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C00002 00002	vts[w83,jmc]		VTS course description and notes
C00005 00003	There are only one and a half cultures.
C00008 00004	Draft Syllabus
C00012 00005	Enhancing humanity
C00014 00006	What do I want from the student?
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vts[w83,jmc]		VTS course description and notes

su-bboards
VTS course
The following course will be given by John McCarthy in Winter 1986 in
the Values, Technology and Society program.  As will be noticed from
the description, it will emphasize opportunities rather than problems.
It will meet 14:15-15:30 Tuesdays and Thursdays
in room 202 History corner (bldg 200).


Technological Possibilities for enhancing man

	This course surveys the technological possibilities for increasing
human capability and real wealth.  It is oriented toward what people will
want rather than around what we might think is good for them.  Some of the
improvements discussed are in the direction of (1) making housework
trivial (2) making government responsive (3) increasing the ability of one
person to build an object like a car, airplane or house to suit him
without organizing others (4) allowing groups to live as they prefer less
hindered by general social laws and customs.  We will emphasize computer
and information technology and ask what will be genuinely useful about
computers in the home and not just faddish or flashy.  To what extent are
futurists and science fiction writers given to systematic error?  Can we
envisage advances as important as electricity, telephones, running water,
inside toilets?

	The second topic concerns the social factors that determine the
rate of scientific and technological progress.  Why was scientific
advance a rare event until Galileo?  Why didn't non-Western cultures
break through into the era of organized scientific and technological
progress and why did it take Western culture so long?  Why isn't the
rate of progress faster today?  As examples, we shall inquire into
the obstacles that made cellular telephone systems and electronic
funds transfer take so long.
There are only one and a half cultures.
Who are the opponents of progress?  What is the basis of their opposition
and which of their tactics are effective?
Could progress actually stop?
Comparison of the rate of progress today and at turn of century.
Which innovations are easy to get adopted and which are hard --- products
vs. systems.
Could electric power or telephones be introduced in today's social situation?

Discussing what technology can do for humanity leads to the question
of what is good for humanity and what humanity ought to be doing.
We propose to bypass these questions by reducing the problem to
what technology can do to help humans achieve their individual
goals whatever they may be.  It is the business of some other study
than technology to study how the goals of different individuals
must be compromised, what if anything beyond individuals achieving
their goals constitutes the welfare of humanity, and how people
may be persuaded to do what's right.

I don't claim that this choice is entirely ``value neutral''.
Spending effort on improving technology thus delimited, involves
a certain amount of confidence society will somehow work out
the conflicts among individuals.  It also assumes that enlarging
the pie is worthy of effort rather than putting all effort into
deciding how it should be better divided and getting the decisions
implemented.  Anyway that's where my interests lie, and this course
is intended to appeal to people who share these interests or at
least consider them worth their time.
Draft Syllabus

These were intended to be by week, but there are now more topics than
weeks.  The time division will be settled before the course is begun
in Winter 86.

1. Introduction of reading
	course notes on various possible innovations and their social effects
	Dennis Gabor, Innovations
	C.P. Snow, Two cultures
	Samuel Florman, Existential pleasures of engineering
	Joseph Corn and Brian Horrigan, Yesterdays's tomorrows
	Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason
	Serge Taylor, Making Bureaucracies Think
	Petr Beckmann,  Health Hazards of not going Nuclear
	Edith Efron, (recent book on the cancer lobby)
	Francis Bacon, Novum Organon
	Edward Bellamy, Looking Backwards
	Jules Verne as a technological prophet
	Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee
	American science fiction
	Theodore Roszak as an opponent of progress
	Arthur Kantrowitz on the Ming Navy as an example of progress stopping

1.5. Individual values vs. social control
Rate of progress today compared with that of 1900.
Criteria for a useful invention.

2 and 3. Capsule history of technology with emphasis on rates of progress
in different parts of the world.

4. The idea of progress and the pace of technological and scientific
advance.  When did science begin to impact technology?  When did
Utopias begin to include technological advance?

5. The automobile, nuclear energy and EFT.

6. How can computers help?

6a. Full access to all public information.  Full freedom to publish.  How
much difference will it make?

6b. Computerized objectivity, Leibniz's dream revisited.  Anyone who can
get through the filter with an idea can get it seriously considered.

7. Automatic delivery, personal flying machines

8. Robots

9. Medicine, improving humanity. the artificial heart.  How the
camel of social control gets its nose in the tent.
Are humans smart enough?

10. The anti-technological movement

11. The long term, preventing the ice age, CO2.
The scientific basis for technological optimism.

12. Expansion of humanity into the galaxy.  Self modification of
humanity.

13. Computer controlled cars.

14. Technology and crime.

15. Guest lecture by a ``critic''of ``progress'', e.g Bernstein?
Enhancing humanity

General

	Enhancement of humanity among other worthy goals.

	Make it possible for one person to build more: a house,
a car, an airplane, a computer.  That is the extreme case.  It
is also worthwhile to make it possible for a small group to
build more.

	Make the world's literature computer accessible to everyone.

	Make an automatic idea filter powerful enough so that
it is possible to pay social attention to ideas that get through.
(Actually it might be possible to do something with a non-computerized
idea filter).

	Such equality as we have is based on the technology that
permits a person or family to live reasonably with much less
exploitation than formerly.  In particular, such equality of
the sexes as we have is based on household technology.  It will
become greater when we have the technology to reduce housekeeping
and child care to a triviality.

	Robot servants may be a long way in the future.  However,
when they come, we will have a Victorian age that will make
respectable Victorians look like slobs.

Advances other than those that make individuals more capable
and free to achieve their dreams.
What do I want from the student?

Ideally - invention, i.e. descriptions of innovations that will enhance man.

Probably, in most cases I'll have to settle for commentary on invention,
on the social situation of innovation.