Aucbvax.1373
fa.human-nets
utzoo!duke!mhtsa!ucbvax!DERWAY@MIT-ML
Tue May 19 19:35:40 1981
HUMAN-NETS Digest V3 #103
HUMAN-NETS AM Digest Tuesday, 19 May 1981 Volume 3 : Issue 103
Today's Topics:
FYI - Weapons Conference at Stanford,
Query Replies - Name for Bits/Second Unit & ESS details &
USPS Plans for Electronic Mail & Cost per page for Electronic Mail,
Communicating via Network - Impacts on Language & Human Communication,
FYI - Electronic Newspaper in S.F. area
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 18 May 1981 1523-PDT
From: Daul at OFFICE
Subject: WEAPONS CRISIS WEEK at Stanford
WEAPONS CRISIS WEEK
Location: Stanford University
MAY
Tuesday 26 -- 7:30 Kresge Aud.
THE MEDICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF NUCLEAR WAR
Dr. Herbert Abrams
-- Director of Radiology at Harvard Medical School
-- Co-Founder of International Physicians for Social
Responsibility
Dr. Kosta Tsipis
-- Associate Director of MIT Program in Science and
Technology
-- Frequent author in Scientific American
Wednesday 27 -- NOON White Plaza
THE IMPORTANCE OF INVOLVEMENT IN ARMS CONTROL
John Anderson
Former U.S. Congressman and Presidential Candidate
Michael H. Shuman
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Rabinowitch Essay Winner
Coit Blacker
Associate Director Arms Control Program
Stanford University
Wednesday 27 -- 7:30 Braun Aud.
U.S. POLITICS AND ARMS CONTROL
Rep. Les Aspin
U.S. Congressman from Wisconsin
Member House Arms Services Committee and House Budget
Committee
Prominent liberal spokesman for arms control
Thursday 28 -- 7:30 Kresge Aud.
THE ARMS RACE: SOURCES AND SOLUTIONS
Dr. Wolfgan K.H. Panofsky
Director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Winner of National Medal of Science
Dr. Jeremy Stone
Director of Federation of American Scientists
Tony Webb
Founder of the British Anti-Nuclear Campaign
Friday 29 -- 7:30 Bishop Aud.
HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI RECONSIDERED
Dr. Barton J. Bernstein
Associate Professor of History at Stanford
FILM: Day After Trinity
1981 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary
Moving biography of Robert J. Oppenheimer, developer of the
first atomic bomb
Saturday 30 -- 7:30 Fairchild Aud.
DEBATE: WEAPONS IN THE 80's -- THE MX AND BEYOND
Dr. Sidney Drell
Deputy Director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Consultant on arms control to the National Security Council
and Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
VS.
Lt. General Daniel Graham (ret.)
Former Director of Defense Intelligence Agency and outspoken
SALT critic
PRESENTED BY STANFORD ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT FORUM
For further information CALL 415 497 2437
------------------------------
Date: 10 May 1981 19:28:09-PDT
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: Bits/second unit
A while ago I read a proposal that seemed perfect to me: Shannons,
after Claude Shannon, father of information/communications theory. I
believe it was Shannon, who first formulated the concept of entropy as
information content of a message, and entropy per unit time as
effective bandwidth. He said that the information content depends on
the \probability/ of the symbol received, i.e. if you expect to
receive an X and you do, that tells you little. In other words, the
number of bits in a message is the sum of the negative of the logs
(base 2 for bits) of the probabilities of the symbols in the message
(assuming stationary probabilities). The bits per second is just this
number divided by the time the message took. BTW Shannon worked at
Bell Labs.
Sorry if the flame burns anyone, but I can't think of any other name
for the unit that even comes close. Before Shannon no one understood
how to factor in redundancy, etc.
David Ungar
------------------------------
Date: 13 May 1981 1453-PDT
From: Ian H. Merritt <MERRITT USC-ISIB AT>
Subject: Reply to Hobbit's message Re: phones (ferns) etc
My ESS seems to have been the first one in California and thus was,
for while, a bit experimental. I could rattle on for a long time
about all the bizarre things that have takan place on this machine,
but for now, I'll stow it.
Seriously, though, the ESS system has a very strange attribute:
Software which is loaded at any time stays in the system
apparently forever.
It is possible, I think, to clobber it, but it's difficult. It seems
that at one time or another, someone in the central office decided to
give a telephone in the office one of the speed calling features. This
was in the old days of Generic 6.3 or before, when customer changable
wasn't supported yet. Pacific Telephone NEVER offered this feature in
this office until the advent of the new form, however it seems that
the activation of it on one line caused the routines to be loaded or
something, and the format stuck. Anyway, it's still here, right in
there with the new format. One interesting detail is that the command
strings to set up speed calling from the C/O in the old days still
work on the new form stuff. This means that the code is still there
and the storage layout is the same. A friend managed to get old speed
calling just before the update, and his office-programmed codes stayed
on after the new software was installed.
Boy, those poor guys at WECO... They have to stick to SO much
consistancy...
IHM
------------------------------
Date: 05/16/81 09:04:55
From: SIRBU@MIT-MC
Subject: HUMAN-NETS Digest V3 #99 (USPS Plans for Electronic Mail.)
The Post Office has two technical approaches it has been working on
for electronic mail. The first to go into service (scheduled for Jan
'82) is Electronic Computer Originated Mail (ECOM). ECOM consists of
minicomputers and Printronix matrix printers in each of 25 Serving
Post Offices (SPOs). You send a minimum batch of 200 messages from
your computer via your favorite common carrier (Bell, Telenet, Western
Union, etc.) directly to the SPO and the Post Office will print it and
put it in the mail stream. You can also walk in off the street, to
one of the 25 SPOs, with a standard mag tape. This is intended to be
a service for large mailers. It is not unlikely that companies like
Telemail, the Source, Compuserve, etc. (not to mention Mailgram) will
accumulate messages from individual users and send "batches" to the
post office on behalf of these individuals.
