GENERALLY SPEAKING, WHAT IS THE CHANGE THAT IS HAPPENING IN THE COMPUTER FIELD TODAY WITH REGARDS TO NETWORK IN TERMS OF STAND ALONE MACHINES TO NETWORK MACHINES, HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THAT?

Is that your first question? You make it really hard. We did cover that before now obviously we didn't do a good job on it. So what are you looking for?

OKAY WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR, YOU SAID, I SAID, "ARE WE IN THE MIDST OF A TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION." YOU SAID, "WE’RE DEFINITELY IN THE MIDST OF A TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION” AND IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT SOMEBODY HAD ASKED A QUESTION, SO, IF YOU CAN STATE THAT SO THAT I CAN USE IT WITHOUT HAVING TO USE MY QUESTION THAT’S A WHOLE LOT BETTER.

I don't think there's any question but what we're in the midst of a technological revolution in terms of going from a stand alone computer to all the computers getting together and pooling their information. And when you pool information, you really create new forms of information and new forms of interaction. And so I think we're in the midst of really changing human behaviors in the social system as well as just the computers themselves.

UM, RIGHT IN THE BEGINNING YOU WERE STILL LAUGHING ABOUT THE PROCESS THAT WE WENT THROUGH, SO IF YOU COULD DO THAT A LITTLE MORE SERIOUSLY.

I don't think there's any question but where we're in the midst of a revolution in terms of what's happening with the computer. Before we had a stand alone computer. And now all these computers are getting together and pooling their information. So that what we're doing is creating new forms of information. When you put this information together with that information, you really create new information and new ways of working together, not only for the computers but for the people that are using the computers. So I think it's not only a revolution in technology but in, really in social behavior also.

WHY IN SOCIAL BEHAVIOR.

It affects social behavior because there's new ways that people can interact. Even though you and I might be very remote from each other, our, our computers can talk and we can talk and combining the computer power and the human interaction, we can form new ways that humans can interact. It's like when I travel sometimes I leave my office back here, but with the computer technology now in effect I might take my office with me. And so, it facilitates an interaction. I might take libraries with me too, you see. So, I'm not alone anymore and that's, those are new ways that, that people can interact using the computer to help them.[Miscellaneous Conversation]

TALKING TO SOME PEOPLE WHEN WE SAY “COMMUNICATION” THEY KIND OF, IT’S LIKE YOU MENTION IN YOUR BOOK, YOU MENTION WHAT WAS IN YOUR BOOK ABOUT- YOU SAID “INFORMATION.” PEOPLE KIND OF GLAZE OVER. WHY IS COMMUNICATION IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE IN THESE SOCIETIES?

I just want to clarify what, what you want to get here because communication takes many forms for me, just talking on the telephone is a, is a, maybe an old form of communication but now we're augmenting that with other ways. What, what do you want to get it?

THE SENSE THAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT NEW FORMS OF COMMUNICATION. WHY IS THAT GOING TO HAVE AN IMPACT. ONE THOUGHT THAT'S OCCURRED TO US IS THAT SOCIETIES ARE AFFECTED BY THE TYPES OF COMMUNICATION THEY USE.

Societies are affected by types of communication. I think it works the other way around to.

WE’VE COME OFF THE DETERMINISTIC STATEMENT THAT WE HAD WHEN YOU AND I TALKED, AND I THINK YOU WERE RIGHT. SO YOU NOTICE I DIDN’T SAY DETERMINED, I SAID EFFECT. I SOFTENED MY LINE. DID YOU NOT WANT TO TOUCH THAT ONE?”

No, no. That’s alright. When we’re going over some of this, obviously you have something in mind that you want to get at. I just want to understand, you know, what it is. So why don’t you try the question again, and let’s try an answer.

WHY IS A NEW MEANS OF COMMUNICATION IMPORTANT TO A SOCIETY?

I think communications is one of the things that determines how society works. And, by the way, the other way around, society determines communication! When we needed facsimile there it was. I think of it as a social invention. But communication in forms of, both in terms of mass communication, television, as well as personal communication from the telephones, the facsimile to maybe a picture phone, to computer communication, - all these are, are, are new ways for people to deal with each other, with society as a whole and with information. And these, this is the stuff that society is made out of. And so, I think communication goes right to the core of what holds society together, what makes it work.

MORE IN TERMS OF STORED INFORMATION, DO YOU HAVE A PHILOSOPHY OF WRITING AND THE IMPACT OF THAT?

I think we're entering a new era in terms of storage of information. For one thing we have the ability to store anything and we're probably doing that. We're filling the world up with information that's stored. But it's, there's an impermanency about the storage that we have today that works both for and against us. Things are very easy to change with the word processor, you could zap what you've done, put in something new. And the format itself is changing continuously. I think of the ancient Egyptians, chiseling out the hieroglyphics and they'll, to last forever. But today, for example, the 1960 census in the United States now can only be read by two computers in the world. One of them is in the Smithsonian Museum and the other is Japan. So, there's an impermanency now about, about information. The other trend I'd like to point out is that computers are changing their role in information. Right now they've been just stores of communication. They, they keep it for us but they don't know what it is. But as someone said, libraries, for example, are changing their role from curatorship to interpretation. We're getting to the point where computers are going to take over more of a role of interpreting information and, and helping us understand what is out there. So I think the two big changes that have happened are., first, we had the ability to store vast amounts of information and second, we're just acquiring the ability to interpret that information using the computer. [MISCELLANEOUS CONVERSATION]

DOES THE TAPE DEGRADE?

No, no, the, what happens is we don't know how to go back and get it. Can you imagine a thousand years from now someone finding a buried floppy disc, figure out, you know, what, what is this thing and how do you read it, you know. This changes continuously. Floppy discs themselves have gone from through the 8 inch to the 5 inch to the 3 inch. So, you know, just in the space of, of about 12 years or so. So the formats are continually changing in order to cram more information in a smaller space. And in so doing, we're, we're in effect changing the way we store the information. Even language itself, by the way, is not a permanent store, since language itself is evolving constantly. So we don't, anymore understand exactly what the ancient people meant with about what they wrote because they, they had a different interpretation of the words. So the, the archiving of information is really a pretty tricky business if you want it to last forever.

I WAS THINKING IN A BROADER SENSE, WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE SOMETHING SEVERED FROM YOUR HUMAN MEMORY? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE THAT EXTERNAL MEMORY OF WRITING ON PAPER OR STORING IN THE COMPUTER?

Yeah, you know I've never thought about that. Do you want to give me an answer and I'll...

SOME PEOPLE HAVE SAID THAT IT'S VERY IMPORTANT AND IT ALLOWS GREATER COMPLEXITY .... IT'S HARDER TO STAMP OUT.

Yeah, in fact one of the properties of information is that once it's created, it really can't be destroyed. And it's funny, it gets created from nothing too. I mean we're, we're dealing with something that doesn't have the physical properties when we talk about information. It gets created from nothing. It really can't be destroyed after it's created. I can give it to you and I still have it which is a very troublesome property because we've based on social system on material goods where if I give it to you, you have it. And now we can't get used to the idea that I give it away but I still have it. And how does that work and how do we work copyright and, and things like that in the Information Age when it's so easy to duplicate information and to pass it around.

BACK TO THE ANCIENT TEXTS, OF, ABOUT COMMERCE WHEN WE WERE TALKING OFF CAMERA. IF YOU CAN JUST KIND OF RELATE TO ME WHAT YOU RELATED ABOUT WHAT PEOPLE FOUND ON/IN (?) OR WHEREVER…

When I go to museums and I see these ancient tablets that they've, that they've deci., that they've read, learn how to read the language and I always expect some great wisdom to come through and it's always just, just commerce, it's just three bushels of wheat went here or there. And I think if people came back in a thousand years now and dug up our computer tapes and, and read them they would see exactly the same kind of thing. They'd see records of sales and transactions and they would think, - what is this stuff? And so really commerce drives information storage. I think if you took the bulk of all the information stored today, it would just be inventories and tables and data and sales and things like that pretty boring stuff but that's what the world is made out of, a lot of boring stuff.

NOT ONLY STORAGE BUT ALSO COMMUNICATION.

Because I think commerce drives information storage because that's where the money is and that's, that's what promotes the technology. The businesses have the money and they see an investment in information technology as paying off. A lot of businesses today worry about the strategic use of information, you know, how can I preserve my information and, and make, make use of it, make money out of it? And so they're constantly striving for better forms of information processing and that's what really drives it.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE FOR ME THE PROCESS OF DIGITIZATION. WE'RE GOING TO BE SEEING A PICTURE OF A WOMAN THAT IS DIGITIZED. WE ZOOM IN AND WE SEE THE SQUARES OF BLACK AND WHITE, THE ZEROS AND ONES. WHAT IS THE PROCESS AND WHY DO WE DO IT?

The world of the computer is digital, that is 1s and 0s. And they're, and they're beautiful because they're perfect. They, they're always 1s and 0s. They're nothing in-between. The world around is analog. It has all different values. It has my, when you look at me you see all different colors and all different shades and it's not 1s and 0s. And so to take this world that we live in and put it into the computer we have to change it into a digital world that the computer can understand and can store and process. So we take a picture and to change it into 1s and 0s we break it up into a series of dots, what we call pixels, for picture element. And each element then has to be encoded to, to it's color. If you have a black and white picture we can have 1 is black and 0 is white. And so we take a picture, we might digitize it up into a whole lot of squares, maybe 256 squares in the, in the horizontal and 256 squares in the vertical. And so you would take every one of these 65 thousand squares and denote the color or the shade of that square by 1s and 0s. And then we would take this analog around of us, around us and put it into a computer as 1s and 0s.

WHY DO WE GO TO ALL THAT TROUBLE? WHAT'S THE ADVANTAGE IN DOING IT DIGITALLY?

Once we've taken a picture and put it into 1s and 0s, we can store it easily in computer because computer memory only knows about 1s and 0s so that's important. But I think it, it's more than that really, it's that once you've digitized a picture you have a permanent record of that picture that can't age like if you took a photograph with, that would age over time and would change its colors. Whereas when you change it to 1s and 0s, you have a perfect memory of it. For example, when they clean Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel painting, they're not sure whether they're really putting it back like it was, back in the Michelangelo's time. If they digitized then, they'd have a permanent record and they'd know exactly what those colors had to be today.

IN THE LINE OF COMPUTER NETWORKS, WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO BE DIGITAL?

Well, computer networks are digital. Everything that passes through them has to be changed into 1s and 0s. In fact the telephone network today is entirely digital. It's 100 percent digital. When you speak over a telephone, your voice is changed into a series of 1s and 0s and sent as computer data over the telephone network today.

IS THAT LOCAL LINES AS WELL?”

No but, but if you go anywhere else. The entire AT&T network is digital.

I GUESS WHAT I WAS THINKING IS THAT NOT ONLY CAN WE HAVE A PERFECT RECORD OF IT, WE CAN PROCESS IT, BUT THEN IT MEANS ONCE WE HAVE THIS INFORMATION WE CAN THEN SEND IT. SO IF YOU CAN TAKE US THROUGH THOSE THREE THOUGHTS IN ONE.

We do digitization for three reasons really: one is that we have a perfect record of, of, of the information. Two, what was two? What was two?

PROCESS IT.

Well I think, you know, it's not just a question of permanency, it's a question of, of... We digitize partly for, for permanency, to have a, to have a permanent unalterable record of the information. The second that it can work with computer hardware, that we can store and process it because computer circuitry deals in 1s and 0s. And the third thing is that if you want to communicate the information, send it someplace else, we also need it to be digital in, in terms of 1s and 0s. That's the way the computer networks work today.

YOU MENTIONED PERMANENCE AS IF WE HAD ALREADY HEARD IT AND YOU WERE REFERRING TO SOMETHING WE MIGHT NOT HAVE.

We digitize things for probably three reasons: first, is, is to give a permanent record of, of that information in a form that's unalterable in, in cold 1s and 0s the second thing is that the, the digital information can be handled by computer hardware today, that is, computer memory chips and processing chips handle 1s and 0s. They don't handle analog information and the third thing is that we can send it, communicate it, that information someplace else. And computer networks are digital, they deal in 1s and 0s and so in order to have a permanent record, to be able to process information and to communicate it, we need it in a digital form.

IF YOU COMPARED COMPUTER STORAGE AND INFORMATION WITH BOOKS, WHAT WOULD THE ADVANTAGES BE?

Well books are a traditional form of information storage and they, they certainly have lasted a thousand years or so and maybe even longer. But they're big, they're, they're bulky and they're in a serial format. You have to read them page by page to find what you want and it's kind of an awkward way of getting at your information. What electronic media has done for us is, it's put in a very light, nimble format. You can compress a book down into a, a little chunk of electronic information and you don't have to go through it serially. You can go in and the computer can pluck out the information you want, can go in there and find it, that, that, very, very quickly. So, it's, we've gone from a big, bulky serial thing to a small, nimble thing that can be randomly accessed by a computer. So it's a whole new form really of information retrieval and storage.

WHY IS THAT IMPORTANT?

