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C00002 00002 Here are some comments suggested by "Social Implications of
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Here are some comments suggested by "Social Implications of
Computer/Telecommunications Systems" by Edwin B. Parker.
1. In general, I agree that a problem oriented approach is desirable.
Actually, both problem oriented approaches and technology oriented
approaches need to be pursued, because ideas suggested by one
approach are often missed by people exclusively following a different
approach. It is best if everyone would alternate his own
considerations between different approaches, but naturally people
differ in their capabilities.
2. Let me defend technology forecasting as a useful tool if not used
to the exclusion of others, and say further that in some
circumstances it may be all that is required. If we assume that
individuals can optimize their own purchases, then any new technology
merely adds to the options available. Moreover, any possible
technology will become available, and social policy can only modestly
affect how soon. An example of this is the electronic technology
making possible pocket calculators and digital watches. It seems to
me that government policy could not have made these available even
five years sooner. Moreover, the government fortunately did not
conduct a technology assessment and solemnly decide whether these
developments are good or bad. Note further that the Free World
electronic industry was capable of expanding its production of
digital calculators to the market saturation level in a very few
years, and digital watches will also reach saturation in a few years.
Similarly, color TV production reached a level at which it is limited
by demand at mass production prices within three years after the
amount of color TV programming justified the purchase of sets.
Let me try to generalize the lesson here. %3Policy makers should
keep not try to make decisions that the people affected can very well
make for themselves, certainly whether to buy a calculator and
probably whether to buy a car and the trade-off between gas mileage
and comfort.%1
Beyond this, I see the need for a serious attempt to define the
extent to which it is legitimate for planners to try to decide what
is desirable for other people. Of course, one can always say that to
do nothing is also a policy that requires justification. However,
often each individual will often be able to choose or reject a new
offering and change his mind if he doesn't like the result.
Naturally, there will be global effects from the multitude of
individual decisions, but I will argue that they can rarely be
predicted and are usually smaller than the sum of the individual
effects and are subject to social decision at the time when they
happen.
Well onward. Let me see if these considerations apply to the
proposals advanced in this article.
3. I agree about concentrating on institutions rather than on
technology per se. However, I disagree with the implicit idea that
one's desired distribution of wealth in the society should influence
detailed decisions about what technology people should be able to
buy. The latter should influence decisions about minimum wage,
taxation, and the bargaining balance between labor and capital, but
if groups carry such considerations into technology regulation, the
social costs of these conflicts will consume half the country's
income. There is a good reason why labor contracts run for years
rather than weeks, and why including details of job assignments in
labor contracts works out badly for everyone.
4. The statement on p.3 that "policy analysis should instead begin
with the social problems and social goals that need urgent attention,
and purposively structure both the technology and institutions
controlling the technology in order to accomplish long-range policy
objectives" makes some assumptions I believe false.
4.1. It assumes that non-urgent goals should never affect
policy. This gives power to whoever shrieks the loudest. It may be
that there are no urgent problems at present.
4.2. It presupposes that we think in terms of problems rather
than in terms of opportunities. Most social problems cannot be
solved until some event (usually technological) makes an opportunity.
I agree that the most useful reaction to a technology
provided opportunity is often a change in institutional structure
rather than merely spending money on the technology itself. I agree
with the classification of opportunities for change.
5. I doubt the theory that we are in the process of a transition to a
"post-industrial society", or at least that such a change is
inevitable or even desirable. The apparent change has two main
causes both of which it would be desirable to reverse.
5.1. Fewer good material goods have been invented recently
than in the period 1890-1920. This is because the easy things were
done at that time, but I believe that a new wave of invention of
material goods is possible and desirable. I have gone into detail on
this elsewhere, but I believe that personal flying machines are
possible, automatic delivery is possible, home terminals will have
large material costs, and automatically driven cars are possible.
Finally, most people will want to put much more money into their
housing and we are far from reaching the desired number of square
feet per person.
5.2. The people performing non-production work should be
divided into two categories. (i) People like doctors, counselors,
and teachers in which the direct contact between the server and the
client is important, and (ii) people whose function is purely
bureaucratic and whose jobs can be eliminated by improvements in
information processing technology. In my opinion, improvements in
information processing technology can eliminate most of the increase
in service jobs. The jobs are not attractive, and the labor freed
can be used to let production workers slow down a bit.
6. The article accepts the current dogma that we are fast approaching
the limits of physical growth. Such limits exist, but we are not
close to them, and the changes in technology required to get new
(e.g. nuclear) energy sources and to use lower grade ores are of
smaller magnitude than some that occurred in the nineteenth century
with much less fuss. I hold the extreme view that the crisis is
almost entirely a matter of ideology.
7. I agree with the dissection of service occupations into
information and other. The list of four reasons why information has
grown relative to other activities soes not include the possiblility
that a social fluctuation has created bureaucratic monsters both in
private industry and at all levels of government. This problem is
getting much attention, and I believe that technology will be
developed to take care of the problem. To take Stanford University
as an example, I don't believe that the growth of administrative
costs relative to academic has any of the four reasons mentioned.
8. I agree that information is different from other commodities. I
also agree that the difficulty in buying and selling it lead to
suboptimalities that may be very important. In fact, these
information problems lead to suboptimalities in industrial society.
