[LINK] The Samizdat Blog

[Tom Koltai]

To understand the future, occassionally we must study the past.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Rick Welykochy
> Sent: Thursday, 9 December 2010 2:16 PM
> To: 'The Link Institute '
> Subject: [LINK] The Samizdat Blog
> 
> 
> Hello Linkers,
> 
> The Russians had a word for it: samizdat. The copying by hand 
> and distribution of secret state documents.
> 
> I agree with many of the sentiments expressed in the Zamizdat 
> blog by GeorgieBC.
> 
> <http://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/samizdat/>
> 
>    "Wikileaks is not a lone vandal hacker. It is an idea. We 
> all have the idea.
>     And you can't bomb an idea, or send drones after it, or 
> put it in jail. I
>     suppose Hilary Clinton could declare an idea a terrorist, 
> since she called
>     the people terrorists for catching her spying, but she's 
> going to have a
>     hard time executing an idea.
> 
>     This is not a 'hacker' movement, whatever that even 
> means, but it gains two
>     things from the computer world: shared logic and mass 
> communication of data.
>     We, the people, have the ability to store and communicate 
> massive amounts of
>     data. We, the people, also have the ability to logically 
> process that data
>     and come to the best conclusions possible for society. 
> Together our brains
>     are much more capable than the brains currently running 
> the world, and an
>     open transparent system will ensure potential abuses are 
> spotted and stopped.
>     We will no longer submit to a paternalistic and secret 
> form of governance,
>     where everyone in the world running political, 
> industrial, financial, media
>     and military organizations are privy to information that 
> we, the governed,
>     are denied. We will never again believe anything we are 
> told by the servant
>     media, unless we have supporting evidence and a forum for 
> verifying their
>     interpretations ..."
> 
> and so on.
> 
> An idea goes viral on the Internet. The backlash against the 
> idea starts the revolution. Good stuff.
> 
The following may be of interest to both futurists and Historians.

Yes it's long. However, Licklider appears to have nailed the revolution
pretty much with the last line I have quoted here-under:

"consider the magnitude of the task of adapting the network's software
to all
the new generations of computer, coming closer and closer upon the heels
of their predecessors until the entire population of the world is caught
up in
an infinite crescendo of on-line interactive debugging."

I'm not sure he meant Social Networks and Wikileaks, with a notable
exception to that being his opening comment in that para:

" Unemployment would disappear from the face of the earth forever,
for......"

Put together with "Oliver" [See below] Licklider appears to have pretty
much "seen" where we are today. 

He asks the question (in 1968) "Will "to be on line" be a privilege or a
right?" 

Google offers 17,900,000 hits for that phrase.

That I think qualifies Licklider as the Che Geuvera of the Computer
Revolution.

Excerpts from:

CIRE (now IEEE) 1960
"Man-Computer Symbiosis" is reprinted, with permission, from IRE
Transactions
on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11, March
1960.
CScience and Technology 1968
"The Computer as a Communication Device" is reprinted from Science and
Technology, April 1968.

In Memoriam: J. C. R. Licklider
1915-1990

>From the SRC - Digital

CDigital Equipment Corporation 1990
This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any
commercial
purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment
of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes
provided
that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice
that
such copying is by permission of the Systems Research Center of Digital
Equipment Corporation in Palo Alto, California; an acknowledgment of the
authors and individual contributors to the work; and all applicable
portions
of the copyright notice. Copying, reproducing, or republishing for any
other
purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to the Systems
Research
Center. All rights reserved.
Quote/