It's important that we get it in this nimble format, the information because information is doubling about every seven years and it's just overwhelming us right now. And we can't keep it in this old format where you walk down the shelves of the library, we'll never get at it, we'll never understand it all. Otherwise, it's going to overwhelm us . We need help with this deluge of information and only the computer right now can give us this help and that's why I think it's really important to digitize all that information and let the computer be the curator and the interpreter of this information.

COMPARE FOR US HOW EFFICIENT DIGITAL STORAGE IS VERSUS SOMETHING ELSE.

Well I always think of melding down the Library of Congress to a -- let me start that again. I always think of melding down the Library of Congress to a, a little pile of, of floppy disc or something like that. I mean today the, the densest form of information and storage would be an optical disc. And if you took Library of Commerce [sic] and put it on optical disc I think it would be, it would be more than twenty thousand of our best optical discs today. You know probably in twenty years we'll have another format that will make it even smaller but by then the Library of Congress will be a lot bigger too, so, I don't know whose winning here.

YEAH PLEASE.

I think of taking the Library of Congress and putting it in, in electronic format and we have to do that one of these days. And I wonder how much would that really be. And if I took today's densest form of information storage, the Library of Congress would get down to about 20,000 optical discs. Now that's a lot of discs but we're learning to get more and more information on, on optical disc all the time. Of course the Library of Congress is getting bigger too, so, ah. So I screwed this up completely.

20,000 SOUNDS LIKE A LOT. IS THERE ANY WAY WE CAN MAKE THE POINT THAT IT IS IN FACT AN IMPROVEMENT? [MISCELLANEOUS CONVERSATION]

Well I always think the Encyclopedia Britannica is sort of a standard of information to me. It's yea big and it, it contains a lot of information. It used to have everything but today everything has gotten ahead of it. I happen to know that about one billion bits of information in the Encyclopedia Britannica and that's probably the equivalent of about 100 normal books. And if we put it down into compact disc and I think it would be several compact discs would, would hold that entire Encyclopaedia Britannica so, I mean it is quite a compression in terms of the physical storage medium that you're dealing with. More important though that we have the random access when you have it in that form.

THE POINT IS, IT IS A MORE EFFICIENT WAY FOR STORING STUFF.

Well I, I often use the Encyclopedia Britannica as a standard of information storage. And today that, I think of it as a shelf full of library books. And if we put that on compact disc, we could store that shelf in a couple of compact discs. So you, you do really achieve a physical compression of the information as well as putting it in a, a format that we can process and deal with in computers.

DO IT AGAIN.

I think of the Encyclopedia Britannica as the standard for information storage, ah. It's about so big, I think of it as library shelf and it contains a lot of, a lot of information. It used to have everything but it doesn't any more. But you could take that shelf full of books and putting an electronic format on a, on a compact disc, you could put it on several compact discs, so we take this whole shelf full and make it into several compact disc which certainly a physical compression of the information as well as putting it in a format that computers can deal with it.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT THAT COMPUTERS DEAL WITH IT. IS THERE ANY WAY TO EXPLAIN TO THE AVERAGE VIEW WHAT RANDOM ACCESS ALLOWS AS OPPOSED TO STEPPING THROUGH IT?

Today if I, today if I access information in the encyclopedia, I can look it up by, by subject which is a great improvement over a book which doesn't, isn't organized into subjects. But it's not it's not perfect in many ways. I might not know the subject that it's stored under in the encyclopedia. But today computers can read that whole encyclopedia in a matter of seconds and they can look for key phrases or key words so I could, I'd tell them, - go find something about gerbils in the encyclopedia. I could probably look up gerbil, but that's probably not a good example.

...

But computers search algorithms and are getting very, very efficient. You can, you can read text so fast with the computer, so much faster than we can and so we really ought to let them do the reading for us. But the trouble is we have to tell them what to look for and we're getting better and better at being able to tell them what to look for so they can do a reading for us and find the information. So that, I think that's why it's important to put the information in a digital form so the computers can read it and find the information that we're looking for and save us a lot of time.

COMING BACK TO THE REASONS FOR DOING THIS. WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF STORING INFORMATION DIGITALLY? THE POINTS ARE, IS IT'S EFFICIENT, IT CAN BE PROCESSED IN NEW WAYS

We also have to get computers to look at pictures for us too by the way.

THAT'S A BANDWIDTH QUESTION.

Yeah I know but I don't, I'm not, wouldn't look at is a bandwidth question for the public. I think it's it's really a question of fundamental understanding too in computers. I mean the whole question of image understanding with computers is extraordinarily difficult. A lot of the information we deal with is in visual form. We can change it into bits but there the computer doesn't know what the bits mean and telling it what those bits mean is a tremendously difficult task, one that we'll do in the future but I think that lies well beyond us right now.

BACK TO THAT QUESTION THE REASONS WHY WE DIGITIZE INFORMATION. RUN THROUGH THAT FOR US, THE THREE STEPS.

We digitize information probably for three reasons: the first is to put it in a permanent format which is relatively unalterable; the second reason is that so we can process it and deal with it, with the computers that we have today, which only deal in 1s and 0s; and the third reason is to be able to communicate it from place to place. We have to put it in this format of 1s and 0s because the computer networks today accept that kind of format. t

WHAT'S THE ADVANTAGE OF SENDING IT DIGITALLY? WHY DO WE TRANSMIT IT DIGITALLY?

We transmit information digitally to, to keep it perfect as it... We transmit information digitally to keep it perfect during transmission. It's just like the old vinyl, long playing records, you hear pops and crackles and little noises in the background whereas with today's compact disc recordings, you hear perfect quiet in the background because you don't allow this little noise, little crackle and pop and snaps can't get in there. When you transmit 1s and 0s you have a, a perfect format that can be reconstructed. And so we need that to protect our information during transmission.

ISN'T THERE ANY ADVANTAGE IN TERMS OF SPEED, SENDING INFORMATION DIGITALLY?

No, in fact disadvantages.

REALLY?

Really. Absolutely. It takes more bandwidth to send digital information. A voice, you know we digitize at 64,000 bits per second which probably we, we carry a bandwidth of 30,000 Hz or something like that, to put it in an analog bandwidth, you see. So it actually, it actually expands the bandwidth when you digitize something. So you actually pay a penalty for putting it in a format that can be reconstructed.

MORE INFORMATION BECAUSE YOU CAN GET IT CLEANER?

It's cleaner, that's, that's the important thing. You see pulse code modulation, really digital transmission was invented back about 1939 and it took a long time for engineers to understand why that was a good thing to do, to put information in a digital format. But the key is that, that it's, it's perfectible, that, that you can take these pulses of information that could be 1s and 0s and, and reconstruct them at any time because you know it has to be a 1 or a 0 whereas with an analog speech, think of it as a squiggly little line, you don't know what it's supposed to be or what it could have been and so when noise comes in, you don't know that it's there. So it's this perfectibility of 1s and 0s, the robustness of it that's, that's the important thing in transmission. And people didn't realize how important that was for a long time. But today all of our transmission on the long haul telephone network is digital. Long playing records have been converted into digital CDs and some day soon television also will be digital so that you won't see little blips of noise and ghosts and, and your picture that also will be perfect. So, the, the quest for perfection is why we put it in digital format.

