabets, type fonts
38000 and character sizes and also be adaptable to diagrams, drawings and
38100 photographs. The consoles also have to be adapted to this variety of
38200 styles. This is an ultimate requirement; much can be done with texts
38300 that are just regarded as sequences of latin letters.
38400
38500 3. The biggest task, however, is the application programming
38600 itself.
38700
38800
38900 5. Commercial organization.
39000
39100 From a social point of view, one of the attractive features
39200 of the provision of time-sharing services is that it is not a natural
39300 monopoly. Communication is cheap enough for teletype based
39400 time-sharing so that with local multiplexors, time-sharing bureaus
39500 can compete all over the United States. In principal, it should be
39600 possible to have world wide competition. The major force that might
39700 tend to reduce competition is the exclusive possession of proprietary
39800 programs or files. Therefore, it is desirable to separate the
39900 ownership of programs performing services from the ownership of the
40000 service bureaus themselves and to encourage enough compatibility
40100 between different time-sharing systems so that the owner of a service
40200 program could provide it on a number of machines. It is also
40300 important that important files be accessible and modifiable with
40400 suitable protections by actions initiated on other machines than the
40500 one that maintains the file.
40600
40700
40800 6. Needs for research and development.
40900
41000 The hardware required for home consoles will be too expensive
41100 for extensive systems for probably another five years. In the
41200 meantime, research and development should be undertaken in the
41300 following areas:
41400
41500 1. Standardization of the interfaces of time-sharing systems
41600 and their languages.
41700
41800 2. Experimentation with services. At present, it is very
41900 difficult to get support for development of generally useful services
42000 unless either it can be claimed that disaster will result from
42100 failure to support the activity or that the supporting organization
42200 will itself make a profit. This political fact is one of the reasons
42300 for the concentration on military technology in the recent past.
42400
42500 3. Research aimed at devising ways of co-ordinating the great
42600 variety of time-sharing services into a mutually communicating
42700 network. Neither sufficient understanding nor sufficient political
42800 or commercial force is available to cause the development of
42900 time-sharing services to proceed according to a unified plan.
43000 Nevertheless, computers are flexible enough so that originally
43100 incompatible systems can be made to communicate and use each other's
43200 services. Experiments with the ARPA network that provides
43300 communication between U.S. Government sponsored research computers
43400 will provide useful information.
43500
43600
43700 7. Comments on the conference.
43800
43900 In general, the conference showed a poor situation in the
44000 scientific and technological community and also the public affairs
44100 community regarding technology and the human future. There were a
44200 few technically competent but rather narrow surveys of the state and
44300 prospects of particular tool areas of technology. There was much
44400 random doom-saying and denunciation of currently fashionable whipping
44500 boys. There was a fair amount of opinion that certain things should
44600 not be done. There was an almost total lack of imaginative
44700 discussion of the opportunities technology offers us to improve human
44800 life. This lack was especially notable in those individuals and
44900 organizations that are supposed to be professionally concerned with
45000 the matter.
45100
45200 This essay represents a small effort to redress the balance.