The Computer as a Communication Device
--------------------------------------
To appreciate the import ante the new computer-aided communication
can have, one must consider the dynamics of "critical mass," as it
applies
to cooperation in creative endeavor. Take any problem worthy of the
name,
and you find only a few people who can contribute effectively to its
solution.
Those people must be brought into close intellectual partnership so that
their ideas can come into contact with one another. But bring these
people
together physically in one place to form a team, and you have trouble,
for
the most creative people are often not the best team players, and there
are
not enough top positions in a single organization to keep them all
happy.
Let them go their separate ways, and each creates his own empire, large
or small, and devotes more time to the role of emperor than to the role
of
problem solver. The principals still get together at meetings. They
still visit
one another. But the time scale of their communication stretches out,
and
the correlations among mental models degenerate between meetings so that
it may take a year to do a week's communicating. There has to be some
way
of facilitating communicant ion among people wit bout bringing them
together
in one place.
A single multiaccess computer would fill the bill if expense were no
object,
but there is no way, with a single computer and individual communication
lines to several geographically separated consoles, to avoid paying an
unwarrantedly large bill for transmission. Part of the economic
difficulty
lies in our present communications system. When a computer is used
interactively
from a typewriter console, the signals transmitted between the
console and the computer are intermittent and not very frequent. They do
not require continuous access to a telephone channel; a good part of the
time they do not even require the full information rate of such a
channel.
The difficulty is that the common carriers do not provide the kind of
service
one would like to have---a service that would let one have ad lib access
to
a channel for short intervals and not be charged when one is not using
the
channel.

...<SNIP>

In the computer field, the cost of a unit of processing and the cost of
a unit of storage have been dropping for two decades at the rate of 50%
or more every two years. In six years, there is time for at least three
such
drops, which cut a dollar down to 12 1/2 cents. Three halvings would
take
the cost of processing, now $5 per hour on our assumptions, down to less
than 65 cents per hour.
Such advances in capability, accompanied by reduction in cost, lead us
to expect that computer facilitation will be affordable before many
people
are ready to take advantage of it. The only areas that cause us concern
are
consoles and transmission.
In the console field, there is plenty of competition; many firms have
entered the console sweepstakes, and more are entering every month. Lack
of competition is not the problem. The problem is the problem of the
chicken and the egg-in the factory and in the market. If a few companies
would take the plunge into mass manufacture, then the cost of a
satisfactory
console would drop enough to open up a mass market. If large on-line
communities were already in being, their mass market would attract mass
manufacture. But at present there is neither mass manufacture nor a mass
market, and consequently there is no low-cost console suitable for
interactive
on-line communication.
In the field of transmission, the difficulty may be lack of competition.
At any rate, the cost of transmission is not falling nearly as fast as
the cost
of processing and storage. Nor is it falling nearly as fast as we think
it
should fall. Even the advent of satellites has affected the cost picture
by less
than a factor of two. That fact does not cause immediate distress
because
(unless the distance is very great) transmission cost is not now the
dominant
cost. But, at the rate things are going, in six years it will be the
dominant
cost. That prospect concerns us greatly and is the strongest damper to
our hopes for near-term realization of operationally significant
interactive
networks and significant on-line communities.