COMPARE FOR US THE TELEPHONE, ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, THE COMPARISON OF TODAY'S PHONE LINE TO THE HIGHEST SPEED FIBER OPTIC LINK, HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE US TO SEND THAT DOWN THE WIRES.

In terms of transmission speeds of what we've been able to do on the telephone network, only about 15 years ago with the typical kind of speed a modem gives you for a personal computer, would take about a week to send the Encyclopedia Britannica. In today's fiber optic cables, it would take about a half second to send that Encyclopedia Britannica. So we, we're constantly going faster and faster and learning to send more and more information in, in a given amount of time over communication lines.

CAN YOU FLIP THOSE TWO POINTS, WHERE YOU GIVE US THE POINT OF WHAT YOU JUST SAID AND THEN BACK IT UP WITH THE EXAMPLE?

We're learning to send information faster and faster. We're really greedy about getting more and more information. And what we've been able to achieve on the telephone network, for example go back 15 years and send the Encyclopedia Britannica using a modem and it would take you about a week to get that encyclopedia through a telephone line. Today, in our fiber optic lines, you could send that same Encyclopedia Britannica in about half a second. Zap and you got yourself an encyclopedia. So, we go faster and faster. In fact we about double the speed every year.

TECHNICAL QUESTION IS BECAUSE WE’RE WIDENING IT THIS WAY OPPOSED TO… BECAUSE WE CAN’T GO ANY FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF LIGHT, RIGHT?

Yes, what, what we're doing is, is increasing the bandwidth really. We're using more of the the electromagnetic spectrum. When we send with light now we're using more colors. It's like when you put a prism and break light up and see all the different colors, we've been sending just one, little, narrow color in, in our optic cables today but now we're going to spread that out, spread it out in bandwidth and go faster and faster. We can probably go a thousand times faster than we do today on the same optical fibers that, that we have buried in the ground today.

IS THERE ANY USEFUL ANALOGY IN TERMS OF ADDING ONLY ONE RADIO STATION AND THEN SUDDENLY HAVING A WHOLE DIAL?

And today's fiber optic cables we use one color of light to transfer information, trans. In today's fiber optic cables we use really one color of light to transmit information. But that's like having a radio, a radio with only one channel on it. We can broaden this out and go to many more channels. In terms of light wave transmissions using many more colors. And there's a potential to probably send a thousand times as much information over an optical fiber as we do today.

How is computer communication, computer storage different than other media, different than the telephone or different than radio?

Why are trying to get at particularly?

[INAUDIBLE]

There's a notion we want to get at that when you put different forms of information together you create new information and that's what computer and computer networking allow us to do. And this is quite a social issue today because of personal privacy kinds of issues. If you take the data on who, who ordered certain things from Sears Roebuck and put that together with American Express information, you create really some new information. If you put zip codes together with wealth information, you find where the wealthy live. And then you get these zip codes that are targeted by the... ... and Charles Jaka was in Kuwait City waiting for the troops with the TV cameras. We were there before it happened even. I mean talk about the disappearance of the float, when a century ago wars were fought and countries didn't know about them for a month afterwards. But today, we've gotten rid of that completely.

ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING - INFORMATION FLOAT?

I think of information float like if the float of money when I write a check and I've spent the money but it hasn't gone out of my account yet. And I count on that, I think a lot of people do, for several days. In terms of information, it's information that has happened, things that have happened but people don't know about it yet. And a century ago, people fought wars in one continent and the other continent they wouldn't know about it for weeks might go by. Today we see the wars right on our television sets and that, that, that float, the difference in time between when something happens and when people know about it has collapsed down to almost nothing, down to the speed of light literally.

WHAT'S THE IMPACT OF THAT? LET'S TALK SPECIFICALLY NOW ABOUT THE FINANCIAL COMMUNITY. MISCELLANEOUS CONVERSATION].

I think the financial the financial markets have really relied on this information float in the past, that it takes some time to transact, to, to make transactions. And I today that's gone down to the speed of light and it could be that the system really depended on having this delay. It's like having a flywheel, it's hard to get it going and it's a ponderous kind of thing but today information is nimble and quick and, and maybe the markets, as we know them, don't, don't work when information is so nimble and quick. Maybe you should haggle and take your time about these things, you know, and, and that, that puts this little delay and lets people think about it and the market could react quite differently then.

THE ABILITY TO REFLECT, IS THAT A WAY OF LOOKING AT IT?

I don't, it's, don't think it's so much reflection, although that, you know, I think of reflection as, as cerebral kind of a thing. This might also be a gut kind of a thing. When I think of the ancient markets and people dickering over what they were going to pay for this or that and I suppose that, that in, in ancient times there was a kind of bid and ask price for goods too. Today we have a bid and ask price for stocks but it's communicated all over the world instantly, and the question is, is the market worth the same as that ancient market where it took time and there was a haggling? Today when things are communicated at the speed of light does it work the same way? And does it work as well even? I, I don't think we know.

IN A PUBLIC NETWORK, WHY DO PEOPLE WANT TO HAVE A PUBLIC COMPUTER NETWORK?

Today there are a lot of private... today there are a lot of private computer networks like, a company, General Motors would have a private network. And they are very useful because General Motors people usually like to talk to other General Motors people. The advantages of having a public network is they can reach out to many more people. That's only part of it, the other part really is economy of scale. If General Motors and American Express all put the information in one pipe, we can build a big efficient pipe that makes it cheaper for everybody. So it's both a question of cost and accessibility. And General Motors might want to talk to American Express after all. And today some of those cross paths are actually very hard to implement because we have so many private networks and not really a good public computer network.

[TECHNICAL CONVERSATION]

IS IT IMPORTANT TO HAVE A COMPUTER NETWORK FOR THE PUBLIC LIKE WE HAVE A PHONE SYSTEM FOR THE PUBLIC?

I definitely think we should have a, a public computer network that you and I and all of us can, can access. Just like the, the mail today, the Post Office, except that it works so much faster and more immediate where we can all get in there and exchange information. (I, I heard some noise over there myself).

SAY DEFINITELY.

We need a public data network today. We need something analogous to the Post Office that's accessible to everybody. The difference with the Post Office though is the computer network is going to be immediate. You get your hands right on it and get the information there at the speed of light. But we need that kind of public accessibility that you have in the Post Office today or in the normal telephone network today.

