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
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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