Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ucbvax!BU-CS.BU.EDU!bzs From: bzs@BU-CS.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures Subject: Knowledge Gap? More like Fear gap Message-ID: <8712161850.AA26614@bu-cs.bu.edu> Date: 16 Dec 87 18:50:08 GMT References: <8712161659.AA25561@bu-cs.bu.edu> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 24 I think fear is a loaded word meant to disparage those who would resist the one true cause. It assumes that the technology is obviously beneficial and being applied in only positive ways for the good of all. Therefore, any resistance to this brave new world is "obviously" the result of irrational fears. What about uses like typing pools which now go on machines which monitor keystrokes? Or bureacracies which leave both the bureaucrat (who is not necessarily evil in intent) and the customer helpless to get their goals acheived because of an intractable computer (I remember arguing with the phone company because I overpaid one bill and hadn't paid another yet [I think I accidently paid one twice] so I asked if they could simply transfer the overpayment to the other account, of course not, there's no button to push to do that, we both agreed this was stupid.) One might write it off to "bad use of technology", but isn't that inevitable? For example, can we write off 50,000 automobile related deaths to "bad use of automobiles" and wash our hands of it? -B