HOW IS THE COMPUTER NETWORK DIFFERENT THAN THE MAIL OR THE PHONE?

How is the computer network different ...?

FROM THE MAIL SYSTEM OR THE PHONE SYSTEM.

Well, the computer network differs from the mail system in terms of this speed of response. It differs from the phone system in terms of the format of, of dealing with information rather than dealing with speech. Today we need both. I need not only to talk to you but I need to send you pictures and, and computer files and ordering information, all the kind of data that we deal with today in everyday business and, and personal life.

WHEN YOU SAY WE NEED A PUBLIC NETWORK, IS IT SIMPLY FASTER INFORMATION?

Yes, it really is just, just simply faster. I could send you that same photograph, the same computer file in the mail. It really does come down to speed. I can put my computer tape, my floppy disc in an envelope and mail it to you, you know, and a few days later you'd have it. But, see we can't work that way, you can't, you and I can't exchange information fast enough that way. You want to make an order on my store and I want to tell you that, - gee, I don't have that but would you like this instead? You don't want to wait a week to find that out, we want to deal with it in terms of milliseconds and that's the difference really between the Post Office and a computer network, it really gets down to speed.

LET'S SAY, I DON'T OWN A COMPUTER, WHY WOULD I CARE ABOUT HAVING A PUBLIC NETWORK?

Well in the first place, if you don't have a computer you should get one. And I think one day everybody really will have a computer whether they know it or not, they'll have a computer...

LET'S SAY I DON'T HAVE ONE.

Even if you don't have a computer you ought to care that there's a public network that other people have them. For example, one of the services you can get today is you can, you can make a telephone call to a brokerage firm and you can punch into your touch-tone telephone the, the stock that you want to get a quote on and a computer will read you that stock price. So here you've, you've really reached out and dealt with other people's computer databases through just a normal telephone and we're doing that more and more today. So even though you don't have a computer, you certainly care that there are computers out there that are storing the information and have electronic format that can at least be dealt with through other forms of communication like a normal telephone.

DID YOU SEE THE ROBERT REICH ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE A COUPLE WEEKS AGO ABOUT THE SUCCESSION OF THE SUCCESSFUL?

No I didn’t

IT TALKS ABOUT SYMBOLIC ANALYSTS AND THAT THEY ARE MANIPULATORS OF INFORMATION AND THEY ARE COMPETITIVELY MORE, THEY ARE MORE COMPETITIVE THEN SOME OF THEIR COUNTERPARTS WHO AREN’T, WHO DON’T GRAB THESE NEW TECHNOLOGIES. IS THERE ANY PART OF THAT, THAT THIS IS A NEW TECHNOLOGY AND YOU BETTER BE INFORMED ABOUT IT OR ELSE YOU’RE GOING TO BE LEFT BEHIND?

I think that in the information age we all have to swim through so much information that the more adept swimmers are going to be the people that get ahead. The people that learn to access information, to process it, and to deal with it are going to be the people who, who—are- succeed in today's, today's world., This is, after all, the Information Age and it's not like the days a hundred years ago when the Industrial Revolution when whoever could make the better product, the better material good was the person who succeeded. - (I don't like that answer, by the way).

GO AHEAD.

We do have a certain ambivalence about the Information Age because it still is necessary to make material goods. But I do think that the key to success in the future is going to be how you handle and deal with information. So I think, yes, the people who have computers, who learn to use them, learn to swim through all that, that, that flood of information out there, are the people that will succeed.

LOOKING AT THE SENSE OF COMMUNITY, CAN YOU COMPARE THE ELECTRONIC COMMUNITIES THAT FORM AROUND BULLETIN BOARDS OR AROUND CONFERENCE SERVICES, IS THERE ANY ANALOG IN THE REAL WORLD, IS A BAR AN APPROPRIATE ANALOG?

Well if I look at electronic communities I'd like perhaps to think of them as a bar but the truth is that I think there's a broader spread of people that come into an average bar than the people who come into the average computer network. Certainly, computer networks start out with computer nerds and they've, they've gone a long way past that now. You get quite a segment of society but they're still weighted toward the people who know about computers. And when you go to computer shows and fairs and I look around at the crowds and they're not quite the same crowds I see, for example, at a football game or in a bar or in the malls. It's not exactly representative of society as a whole but it's getting more and more that way.

IN TERMS OF A BAR, YOUR POINT IS WELL TAKEN.

I think though a bar might be a good example in other ways. A bar is a public place that you can walk in. You know where it is and you know how to get there and you walk in and once you're there, you can interact with the people who are at that bar. Now a computer network is a lot like that, you have to know where it is, you have to know how to walk into it but once you're there, you can interact with all the other people that you didn't know before that have walked into the same bar.

IS THERE A LEVEL WHERE YOU HAVE TO HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE. IF YOU GO IN AND THERE IS ONLY PERSON AT THE BAR, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO STAY VERY LONG.

Well if you go into a bar and there's only person, it's a pretty dull bar and, and you could al., you could always drink but you can't do anything else. Computer networks are like that too, if you walk into a network and there's only one other person there, that's just like a telephone conversation, it's not much different and maybe you don't even want to talk to the person whose there. So you need a certain number of people, you know, you have to get a bar that's fairly crowded. But, on the other hand, you open a door and it's just wall to wall people, you don't want to go in there too. And computer networks can be like that too. They, they can get so many people in them that it, it really gets polluted with information and you don't want to go in there either. So computer networks go through a, a birth and death process: they start small and they go slow until you get a certain number of people in them and then they're great fun for a while and then you get too many people and then you have to break it up and you say, - hey, all you people go over there and all you people go over there, and now you have two different computer bulletin boards with two different discussion groups and so you have to keep going through that process of birth and death, dividing this up.

IN TERMS OF THE COMMENT YOU MADE BEFORE WHICH IS THAT YOU SEE MANY OF THE THINGS THAT YOU SEE IN EVERYDAY COMMUNITIES ON THE COMPUTER NETWORK, IS THE WILD WEST, IS THAT A USEFUL ANALOGY OR NOT?

It might be. It might be. I think in the early days of computer networks I felt like it was the Wild West out there myself. You have a few pioneers and you sort of recognize the other people, they look like you, they talk like you and there was this pioneering atmosphere about the thing. Today, they've become very, very widespread and they've changed their character very much. The West has been opened up.

PART OF THAT IS IN THE WILD WEST THE SHERIFF DECIDED THE LAW AND ORDER. ARE WE TRYING TO CREATE THAT NOW? ARE WE WRESTLING WITH THAT IN THE COMMUNITY?