Thus they lead to salesmen being rewarded more highly than inventors,
because the salesman is closest to the sale so his contribution is
easy to measure, while the inventor is farthest from the sale and his
contribution is conjectural especially if there isn't just one
invention contributing to the product.
9. I don't agree that the present economic crisis has information
roots or an information solution. I doubt that the present recovery
has much of an information component. Housing starts and automobile
production is still playing the key role.
10. Well I agree that there is a great payoff in stimulating
information processing productivity. Let's see if there are any good
ideas, however.
11. As I said before, I am doubtful about the alleged natural
resource constraints. However, I also doubt growth predictions based
on mere extrapolation of trends. Each proposed new use of energy
must justify itself, but this is best done by the traditional price
mechanism rather than by setting energy targets.
12. The thought of government policy attempting to change people's
values as is proposed is quite repellent to me. This is mainly
because (i) present attempts to be explicit about values lead to
nonsense far worse than the same people produce when asked practical
questions, (ii) the people who want to change values seem quite ready
to formulate extremist hypotheses justifying coercive methods when
their attempts fail. Thus I can see environmentalists coming to an
equivalent of Stalin's theory of the intensification of the class
stuggle after the victory of socialism with all its attendant
opportunities for 1984ish disasters.
To give an example, the characterization of the "Protestant
Ethic" in the paper is eccentric, but most of the other
characterizations of it in the current literature are equally
eccentric and usually ad hoc to some ax being ground.
13. Note that the U.S. balance of payments is now favorable in spite
of the energy crisis. We don't need to limit imports to the harm of
other countries as long as they want our wheat, airplanes, and
integrated circuits.
14. Unfortunately, there are many countries that have neither
material resources nor information to sell. They have to sell their
labor power, and those countries that have recognized this like
Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea have rapidly increased
their GNP's and incidentally the per hour prices they can get for
their labor power.
15. The idea that as society becomes more oriented to information,
co-operation should replace competition is interesting. There is
certainly an effect of some kind, but I am not even sure of the sign.
It may be that we should try to improve social institutions that
permit information to be marketable property. The home terminal will
permit competition in many areas that have not allowed it before.
Maybe the best solution would be to develop a mechanism for the a
posteriori evaluation of the contribution an individual or
organization has made resulting in an appropriate reward.
16. The most repellent of all proposals are those to force the delay
of benefits until all can have them. The creation of a legal
mechanism to do this, would lead me to think only of escape from such
a country.
17. In my opinion the privacy issue is mostly superstition.
Dictatorship and oppression comes from control of police power and
willingness to use it improperly. There have been police states
without any information technology.
18. The key reason for property in information is to allow the person
who believes that a certain information product will be valuable to
proceed on his own to create it. Society will be able to determine
the need for information products in advance only when all creators
are substantially the same, i.e. when individual differences have
disappeared. The extreme example is when a committee decides that a
novel with such-and-such a plot is wanted and commissions someone to
write it.
19. There is a belief that whether work is rewarding in itself is a
characteristic of social organization and that it can be
fundamentally affected by changes in social organization. In my
opinion, this is an illusion. The jobs that have to be done are
determined by people's wants and the technology available to satisfy
them. Garbage has to be collected and cars have to be built, and it
is unlikely that the activities will become rewarding in themselves.
Justice requires that the people who have to do them not have to
support people who don't produce anything beneficial to these
workers. In this respect, much of the growth of the post-industrial
society has been parasitic on the industrial workers, i.e. we
intellectuals have become increasingly skilled in taxing them. The
biggest burden on them, I will claim, arises not from the professors
and big business men who are few in number, but from the increasing
army of clerks and minor officials. This calls for a more precise
analysis. The Utopian vision of a draft to ensure that everyone does
his share of collecting garbage and assembly line work has much to
recommend it, but one must also take into account that for many
people, rewarding work is not wanted. They want good money, long
vacations, short hours, and non-tiring work and will get their
psychological rewards from their leisure time. Every psychological
study of production workers has shown this, and the majority of a
group of GM production workers sent to Sweden to try team assembly
came back preferring the American system that imposed fewer
intellectual demands and fewer demands for personal integration with
the working group.
20. Who are the "responsible and knowledgeable computer
professionals" who wish to forbid other people to transfer funds
electronically? Why does this make them responsible? It is my
fondest desire that robbery become impossible, because the robber
would have to demand that I transfer funds to his account.
21. The proposals for consumer information are a pale shadow of what
home terminals will make possible.
22. I think teleconferencing should be a by-product of more important
innovations such as universally available computer terminals and the
ability to give commands to the telephone system through them.
23. I agree with the last remark in the section on Health. Namely,
the health system should be a service in a large home information
utility.
24. As stated before, the amount of energy should be determined by a
demand curve rather than by a bureaucratically set growth target.
25. Indeed the government is not supporting the kind of R&D required
for home information utilities. My present main hope is in the free
enterprise system.
26. It would be better if the government set a good example on access
rather than jumped in with regulation immmediately. How about a law
that all information required to be made available under the Freedom
of Information Act be made available on disk to anyone who calls it
on his terminal. With even the present distribution of terminals,
this would lead to a large expansion in the availability of
information.
John McCarthy