The second technical approach is called EMSS -- Electronic Mail
Service System. In this approach, messages are primarily facsimile
encoded and printed on high speed (10 pages/sec) facsimile printers.
Input will still include direct from computers but there will also be,
at your local post office, a walk-up mail drop which scans your
unenveloped letter while you key in the address on a small keypad
(This avoids the problem of trying to "read" the address off the
letter for electronic routing purposes). The EMSS technology is
currently in the testbed stage, and it's not clear it will ever get
introduced. (Will terminal-to-terminal mail obviate the need for an
electronic input/hard-copy delivery system before you could recover
the investment in an EMSS?)
------------------------------
Date: 05/17/81 10:59:17
From: JMTURN@MIT-AI
Subject: Cost per page for electronic mail.
Shade and Sweet water to you,
The small scale delphi poll I took indicates a cost to mail a
letter electronically of about 2-5 cents a page (with 50 cents a
letter listed as a maximum if done via long distance) Thanks to
everyone who helped out!
James
P.S. Just in time for Christmas, the perfect gift! The entire HN
archives. Great for using to weigh down union members who get out of
line. Stack them up and use them as a chair. Drop them on people from
great heights! Only $9.95 (plus $12,233 shipping)
------------------------------
Date: 05/15/81 01:19:00
From: FFM@MIT-MC
Subject: English Murdering & flame about human telecommunicating
I can't seem to understand all the sighing and moaning about the
"death of the English language". It seems alive and well to me. All
languages have always had slang and argot and various other
unapproved-of features. Every so many years someone gets up and moans
about horrid things that are being done to whatever language they
happen to worry most about.
Some countries, most notably France actually have 'bodies' dedicated
to 'keeping the language pure' which in thier case means trying to
fine people who use the word "hot-dog". We could go this route and
order that MLA stylesheets be attached to all terminals and followed
scrupulously in all communications.
I however do think there is a difference in written and verbal
communications. Cue words like like "Hmmm", "I see" and "Ya-know" are
common in verbal communications, along with things of an outright
nosensical nature(if taken literally) like "How do you do?". Some of
us do not take these literally but realize they have symbolic meanings
like "Was unaware of that..", "I follow you.." and "we are sort of on
the same base...you kind of agree?? ..". Verbal communication needs
cues to go along smoothly and to work well, if it did not have these
things it would be a rather disconcerting and distressing.
I think/feel that computer communications(done between humans via
computers) lie somewhere between written and verbal communications in
style and flavor. There is an ambience of informality and
stream-of-conciousness style that pervades it but coupled with ideas
that are well thought out (usually) and deeper in insight than average
verbal communications. Does this make any sense to anyone 'sides
myself?
As far as the medium being used because people really don't want to
communicate in a 'really human way'(read snailmail(??), phone or in
person)....I really wonder about the validity of that statement. The
most important thing about electronic mail is that it is asynchornous,
if I send you a message at 2am because I had a sudden brainstorm, you
won't be rousted out of bed and wonder if someone close is in real
trouble, which would happen if you were a day person and I called you
at 2am. Snailmail is very slow and only really winning if one does
artwork in letterwriting, which I sometimes do...
It is however a more 'cowardly' medium in that if I send you something
that might provoke ire, there is little you can do to me immediately
in a physical manner, and the most likely thing that will happen is
you might yell at me in a letter or a send which is much less
bothersome than if you were doing it into my face. And even if
you(good old hypothetical you..)got angry there is a chance ,you and I
would be cooled down quite a bit before we met face to face...
However if our hypothetical communications produced some more
pleasenter passions there would be only so far we could go without
needing to see each other in person. However the same problems apply
to snailmail writers, there is only so much you can do in words...
However there are advantages in that not initially seeing a person in
the flesh. There are all sorts of things we attach to people's
appearence and the clothes they wear etc. Sometimes nice to start
relationships with- -out those things being initially the most
important, much vaunted-first- -impressions.
I feel that electronic mail is definitely a different medium than
'written' communications or verbal 'communications', after lots of
thinking/feeling it over I can not see it as a medium that is by
nature tremendously inhuman. It can definitely be used in inhuman ways
or in human ways and it has limits as to what it can do but I honestly
can't see it one way or the other. It can't replace holding someone in
your arms but neither can a letter or a phone call or a pillow for
that matter...
Enuff flaming....
Have fun
Sends Steve
------------------------------
Date: 15 May 1981 1320-PDT
From: David Lowe <DLO SU-AI AT>
Subject: Electronic Newspaper
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a full page advertisement this morning
advertising "The Chronicle Electronic Edition." As they put it:
"All you need is a television set, a telephone and an inexpensive home
computer. It's fast and easy. Dial a local telephone number to
connect your home terminal to the electronic edition of The Chronicle.
An index of Chronicle news, sports, weather, business stories, opinion
and commentary ... will appear on your screen. Using the keyboard,
it's easy to quickly display Chronicle news stories and features on
the TV screen."
I've sent in the coupon for further information, and will mention it
on HUMAN-NETS when I have more detailed info. Unfortunately, the
Chronicle is a very poor newspaper in terms of content, and electronic
access will only spread the Hearst message even more widely.
------------------------------
End of HUMAN-NETS Digest
************************
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