Well certainly in, in the Wild West when you went out there, there was lawlessness and everybody could do everything he wanted to because there weren't any sheriffs around at first. I think computer networks are like that too and they're, they're still largely like that today. They're run by volunteers and there's no real governing body. There's no sheriff out there in most of these things. But so many issues have arisen about material that, whether a material is suitable for a computer network or not that we're starting to get sheriffs out there now. We're starting to get censorship in, in various forms. Who decides what information goes where? So I think it is like opening up the West in the sense that you have a lawlessness which gradually gets turned into a, a lawfulness by a process of chaos turning into order.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT VIRUSES AND HOW DO THEY PLAY IN THE WILD WEST ANALOGY, IF THEY DO?

That's interesting. I was just thinking about that. I don't see a virus as a, in a Wild West analogy. It's too, it's a too clever a thing. You know the, the Wild West was a, you know, people were rugged and simple. And a virus is a, is a devilish little beast which is concocted by a very intellectual person, so.

I WOULD THINK IT ANALOGOUS TO A PERSON THAT LIKES TO PLAY WITH FIRE AND FIRE SPREADS FROM PLACE TO PLACE.

Yeah but fire is a pretty dumb thing. Even cave men have it. Viruses are not. They, they are very tricky. They have to be, you know just so, ah. A lot of the computer community, I mean, holds them in awe because they're so difficult to do, but.

EXPLAIN FOR US WHAT A VIRUS IS.

A virus is a, is a computer program, it's really, generally a, a short program that, when I transmit it to another computer, to your computer that the virus is self reproducing it goes from your computer and, and it, it spread to another computer. And so it sits in your computer, my computer, now it goes to another computer and it starts spreading from computer to computer, just the way a virus, if I catch a cold, you catch it and you give to someone else, viruses are the same way. And that they're a program that's concocted to be self reproducing, unbeknownst to you, so when it gets to your computer, you don't know that it's, all of a sudden, it's decided to reproduce itself and call up another person and send it over there, and, and you can have a virus that literally spreads through the country in a matter of, of minutes.

FOR EXAMPLE, CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE MORSE VIRUS?

I'm sure if I want to touch this Morris virus thing. But we have had examples of, of viruses that have spread over the government networks for happened -- let me start this again... We certainly have had examples of viruses that have gone out there and spread. There was a, one that spread in the government networks about a year, year and a half ago. And literally in a matter of a, of an hour or so spread throughout, throughout the country from computer to computer. And what it did really was to use lot of storage space on a lot of different computers. But you could have viruses that would be a lot worse than that, that would actually tear apart your computer system once it got in there. It would, it would have these secret instructions that would open up and then it would, it would start destroying and erasing all the files in your computer, ah.

HOW DO YOU PROTECT?

It's very hard actually to protect against virus. There are programs that are like flu shots, that you can get them and they try to see if there's a virus in your computer. They look at your computer operating system and try to see if things are happening to it. But in the end it's, it's really very, very difficult to know whether you have a virus in there or not. Not a very good answer, but...

... A PROBLEM OF NETWORK COMPUTERS?

Well as soon as you network computers you, you make viruses possible, just like when you network people you make plague possible you make the spread of illness possible. So they go hand in hand. If you've got a network you have the possibility of a virus just like the telephone network, there's a possibility that a virus can, can go through that too.

WHAT ELSE HAPPENS, THE ABILITY TO COLLECT VAST AMOUNTS OF INFORMATION, IS THAT A FUNCTION OF NETWORKING OR IS THAT JUST SIMPLY BECAUSE WE CAN STORE INFORMATION ON A DATABASE?

Once you have a network you not only allow information to be stored in many places but you allow it to be put together in new ways and I think we're, we're finding that out now in terms of the private, privacy issues in, in databases. Can you take a database that might be owned by American Express and put that database together with Sears information on shopping habits? Can you put that together with zip code information? And when you do that you create invasions of privacy. If you get data on the people who bought boats and put that together with data on, on zip codes, you'd find where the wealthy people live. And where is, does this become invasion of privacy? We literally do create new forms of information when you allow the databases to be compared. Before you had networks you really didn't have that ability to take this kind of information and compare it with this other kind of information.

WHAT ABOUT THESE DATABASES, HOW DIFFICULT IS IT WITH REGARDS TO INCORRECT INFORMATION GETTING INTO THEM. COULD YOU TELL THE CONCEPT OF THE PROBLEM THEN?

Well, one of the consequences of having computer networks is that you, you can actually allow information to get polluted and for the pollution to spread around too. You can get wrong information in there. There's always wrong information in, in a database. It's, it's almost impossible to prevent. And now you can get that wrong information transmitted around and shared, replicated and, and acted upon. And, and we worry about that. We worry about that a lot.

YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO TELL THAT STORY. IT'S A GREAT STORY. I TELL PEOPLE THAT STORY.

Well, I'm not sure what it has to do with computer networks but, ah.

JUST THE SPREAD OF INFORMATION. WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT SOFTWARE RELIABILITY, NOT ONLY FROM A NETWORKING STANDPOINT BUT GENERALLY ABOUT THE SOFTWARE RELIABILITY. DO WE PUT TOO MUCH FAITH IN SOFTWARE IN COMPUTERS?

Well people that work with computers put very little faith in, in software because they know that you, you really can't write a large program correctly and one of our switching offices has about eight million lines of code that are associated with the way that switch runs. Whose going to write eight million lines of anything and get it right? I mean you can't even write a, a modest size paper without a lot of spelling mistakes in it, I mean. The logic behind the computer program is so complex that no person could possible understand all those eight million lines of code. So, guaranteed to be some mistakes in it. And you can just hope that over a period of time that you find most of these out but there will always be another one lying, waiting to come up and bite you.

IF I WAS READING A REALLY LONG PAPER AND THERE WAS SOME TYPING MISTAKES, I'D STILL UNDERSTAND THE BASIC MEANING OF IT. WHAT IS IT ABOUT SOFTWARE THAT IT DEMANDS SUCH PERFECTION?

Yes, if, if you, there were spelling mistakes in some article that you were reading, you would still understand what you were reading. The trouble about computer code is it's treated so literally by the computer. It takes every single character in that program and, and acts on it. And so if, if you've misspelled a word or the equivalent, it's going to act on that and it's going to do something wrong, something dumb, something that might get you in a lot of trouble.

WE’RE LOOKING AT AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, DO YOU KNOW MUCH ABOUT THAT?

No, no I don’t.

IF YOU CAN EXPAND ON WHAT YOU SAID AT THE END OF AN EARLIER COMMENT, THAT THERE ARE STILL MORE BUGS WAITING OUT THERE. WHY IS IT SO HARD TO FIND A SOFTWARE BUG? WHY IS IT SO HARD TO GET PERFECT SOFTWARE?

