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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

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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

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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

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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?)

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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)

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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

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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.

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