Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxi!mhuxa!houxm!hocda!spanky!burl!duke!unc!brl-bmd!Human-Nets-Request@rutgers From: Human-Nets-Request%rutgers@brl-bmd.UUCP Newsgroups: fa.human-nets Subject: HUMAN-NETS Digest V6 #47 Message-ID: <624@brl-bmd.UUCP> Date: Thu, 18-Aug-83 04:46:11 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-bmd.624 Posted: Thu Aug 18 04:46:11 1983 Date-Received: Sun, 21-Aug-83 02:48:09 EDT Lines: 190 HUMAN-NETS Digest Thursday, 18 Aug 1983 Volume 6 : Issue 47 Today's Topics: Responce to Query - Who contributes to HN?, Computers and People - National Database & Technology and Civilization (2 msgs) & System Limits and People & "Calling Channel" mailing list ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed 17 Aug 83 12:30:06-PDT From: Richard Treitel Subject: Who contributes? One of our local BBoards here at Gotham City U. is used for unfettered general discussion, and is dominated by a group whose composition changes, but rarely has more than about 10 people at the core. Some numerical data have been collected, but I don't have them. Most of what goes on (apart from used cars for sale) consists of semi-private arguments between these people. They tend to forget about the rest of their audience, which never says anything. On HUMAN-NETS, it seems to me that the writing is rather less exclusive, but it would equally be interesting to know who does the reading. I wonder if this knowledge would dissuade some of us from making our usual contributions ... - Richard ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 Aug 83 01:33:47 PDT From: fair%ucbarpa@Berkeley (Erik E. Fair) Subject: Re: HN V6 #46: Doesn't anyone know about us? Clearly that clown hasn't ever heard of the ARPAnet or CSnet. Or he's fishing for new money, based on Congress' short memory for such things. Has Argonne done anything significant recently? Obviously they're not reading the literature in computer science... For that matter, what is the deputy directoro of Argonne doing testifying to congress about 5th Generation computers and Networks? Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucb-arpa ------------------------------ Date: 17 August 1983 01:40 EDT From: Robert Elton Maas Subject: The influence of technology to our well being Although it's true that the median living human today isn't much better than 2000 years ago, when you start at the top and compare person for person you find people are much better off now than then. There are millions alive today who are living much better than the top millions back then. Further down the line there are billions living today in poverty who wouldn't have been alive at all back then. Pick any level of quality of life, from barely-living to very rich, and you'll find more people living above that level today than back then. It would be trivial to bring the median person up to our level. Just kill off the bottom 80% of humanity. There'd still be more people living today then back then, and they'd be way up in quality of life too. Now give those bottom 80% the choice of death or poverty. Which would they choose? It's always possible to lower the apparent median by including more of the unfortunate people in the survey. That's what you're in effect doing by comparing the billions who are alive today with the mere millions who were alive back then. To be fair you should include all the billions back then who were never even born. Then the median back then would be dead while the median now would be poverty. When comparing apples and oranges, there are many "correct" ways to interpret the data, yours and mine included. Perhaps we should simply choose which world/society we'd prefer, where 4.6 billion humans can live, mostly in poverty, a few in luxury, or where only a few million can live, where probably you and I wouldn't be among the chosen few to live. (Remember you can claim "well, I'd be alive, it'd be those other guys who'd be dead"; but to be fair you have to consider that maybe you would be among the dead if we reverted to pre-industrial society.) ------------------------------ Date: 27 July 1983 14:12 cdt From: Bibbero.PMSDMKT Subject: Technology and Civilization In reply to the question raised by esherman at BBN Has any technological development fundamentally changed men and women for the better? The answer to this question depends so much on what you define as "better." If you mean a better life-style for the common man/women in the sense of more leisure, more access to knowledge and more development of the intellectual and physical resources of the human body, to say nothing of better health and longevity, there is no doubt that nearly every technological development has helped. At least those preceding the ages of nuclear and chemical pollution in which we are now residing. The ultimate result of the industrial revolution was more goods for all and, indirectly, a better status for the working man or woman. We tend to forget all to easily that the Middle Ages were a time when life was "short and brutal" for most people. So far as health is concerned, it is obvious that more people are surviving diseases that killed them off just a few decades ago (like TB and pneumonia) and that infant mortality has plummeted as longevity has risen. Although it is not perhaps immediately clear that a longer life is a better life, the opposite is certainly true. It is hard to be "good" or to enjoy life when you are not around. >From a longer range standpoint, that is, genetically, it is probably too early to say whether the change in life-style from survival, food-bound to a motive-bound economy has any lasting effect on the fundamental patterns of the race. Generally, these changes take millenia rather than years to become obvious. But it seems that the gene pool is bound to change when the emphasis is altered from survival of the most powerful physically to that of the most agile mentally. There are no doubt more geniuses surviving today (like the conductor Perlman, for example) who would have perished in the bad old days. And these live to transmit their superior characteristics to the race. The history of the Jews might be an indication of what a few thousand years of intellectual emphasis does to a gene pool. As far as the "spiritual" aspect of technology's effect on making a person "better" this is beyond my sphere of expertise. I don't know what a spirit is much less what makes it better, or even what is better. But it seems reasonable that a more relaxed physical life would offer personal opportunities to be kinder and more considerate of one's fellows. Rather than "spirit" I prefer to think of the advancement of the human race as a trek toward cooperation, even cooperation between "machines" (computers) and humans. If this is the future of the human race, and one to be desired, there is no doubt that technology is a major driving force in shaping that future. ------------------------------ Date: 17 AUG 83 16:55 PDT From: Hathaway@AMES-TSS.ARPA Subject: Re: system limits and people I'm afraid our "outrage" at the 80-character company name limitation is caused simply because we realize the origin of the seemingly rather arbitrary value of 80 (presumably screen width). There have of course always been limitations on company names: a few years ago I tried to 3 register the name T ["T cubed"], and was turned down on the grounds that superscripts and subscripts were not allowed; I would have had to register "T3" (and that was not available because somebody else had already registered "3T"!). And obviously there are "arbitrary" limits on countless other things and we accept them quite well (e.g., I am only allowed to have seven letters on my personalized license plate). I'm afraid this is like the joke about the dude propositioning a woman for a million dollars and then dropping to five bucks: I think we all agree on the need for some sort of limits, we're just haggling over the price. Wayne PS: I too had a hard time relating the 80-character limit to the pi=3 episode, as well as to the lousy programming of a billing system. ------------------------------ Date: 17 August 1983 22:25 EDT From: Robert Elton Maas Subject: "Calling Channel" mailing list One major problem with mailing lists like this is that there's no control on how many people see a message after it's obsolete because the first person to see it already answered the question. Sometimes several people answer the same question. Sometimes everybody figures this is going to happen to avoid duplication they don't answer the question, and the result is nobody answers at all. It would be nice to have a way to send a query to say ten different people. Any subset of these ten can answer the question, but if fewer than two answer then the question is sent to ten more or twenty more or whatever. Ideally only three should get the question but each of the three who doesn't answer it should forward to somebody more knowledgable in the subject matter. Even more ideally as soon as one of the three has forwarded the message to an expert OR answered it directly the question should dissappear from the other's mailboxes. Or, ... lots of parameters to adjust to achieve good performance, but simply having a BBOARD mailing list doesn't seem at all the right way. ------------------------------ End of HUMAN-NETS Digest ************************