The problem with software is you can never test it completely. I mean you'd like to think that you've written this program and now you, you could test it to see if it works. But the problem is that there's so many possibilities for conditions, for, for the inputs to this program, there are so many - what ifs, - what if this? what if that? And you put a lot of - what ifs - together and you get just a myriad of possibilities. And so many, you could never test all the situations. I Think of that switching office out there with eight million lines of code and that are associated with it and try to think of all the different things could be happening, that all the telephone lines coming into that office. And then you just might hit this magic combination where suddenly the program gets down to a line that has a mistake in it and it's never been there before. That line of code has never been acted on and it's wrong and now you've got troubles.

IF YOU COULD SUMMARIZE THAT, YOU WERE SAYING, INPUTS AND CONDITIONS, THE - WHAT IFS, IS SOMETHING THE AVERAGE VIEWER CAN GET. WOULD YOU MIND DOING THAT AGAIN?

Right sure. The problem with accuracy in computer programs is the number of - what ifs - associated with a program. What if this is this way and that is that way and a, a typical program can have so many different possibilities for the situation it has to deal with that you're overwhelmed with all these - what ifs. It's impossible to test the program to see if it works under all these different conditions. So there will always be conditions that a program runs against that is never seen before, has never been tested before. So you don't know really if it's going to work.

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN IN TERMS OF, - ARE WE GOING TO SEE MORE SOFTWARE PROBLEMS IN THE FUTURE?

There are always going to be software problems. I mean software scientists are continually working on new ways of testing software. But the complexity is growing and growing so I think there will always be problems with software. I mean nothing in the world is perfect and I don't think, I don't see why you should expect software to be perfect too. It breaks like, like anything else. The simplest programs can work for years and years and all of a sudden one day they break and they crash because a condition they've never seen before.

I GUESS WHAT I’M FISHING FOR IS A CAUTIONARY NOTE, WE'RE BUILDING AN INFRASTRUCTURE WITH COMPUTER NETWORKS THAT DEPENDS ON THIS THING THE PUBLIC TENDS TO PUT TOO MUCH FAITH IN, - THE COMPUTER. IS THERE A CAUTIONARY NOTE THAT CAN BE DEVELOPED IN THIS?

Yeah I, I'm a bit cautious about how much faith you put in computers, when I went to Cheyenne Mountain where NORAD has its command center and you see the situation board as to whether we're under atomic attack or not and the computers are assessing everything. But I'm really glad there's a general sitting there who has the final say using the human judgment and it has happened that a computer will say,- we're under attack. Even for all the safeguards that you can imagine are taken at a place like that. There's been several episodes where, there are certain indications that we're under attack and you need that final human judgment. So with anything that important, you have to have a human in the loop. I'd really be unhappy if there weren't a human in the loop.

IS THERE A CAUTIONARY NOTE THAT WE CAN LEAVE THE VIEWERS WITH?

Well you know, I think, I think both things are true in, in the sense that, that there are always going to be problems with software. I mean you should never get the idea we're going to get rid of them forever. It's, it's impossible, ah. But on the other hand, you learn from every mistake. When we had problems with the telephone network we learned a lot from that and, and you won't see that happen again that way. Now something else could happen. But, you know, we're continually putting in safeguards, we, we learn from our experiences. So, you know, I'd be cautious about it but, gee, you got to trust computers up to a certain point because we have to depend on them in the complexity of life today.

WHY DO WE HAVE TO DEPEND ON THEM TODAY?

Life has become too complex without computers today. You know, we, we brought the computers in to help us and then they sort of gone beyond that., Now, they've become a necessity for handling the amount of data and information that we deal with today. You couldn't anymore make an airline reservation without the, the computer systems that, that lie behind that. And so we become dependent on them. We let them in and now they're here for, they're here for good and, and so we have to depend on them for, for just everyday things.

SOMETIMES PEOPLE TAKE A SIMPLISTIC VIEW, THE TECHNOLOGY IS GOOD, TECHNOLOGY IS BAD. YOU TALKED TO US ABOUT THE STEAMROLLER ASPECT BEFORE. IN ONE CASE COMPUTER NETWORKS CAN PROVIDE A GREATER FLOW OF INFORMATION, A GROUP LIKE A SENIOR NET, WHICH IS A NETWORK FOR SENIORS. ON THE OTHER SIDE YOU HAVE THE ABILITY OF PEOPLE TO ACCESS INFORMATION ON PEOPLE IN DATABASES. THERE ARE QUESTIONS ABOUT MONITORING. IS THERE ANY COMMENT YOU CAN USE TO HELP US PULL THOSE DISPARATE THINGS TOGETHER?

Well I think technology itself is, is neutral, you know. It, it brings complexity into our lives. But it also gives a tool for managing complexity. So, for every good side I, and I, ...let me start again. I think technology itself is neutral it, it gives and it takes away. It, it, it gives us a tool for a managing complexity but at the same time it really brings complexity into our lives. So for every, for every ill effect that you might see from technology, you also see a technological solution to that ill effect. So even though it, it let us accumulate vast amounts of data, it gives us abilities to manipulate and to handle and to access that information for good or for bad. So we need not only the technology but a set of ethics to deal with it and all this is changing, we're, we're in an evolutionary state today.

WOULD YOU SAY IT'S PROPOSING NEW CHALLENGES TO THE SOCIAL SYSTEM?

Yeah, I'd, I'd say it's, it's, not only posing new challenges to the social system, it's actually shaping the social system. We need new laws that deal with information. And, and we're all in a quandary today as to the, the laws on, on property, intellectual property. It's something you wouldn't have thought of twenty years ago, the idea of intellectual property.

MAKE IT A COMPLETE STATEMENT, - CHALLENGING OR SHAPING.

[MISCELLANEOUS CONVERSATION]

I think technology is, is certainly challenging society to come up with new laws for example, new ethics for dealing with it. But it's shaping society at the same time. There's a constant push and shove I think between technology and society. And today the whole idea of intellectual property is upon us and it's been brought to us by computers and computer networks, the value of something that's intellectual, that has no substance and how do we deal with it. We need new sets of laws to deal with this. So that's this, that's technology telling society, hey, you better do something about this because it's here.

THAT'S A VERY INTERESTING AREA.

Yeah, it's not just a question of legal legality but ethics and you know, what do we, what do we really want and we haven't decided what we really want there yet, intellectual properties can get lost, can get in your way.

WHAT DO SEE AS THE NEGATIVE ASPECTS OF THE IMPACT OF COMPUTERS AND COMPUTER NETWORKS ON SOCIETY?

