Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!limbo!taylor
From: jane@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Jane Hesketh)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Questions about censorship in comp.society
Message-ID: <1806@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Date: 27 Feb 91 22:42:06 GMT
Sender: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com
Organization: Dept of AI, University of Edinburgh
Lines: 46
Approved: taylor@Limbo.Intuitive.Com

Thom Gillespie writes, in response to a note from Dave Taylor:

> As you note, clearly, there's a lot that's war-related that is right
> on topic with computers and society, including the whole issue of
> "right employment" (a topic that's come up before in this forum).  But,
> again, it's a fine line between talking about that and talking about the
> larger question of whether war is an appropriate way to solve problems
> that should be resolved diplomatically, which is *not* a topic for a 
> group talking about computers and society.

There is a philosophical difference here between 

        - those who prefer to reduce topics into their components for 
	  analysis and get a view on some uncluttered problems, which they 
	  can bolt back together again (some people even believe the 
	  components are absolutely separable)

and

        - those who believe that the analysis of the combined whole cannot
          be achieved like this, since it is inseparable, and any attempt
          to address isolated bits will be flawed.

I support the second view. 

In this case, it's not just a question of whether war is an appropriate
way to tackle diplomatic problems - who said "war is just diplomacy by
another means"?  The whole apparatus enabling conducting a war got there
by design.  Weapons and command systems all selected to suit possible
wars, threats and support for the military-economic infrastructure.
It's not as if the politicians sit around minding their own business and
get a surprise one day when someone mentions they just happen to have
amassed the Armed Forces with a spare several billion they found in a
bit of the budget no-one was using.  And the whatever the military and
associated scientists and companies are able to come up with affects the
diplomatic options.

I expect comp.society to be a forum for discussion for all the
inter-relations of computers and society.  As far as I am concerned
problems influence technology, and technology influences problems in
complex ways, they are different aspects of some entity and I want to
consider it whole.  I am happy to focus on some areas more than others
for the sake of a coherent discussion, but I never want to deny
essential connectedness.

Jane Hesketh