...<SNIP>

On-line interactive communities
-------------------------------
But let us be optimistic. What will on-line interactive communities be
like?
In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members,
sometimes
grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They
[Page 37]
will be communities not of common location, but of common interest. In
each field, the overall community of interest will be large enough to
support
a comprehensive system of field-oriented programs and data.
In each geographical sector, the total number of users-summed over
all the fields of interest-will be large enough to support extensive
generalpurpose
information processing and storage facilities. All of these will be
interconnected by telecommunications channels. The whole will constitute
a labile network of networks-ever-changing in both content and
configuration.
What will go on inside? Eventually, every informational transaction of
sufficient consequence to warrant the cost. Each secretary's typewriter,
each
data-gathering instrument, conceivably each dictation microphone, will
feed
into the network.
You will not send a letter or a telegram; you will simply identify the
people whose files should be linked to yours and the parts to which they
should be linked-and perhaps specify a coefficient of urgency. You will
seldom make a telephone call; you will ask the network to link your
consoles
together,
You will seldom make a purely business trip, because linking consoles
will
be so much more efficient. When you do visit another person with the
object
of intellectual communication, you and he will sit at a two-place
console
and interact as much through it as face to face. If our extrapolation
from
Doug Engelbart's meeting proves correct, you will spend much more time
in computer-facilitated teleconferences and much less en route to
meetings.
A very important part of each man's interaction with his on-line
community
will be mediated by his OLIVER. The acronym OLIVER honors Oliver
Selfridge, originator of the concept. An OLIVER is, or will be when
there is
one, an "on-line interactive vicarious expediter and responder," a
complex
of computer programs and data that resides within the network and acts
on behalf of its principal, taking care of many minor matters that do
not
require his personal attention and buffering him from the demanding
world.
"You are describing a secretary," you will say. But no! Secretaries will
have
OLIVERS.
At your command, your OLIVER will take notes (or refrain from taking
notes) on what you do, what you read, what you buy and where you buy it.
It will know who your friends are, your mere acquaintances. It will know
your
value structure, who is prestigious in your eyes, for whom you will do
what
[Page 38]
Your computer will know who is prestigious in your eyes and
buffer you from a demanding world.
with what priority, and who can have access to which of your personal
files.
It will know your organization's rules pertaining to proprietary
information
and the government's rules relating to security classification.
Some parts of your OLIVER program will be common with parts of other
people's OLIVERS; other parts will be custom-made for you, or by you, or
will have developed idiosyncrasies through "learning" based on its
experience
in your service.
Available within the network will be functions and services to which you
subscribe on a regular basis and others that you call for when you need
them.
In the former group will be investment guidance, tax counseling,
selective
dissemination of information in your field of specialization,
announcement of
cultural, sport, and entertainment events that fit your interests, etc.
In the
latter group will be dictionaries, encyclopedias, indexes, catalogues,
editing
programs, teaching programs, testing programs, programming systems,
data bases, and-most important-communication, display, and modeling
programs.
[Page 39]
All these will be-at some late date in the history of networking-
systematized and coherent; you will be able to get along in one basic
language
up to the point at which you choose a specialized language for its
power or terseness.
When people do their informational work "at the console" and "through
the network," telecommunication will be as natural an extension of
individual
work as face-to-face communication is now. The impact of that fact,
and of the marked facilitation of the communicative process, will be
very
great-both on the individual and on society.
First, life will be happier for the on-line individual because the
people
with whom one interacts most strongly will be selected more by
commonality
of interests and goals than by accidents of proximity. Second,
communication
will be more effective and productive, and therefore more enjoyable.
Third, much communication and interaction will be with programs and
programmed
models, which will be (a) highly responsive, (b) supplementary to
one's own capabilities, rather than competitive, and (c) capable of
representing
progressively more complex ideas without necessarily displaying all
the levels of their structure at the same time-and which will therefore
be
both challenging and rewarding. And, fourth, there will be plenty of
opportunity
for everyone (who can afford a console) to find his calling, for the
whole world of information, with all its fields and disciplines, will be
open
to him-with programs ready to guide him or to help him explore.
For the society, the impact will be good or bad, depending mainly on
the question: Will "to be on line" be a privilege or a right? If only a
favored segment of the population gets a chance to enjoy the advantage
of
"intelligence amplification," the network may exaggerate the
discontinuity
in the spectrum of intellectual opportunity.
On the other hand, if the network idea should prove to do for education
what a few have envisioned in hope, if not in concrete detailed plan,
and
if all minds should prove to be responsive, surely the boon to humankind
would be beyond measure.
Unemployment would disappear from the face of the earth forever, for
consider the magnitude of the task of adapting the network's software to
all
the new generations of computer, coming closer and closer upon the heels
of their predecessors until the entire population of the world is caught
up in
an infinite crescendo of on-line interactive debugging.
/Quote

I guess online interactive debugging is what the Wikileaks is all about.