Well certainly there are negative aspects of, of computer networks on society. You can think immediately of the idea of privacy that they, ah. - I'm going to start again... Certainly there are negatives aspects that are made possible by computer networks and the most obvious one is the idea of privacy that, that they, they give the people who'd like them to look over our shoulders a, a lot of tools to do that. And we also worry about pollution of the databases and spreading of incorrect information. I also think philosophically that one of the difficulties it's just the complexity that they bring into life. They really, they really, they let complexity build and build and, and it makes it difficult for us.

WHAT ABOUT THE ISSUE OF MONITORING, LET'S LOOK SPECIFICALLY NOW AT THE EMPLOYMENT SECTOR. DO YOU WANT TO TOUCH THIS OR NOT?

Well, let's just think about it here a minute.

IT'S ROLLING.

Well, okay, yeah. It certainly is possible to use computer networks to, to monitor. In fact telecommunication communications networks of the future might have to know where you are to get at you. That's cert... that's partly true now in cellular networks today. They have to find your car. But in the future we expect to have personal telephone numbers where I'm going to dial something like your social security number to get at you rather than to dial a place. Today we dial a place rather than a person. We'd like to dial a person. But again, it's a two-edged sword, isn't it, because it's nice to be able to get at you but the network has to know where you are now and so in effect there is some intelligence that's monitoring your movements.

BIG BROTHER COMES BACK. THAT WAS THE INTERESTING THING, IN THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES THEY WORRIED ABOUT THAT. THE PC CAME OUT AND IT SEEMED TO WORK SO DIAMETRICALLY AGAINST THAT CUZ IT’S MY OWN MACHINE, NOBODY KNOWS WHAT I’M DOING ON IT. IS IT BRINGING BACK SOME OF THAT?

Well you know we had experimental network here some years ago where I had a little credit card in my wallet that could be tracked by in the building. So that when I walked into another room and someone called me on the telephone the phone in that other room would ring. But I found out that when I went to the men's' room, I'd leave my card in my drawer, I didn't want people to know where I was. So I took to, to not, to not carrying the card around, ah. Certainly, accessibility to communication and privacy are in some ways diametrically opposed. If you want to be accessible you have to give up some of your privacy. I think that's inevitable. But I didn't answer your question. I just wanted to say, what was your question?

CAN YOU DESCRIBE FOR US THE USE OF COMPUTERS IN TERMS OF THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION, KEEPING TRACK OF PEOPLE AND WHAT THEY'RE DOING?

Computers can be used to keep track of people in their normal workday environment. Certainly, for example, telephone operators can be timed and, and tracked by computers as to what they're doing. Today when a repairman goes out in the morning, the repairman is given a list of jobs and the amount of time that each job requires, the amount of travel time between jobs. So in a sense the computer can look over your shoulder and, and keep tabs on you. And that can make for a difficult world too. It makes for an, a more efficient world from a business standpoint but it also makes us more, I think of it as being a part of a computer yourself. It's like you're plugged into it but you're the arms and legs and eyes and ears for the computer. I, I don't like that sometimes.

WHAT'S TO BE DONE ABOUT IT?

I think this kind of thing actually could get worse because computers can, are going to do more things: they're going to talk and they're, they're going to look at things and then they'll have these powers to really look over our shoulders. And, and so the potential for monitoring, certainly, I think will be greater in the future. Again, it's a social problem. I mean how are we going to use this capability?

WHAT CONCERNS YOU THE MOST?

Um frankly, I don't think I've gotten this across as well as I should but probably the thing I worry about most is the rise of complexity. I, I really think that the computer has brought so much complexity into life. And every April when I have to fill out my tax return, for example, I think this is outrageous, I have to do this much work. It's just, life is getting more and more complex. And a lot of it is because of the computer. People can handle more data. You know the companies can, can store more data and process more so they want more data from you. And, and they're, they're continually requiring more data than perhaps they even need or want but the demands on us are, are getting greater and greater.

IN A NOISY AREA IT'S HARD TO LISTEN TO THE PERSON TALKING NEXT TO US AND WE MISS THAT CONVERSATION WE REALLY WANT, IS THAT POSSIBLE, THAT WE'RE BEGINNING TO GET DROWNED IN DATA AND INFORMATION THAT WE MISS KNOWLEDGE?

Absolutely. (Bad start). I do think that we're really drowning in, in data and perhaps starving for information. Every day in my desk I just get so much information coming through, I mean not only the computer networks or the magazines or the memoranda and the telephone ringing and every day I'm just wading through information. Well I really, I'm wading through data 'cause not all of it is good information and it's plucking out the good bits of information and putting them in my head, that's what counts. And the people that can do that well are the people that are going to do well in life. But that's what I do every day. I don't really make anything here. I just shuffle bits around and some of them end up in my head and hopefully those are the good ones.

CAN YOU MAKE A DISTINCTION FOR US BETWEEN THE SOCIAL IMPACT QUESTIONS IN TERMS OF PRIVACY AND MONITORING AND THE TECHNOLOGICAL ONES IN TERMS OF SOFTWARE AND RELIABILITY? ANY WAY TO GET FROM ONE TO THE OTHER?

The whole idea of a computer program is that you can express life in a nice, ordered form by rules. But real life isn't always like that. There aren't rules for everything. Even something like language, we don't even know all the rules for, for language. So we, if we knew all the rules we could tell the computer how to talk and how to listen and we don't do a very good job with that. So it's the clash between this perfect ordered rule, it's the clash between this perfect world that's ordered by rules that exists in the computer and computer software and our world, real world where things are ambiguous and they're not black and white but they're gray and that's where you get into trouble, this, this clash, trying to put the real world into this make-believe world inside the computer.

ARE YOU CONFIDENT THAT THE SOCIAL PROBLEMS WILL BE WORKED OUT?

I, I don't think that social problems will ever be worked out as far as the computer because it's always going to be in a state of becoming. I mean computer technology is changing at such an enormous rate. I mean the technology is being overthrown about every three or four years. And social systems move much more slowly. So you got the computers moving like that and the social system just sort of creeping along. So there's always going to be a difference between the two. So I don't think that we'll ever work this really. It's always going to be in a state of becoming and it will never be quite right because the technology is just going ahead and the social system is lagging behind.

SO IS ONE ARGUMENT FOR WATCHING THIS SERIES, YOU BETTER GET WITH IT OR ELSE YOU'RE GOING TO BE LEFT BEHIND?

I think if you don't if you don't learn about computers and learn how to use them that, that you will be left behind. I really think that's true. Even though computers are going come more toward you in terms of their ability to deal with you, they'll learn how to talk and to deal with you in the English language rather than in the arcane systems that we have today, nonetheless the ability to deal with computers is going to be an important differentiator in, among people. Today it is and it will be even more so in the future.