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C00002 00002	roszak[s86,jmc]		Review of his The Cult of Information
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C00013 00005		Roszak's 1969 ``The Making of a Counter Culture'' presented an
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roszak[s86,jmc]		Review of his The Cult of Information

The counterculture sometimes regards computers as relatively benign.
Roszak's previous ...

As I sit here at my computer terminal ...

There is indeed a cult of information, and it will be interesting
to determine whether Roszak has discovered it or whether he has
invented it.

$150, 1000 to 1200 words, by middle of May.

As a former part time participant in the Counterculture, the Mid-Peninsula
Free University, I have to say that the counterculture had its chance ---
and proved wanting.

Roszak, like many other counterculture advocates, regards the computer as
relatively benign compared to other technologies, e.g. nuclear energy.

I too worked partly as a file clerk in the Army.

6 weak history

9

"in contrast to the loud, self-serving cacophony of J. W."

14 fantasy about Shannon use of informtion

18 superficial metaphors

Does Roszak live in the Bay Area?

Roszak doesn't realize that the hucksters are also running around
in circles.

When we're richer we'll have what we want.  But will that be?  Hard
to say, but the best estimate is that it will be what the present
richer have now --- less those things that constitute exclusiveness.
You can have a drink brought for the asking, but if your pleasure
in the drink depends on it's being brought by a flunkey, then you
may not be satisfied.

1. Questions discussed
is AI possible
is computer literacy well defined
are personal computers oversold

deep plot or natural overenthusiasm

Not a cult --- only some fads.



	Many people have rather extreme opinions about computers.
Here are some --- not all compatible.

Giving the public more access to information is the way to save
the world.

Unless everyone becomes ``computer literate'',
our society will fall behind in international economic competition.
This opinion partly motivates putting lots of computers in schools.

Computers provide a way of teaching children to think.
Some think this involves teaching children to program
in BASIC.  Others hold that BASIC is bad, but LOGO is good,
while many Europeans hold out for PROLOG.  (Don't worry if
you haven't heard of any of them).  Still others believe that
computer literacy doesn't actually involve learning to program
at all, but merely involves not fearing to sit down in front of
a keyboard.

All this talk about computers is mainly a lot of media and corporate
hype.

Artificial intelligence is here, and computers will soon be as
smart as humans.  Maybe they will keep us as pets.

Artificial intelligence is impossible.

Computers promote a rigid, inhuman way of thinking.

Computers enable the Government and the corporations to control us
and are mainly promoted for that purpose.

Computers will make even worse the disadvantages
of women and minorities, either because women and minorities
lack opportunities to use them or even because their use
corresponds to a white, male way of looking at the world.

	Theodore Roszak is most famous for his 197xx book ``The making
of the Counterculture''

The beauty of technology. appreciation
	Roszak's 1969 ``The Making of a Counter Culture'' presented an
integrated vision of a technocracy dehumanizing society but confronted by
an emerging counter culture of the young.  Some shreds of this vision
remain in today's ``The Cult of Information'', but as the possibility of
visualizing the counter culture as a serious contender for dominance has
faded, Roszak's vision of the technocracy has also become dim.  He has
become moderate and we have a collection of complaints with only a
small-scale apocalyptic vision.

	Some of his complaints are warranted even to a ``rabid''
enthusiast for technological progress, capitalism, and artificial
intelligence like myself.  He correctly finds much exaggeration in the
current talk about personal computers, computer literacy and the
``information society''.  However, this doesn't really amount to a cult,
since there isn't any main organization with a maximal leader --- merely a
bunch of fads and the usual hype of advertisers abetted by enthusiasts.

	First he finds exaggerated the belief that all people need
is more access to information to save the world.
He points out that people don't fully use even the library facilities
that are available.
His skepticism is especially warranted, since the proposals being
publicized do not even extend to making the texts of the world literature
directly accessible from homes.

	His next area of skepticism is the ``computer literacy'' slogan.
Here he is less clear.
NEED TO REREAD.

I am puzzled as to what Roszak might have had in mind when he wrote

Is personifying society or does he have mysterious but actual people
in mind.  It entirely unclear how even the President of the United
States and Congress assembled would go about implementing a decision
to increase or decrease the ``flood of information''.

``The great university of the future will be that with a great computer
system'' --- Richard Cyert, President, Carnegie-Mellon University.
Maybe so, but not with what can be done with the actual facilities
Cyert has described in his articles.

the computer network ``will have the same role in student learning
that the development of the assembly line in the 1920s had for the
production of automobiles''.

becoming computer literate, comments Paul Kalaghan, dean of computer
science at Northeastern university ``is a chance to spend your life
working with devices smarter than you are, and yet have control over
them.  It's like carrying a six-gun on the old frontier''.