From: kamchar@ibm.cl.msu.edu (SunCat)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Caregivers (was: Re: FAR future programs)
Keywords: CPSR
Date: 17 Nov 92 23:50:34 GMT
Organization: Michigan State University

In article <BxGyCz.C1r@ucunix.san.uc.edu> balesej@ucunix.san.uc.edu (Eric  
J Bales) writes:
> In article <1992Nov9.143039.2729@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com>  
shanks@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com (Mark Shanks) writes:
[...]
> >Oh, brother. SURE there will be. Any technically competent people
> >will more likely end up being the slaves to the "care-givers" and
> >art-lovers just to keep the wheels from flying off your idyllic
> >society, a la "The Marching Morons".
> 
> Or just the opposite will happen.  All the care-givers will become  
utterly
> dependent on the small number of people with the technical competence to
> fix major problems in the automated factories.
> 
> Either way is Very Bad.
> 
> -- 
> balesej@ucunix.san.uc.edu - atreis@tso.uc.edu		 -Eric Bales-
> ebales@ddt.eng.uc.edu - at098@Cleveland.Freenet.Edu
> 		        -The second dolphin-
> Dolphins. Soon you will be one of us, and then you will understand.

I would say that "the small number of people with the technical competence  
to fix major problems" *are* caregivers.  I had a talk with a friend who  
had been in the Peace Corp.  Unlike most of the activist poseurs in my  
town he could use tools and reason scientificly.  He said that people were  
more likely to donate money if they could earmark for an individual child,  
but if that same amount of money were used to build a village water system  
many more lives could be saved.

But of course if I prolong this post I'll be quoting John Adams and all  
the rest.  Check out the Computer underground Digest #4.58.  It has a  
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility platform in it.  Here's  
the table of contents.
--CUTHERE--

PLATFORM SUMMARY

A.  ACCESS TO INFORMATION and INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

  1.  Universal access to education
  2.  Elimination of barriers to access to public information
  3.  An open National Data Traffic System
  4.  Expansion of the public library system
  5.  Expansion of public information treasury
  6.  Freedom of access to government data
  7.  Preservation of public information as a resource
  8.  Restoration of information as public property

B.  CIVIL LIBERTIES and PRIVACY

  1.  Education on civil liberties, privacy, and the implications
      of new technologies
  2.  Preservation of constitutional civil liberties
  3.  Right to privacy and the technology to ensure it
  4.  Community control of police and their technology


C.  WORK, HEALTH and SAFETY

  1.  Guaranteed income for displaced workers
  2.  Improved quality of work through worker control of it
  3.  Emphasis on health and safety
  4.  Equal opportunity to work
  5.  Protection for the homeworker
  6.  Retraining for new technologies


D.  THE ENVIRONMENT

  1.  Environmentally safe manufacturing
  2.  Planning for disposal or re-use of new products
  3.  Reclamation of the cultural environment as public space


E.  INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

  1.  Replacement of "national competitiveness" with "global
      cooperation"
  2.  Global distribution of technical wealth
  3.  An end to the waste of technical resources embodied in the
      international arms trade
  4.  A new international information order
  5.  Equitable international division of labor


F. RESPONSIBLE USE OF COMPUTERS and INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES

  1.  New emphasis in technical research priorities
  2.  Conversion to a peacetime economy
  3.  Socially responsible engineering and science
--CUTHERE--

=========SunCat++++     | kamchar@ibm.cl.msu.edu
"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of
a democracy should be the weapon of openness."
 --Niels Bohr
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures