The CPSR Newsletter

Volume 10, No. 3 COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Summer 1992

Defense Cuts and Cooperative Security in the Post Cold War World Randall Forsberg Director Institute
for Defense and Disarmament Studies

The end of the Cold War represents a turning point for the role of military force in international
affairs. At this unique juncture in history, the world's main military spenders and arms producers
have an unprecedented opportunity to move from confrontation to cooperation. The United States, the
European nations, Japan, and the republics of the former U.S.SR can now replace their traditional
security policies, based on deterrence and unilateral intervention, with cooperative policies based on
minimum deterrence, nonoffensive defense, nonproliferation, and multilateral peacekeeping. In fact,
they have already taken early steps in this direction.

There are four important reasons to make this change, and make it quickly:

First, massive resources are at stake. With a cooperative security policy, the United States could cut
annual military spending by 50 percent over the next few years and as much as 80 percent by the turn
of the century. Ultimately, the savings from a fully cooperative approach could come to $180 billion
per year over and above the $30 billion cutback now planned by the Pentagon. A peace dividend on this
order is exactly what we need to revitalize the U.S. economy and meet the swelling backlog of needs in
housing, health, education, the environment, and economic infrastructure.

Second, a cooperative approach to security is a prerequisite to stopping the global proliferation of
armaments and arms industries. The prospect of proliferation has become the single greatest military
threat to this country and to the world. Here, as in many aspects of security policy, an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure. To prevent further proliferation, the major industrial nations
must severely restrict arms exports and practice the same restraint in security matters that they
would like to see Third World nations show. This means that they must reduce their conventional forces
to nonoffensive defenses, decouple nuclear weapons from the deterrence of conventional war, and
replace unilateral military intervention with multilateral peacekeeping.

Third, the choice by the major industrial nations either to perpetuate a U.S.-dominated international
security system or to develop a more cooperative system will have far-reaching political ramifications
at home and abroad. In the new Commonwealth of independent States, in central Europe, and in the Third
World, the adoption of cooperative security policies would promote the growth of democratic
institutions. Here in America, the change would help reverse the nasty mixture of cynicism, violence,
and racism that has increasingly pervaded our society since the first Reagan Administration made huge
increases in military spending at the price of a spiraling national debt and deep cuts in domestic
programs.

Last but not least, a cooperative approach to security is likely to be far more effective than the
traditional approach in reducing the incidence and scale of war.

Despite these enormous stakes, Congress and the Administration have, until recently, refused even to
consider substantial cuts in post-Cold War defense spending, much less seize the unprecedented
opportunity to develop a cooperative security system. Now signs of an important new dialogue are
emerging. After briefly noting the "old thinking" of President Bush's defense plan, this article reviews
the opening rounds of a new Washington debate on military policy and spending. It then explores the full
promise of a cooperative security system for federal spending priorities, for international peace, and
for the spread of democracy.

Gridlock in Washington

In January President Bush proposed to reduce defense spending from $281 billion in 1993 to $251
billion in 1997 (in constant dollars, after allowing for inflation). Set against 1990 defense funding of
$336 billion (in comparable dollars), the President's long-term plan would reduce annual U.S.
military funding by 25 percent.

This would do little more than reverse the excesses of the Reagan years. It would bring the U.S. military
budget back to the scale of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, when the main purpose was to counter the Soviet
threat. (In comparable dollars, military spending hit a post-Korea low of $237 billion in 1955 and
stayed below $275 billion for 18 of the 26 years until the first Reagan budget.)

The Pentagon's proposed budget for 1997 would give the United States enough active combat forces to
fight two Gulf-sized wars anywhere in the world. The idea of fighting two large wars simultaneously is
absurd. Moreover, the Pentagon cannot identify even one nation as threatening as pre-Gulf War Iraq,
much less two such nations.

Despite the blatant excess in defense spending, the Democratically-controlled Congress has failed to
press for deeper cuts. At the very least, public concern about economic competition from Japan and
Europe should have prompted members of the Armed Services and Appropriations committees to ask
whether it is necessary or wise for the United States to continue spending eight times as much on
defense as Japan, Germany, Britain, or France (nations one-third to one-half our size).

On these matters, there has been a conspiracy of silence between Republicans and Democrats in
Washington and on the campaign trail. No prominent politician wants to say that the emperor has no
clothesÑthat is, that the bulk of U.S. military spending is not justified by a rational military or foreign
policy purpose.

The unspoken truth is that the U.S. defense budget has become a gigantic Federal public works program:
an economic stimulus that provides local job fixes for the short term but destroys the national economy
in the long run. The real obstacle to deep and rapid cuts in military spending is not foreign threats but
domestic unemploymentÑand the obstinate refusal of the Administration and the Congress to tell the
public that the current national and international situation requires an industrial policy and a major
conversion plan.

The terrible consequence of this failure of vision and leadershipÑthe consequence of the unwillingness
of political leaders to combine deep cuts in military spending with conversion measures that boost
civilian jobsÑis that our tax dollars are going to military forces we don't need and arms exports that
actually subvert our security, instead of providing education, health care, and investment in a viable
economic future.

Challenges from Within the Beltway

Now at last, however, there are some cracks in Washington's wall of silence on post-Cold War defense
posture. Without necessarily supporting a fundamentally new approach to security, some of the nation's
most qualified and respected defense analysts have developed thoughtful options for large cuts in
military forces and spending. The proponents of these new proposals are among the most influential
Washington insiders. Les Aspin is chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has earned a
relatively hardline reputation with decisions such as his support for the MX missile in the 1980s and
for the Gulf War in 1991. (In the latter case, he correctly predicted that the war would be short and
entail few U.S. casualties.) William Kaufmann, a top adviser to secretaries of defense in successive
Democratic and Republican administrations from 1960 to 1980, was the principle drafter of the
defense secretary's annual report to congress throughout that period. Now retired, he is a senior fellow
at the Brookings Institution. John Steinbruner has spent fifteen years as director of defense and foreign
policy studies at the Brookings Institution, the nation's largest public policy think tank.

Aspin's Threat-based, Building-block Approach

In a recent paper entitled "An Approach to Sizing American Conventional Forces for the Post-Soviet
Era: Four Illustrative Options," Congressman Aspin provides a remarkably succinct and dismissive
tour d'horizon of potential future worldwide military threats. After describing the collapse of the Red
Army and citing the view of the Defense Intelligence Agency that the former Soviet Union ``will have no
capability to directly threaten the United States and NATO with large-scale military operations," Aspin
concludes that Òresidual 'Soviet' conventional forces will be incapable of external aggression for years
to come" and could not restore that capability "without years of warning time for the United States and
our European allies."

Aspin then identifies a handful of other countries with relatively large military forces which could
conceivably use those forces in ways that might provoke a U.S. military response: Iraq, Iran, and Syria
in the Middle East; Libya in North Africa; North Korea and China in the Far East, and Cuba in this
hemisphere. Using standard military measures

to assess the armed forces of these seven countries, Aspin finds that except for China (whose large
forces are "lightly armed and not very modernized"), the potential troublemakers generally have
ground and air forces less than half as powerful as those of pre-Gulf War Iraq. Even the strongest,
Syria and North Korea, are little more than half as powerful.

After noting that political constraints make aggression by any of these countries unlikely, Aspin
develops a "Desert Storm-equivalent" U.S. force structure that could easily counter any aggression,
should it occur. The Desert Storm-equivalent force comprises seven Army and one and one-third
Marine ground force divisions; eight Air Force tactical air wings (plus 70 heavy bombers); and four
aircraft carriers. (This includes one Army division and some ships that were not present in the Gulf
but might have been helpful, in Aspin's judgement; and it excludes some Air Force and Marine tactical
aircraft, two aircraft carriers, and one Marine brigade that were present but not needed or useful, in
his view.)

Having pinpointed unlikely but conceivable future threats and developed a slimmed-down U.S. force
structure more than ample to meet those threats, Aspin re-expands future U.S. force and spending
requirements in two ways. First, he uses relatively high estimates of the cost of each force component.
Second, like Defense Department officials, Aspin sets out options for much larger forces that would
allow the United States to conduct several major military operations (that is, wars and invasions)
simultaneously. Aspin's lowest budget optionÑthe $200 billion a year Option AÑwould provide forces
capable of conducting another Gulf War and at the same time an operation like the U.S. assistance to the
Kurds ("Operation Provide Comfort"). Option B, estimated to cost $213 billion yearly, adds forces for
U.S. support to South Korea in a war with North Korea. Option C, at $234 billion annually, funds
additional forces for a military action like the U.S. invasion of Panama ("Operation Just Cause") and for
force rotation in a protracted quarantine as an alternative to war in a Gulf-type crisis. Option DÑa
$255 billion alternative to the President's 1997 budgetÑwould provide forces for a second "Provide
Comfort" operation and strengthen U.S. military support to South Korea (or a comparable contingency
elsewhere). In sum, Aspin's threat-based building blocks demonstrate that the President's budgetÑ
which does not specify either threats or responsesÑwould allow the United States simultaneously to
conduct another Gulf War, help defend South Korea in a major war with North Korea, invade a small
third world country, and protect two large indigenous populations from abuse by military dictators.

Aspin's analysis implies that the United States should not prepare to conduct all conceivable military
actions simultaneously. Like the story of the three bears, his paper suggests that budget Option A,
which would permit one major war and one minor military action, is probably too slim, and Option D
too heavily padded, while something between Option B and Option C would probably be just right.

Aspin's approach poses a powerful challenge to the Administration. By dispassionately using recent U.S.
military actions as a measure of potential future needs, Aspin obliges those who support high military
spending to make a case (which becomes more difficult the higher the proposed budget figure) that the
country should plan to conduct many wars and other military actions at the same time, and can afford to
do so.

The content of Aspin's threat-based analysis strongly suggests that Option A forces are more than ample
for the coming decade. A member of Congress concerned with the deficit, for example, could make the
following case for Option A:

In the war with Iraq, the United States had so much excess military power that the war was not really a
war: it was a rout. Other potentially aggressive countries have military forces even weaker than Iraq's
pre-war forces. Thus, a U.S. "Desert Storm-equivalent" force should be more than ample to meet other
potential threats (which are unlikely to materialize in any case), leaving some surplus capacity for
actions like "Operation Provide Comfort."

Larger military operations, like invading Panama or assisting in the defense of South Korea, should not
be undertaken at the same time as a Gulf-sized war. The U.S. government can, of course, control the
timing of military actions it initiates. With regard to events beyond U.S. control (a North Korean attack
on South Korea while U.S. forces are engaged in a new Gulf war), the U.S. government would have
several options: use incentives and pressure to head off any such attack before it happens; ask for
military support in the Gulf or in Korea, or both, from Europe, Russia, or Japan; allow more time to
restore the status quo ante in the two theaters; and foster reconciliation between the two Koreas, which
will move forward in any case when Kim II Sung dies.

Despite this persuasive logic, it would be difficult to build a Congressional consensus for Option A this
year. Even Senator Ted Kennedy, a member the Armed Services Committee, has proposed that military
spending level off at $233 billion (Aspin's Option C) and reach that level in 1999, after following the
Bush plan for 1993-1997. Thus, it is possible that Aspin developed a range of intermediate options not
as a matter of principle but as a matter of expedience. They allow him to build a Congressional majority
this year for cuts slightly greater than those proposed by Bush, while keeping open the possibility of
moving toward deeper cuts in future years, when the Congress becomes more courageous or more
informed, or both.

The Kaufmann-Steinbruner Cooperative Security Budget

In recent Congressional testimony, William Kaufmann and John Steinbruner made a powerful case for
U.S. forces similar to those in Aspin's Option A, but supported at a cost of just $161 billion per year.
This would mean cutting $90 billion from the future annual budgets proposed by the Pentagon, instead
of the maximum of $50 billion suggested by Aspin.

The new testimony updates a proposal which originally appeared in the 1991 Kaufmann-Steinbruner
book, Decisions for Defense: Prospects for a New Order. The book proposes three defense budget options
well below the Bush plan. Because of the dissolution of the U.S.SR and other developments since
mid-1991, Kaufmann and Steinbruner now support the lowest of their three options, the $161 billion
"cooperative security" budget. Moreover, they want to reach this goal by 1998 (not 2001, as they
originally proposed); and they expect the target budget to drop by several billion dollars once further
cuts in U.S.-Soviet strategic forces are agreed.

Like Aspin's Option A, the Kaufmann-Steinbruner proposal would retain somewhat more than a "Desert
Storm-equivalent" U.S. military force. The main difference in combat forces is the five additional
tactical air wings which Kaufmann and Steinbruner retain to help defend South Korea or engage in a
comparable action elsewhere (possibly Europe). In this respect, the Kaufmann-Steinbruner proposal
resembles Aspin's Option B.

Despite the similarities in force structure, the Kaufmann-Steinbruner proposal diverges substantially
from Aspin's Options A and B in cost and in long-term political assumptions and goals. The Brookings
authors save funds by scaling back procurement of new weapons, research and development (R&D), and
training in a manner roughly proportionate to the reduction in combat forces. Aspin, in contrast,
establishes a "Defense Foundation "that beefs up R&D and the defense industrial base relative to combat
forces. This minimizes the impact of force cuts on spending and industry. (In addition, Aspin's strategic
nuclear forces may cost more, and he strengthens capabilities for rapid transport to overseas crises.)

More important than the cost differential between the Brookings and Aspin approaches are the
differences in political framework and long-term goals. Aspin's approach would perpetuate the
traditional principles of deterrence and unilateral interventionÑmilitary concepts which are
increasingly inappropriate in the post-Cold War world. The central organizing idea in Aspin's analysis
is to provide the capability for unilateral U.S. intervention in crises and conflicts in the Third World.
Aspin's go-it-alone approach resembles that of the notorious official "Defense Planning Guidance." The
draft Guidance document stresses '`the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S." and
the view that "the United States should be postured to act independently" when other nations do not
support military intervention. Like Bush Administration officials, Aspin also assumes that the
environment for this strategy is an international system in which the historic pattern of Third World
arming will continue unchanged despite the historically unprecedented cooperative relationship among
the world's main arms producing and exporting nations. The reciprocal aspects of this traditional
approach to securityÑbeing prepared to use force unilaterally and expecting others to do the sameÑtend
to reinforce each other.

Steinbruner and Kaufmann appear to agree with Aspin on potential near-term sources of aggression.
Where they differ profoundly from him is in suggesting that the United States should move toward a
cooperative security system for addressing such threats. The concept of a cooperative international
approach to security introduces entirely new policy options, which are absent from traditional
repertoire.

The underlying premise of a cooperative approach to security, Steinbruner and Kaufmann observe in
Decisions for Defense, is that the military establishments of various nations are all "on the same
side,... defensively configured, and ...primarily committed to providing mutual reassurance." Noting
that this would require nations to "systematically limit offensive capabilities that might support
ground invasions or might undertake long-range bombardment to achieve some political objective,"
they list six rules for cooperative defense strategies. In brief, such strategies would:

1. Keep the density of modern ground forces for a given area "low enough to signal defensive rather than
offensive intent."

2. Limit the movement of ground forces to prevent ``localized offensive concentrations."

3. Alter tactical air forces to "favor defense over deep interdiction."

4. Publish hitherto secret information about "basic research activities, new weapons deployment
plans, and major operational exercises."

5. Maintain at most small nuclear forces whose "technical configuration and operational practices
would be made much more strictly retaliatory than they currently are."

6. Impose strict, joint controls on weapon exports and related technology.

Steinbruner and Kaufmann point out that if these rules were implemented by the major military
powers (the United States, the former U.S.SR, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and
China), a new global security standard could be established. Other countries would find it hard to flout
the new rules of the game for reasons worth citing in full:

It is one thing to elude [export] controls that are separately organized for different weapons categories,
incompletely developed in all categories, and burdened by extensive secrecy and strong national
competition among the major suppliers. It is quite another to do so if the major suppliers are explicitly
cooperating, are enforcing disclosure, and are serious about imposing restrictions. Moreover, with an
internationally legitimized, highly inclusive security arrangement in place, compliance could readily
be made a condition for access to international financial markets. That would be a much stronger
incentive than any yet attempted.

Clearly, Steinbruner and Kaufmann are suggesting a radical demilitarization of international affairs.
This new approach has little impact, however, on the budget and force structure they propose under the
"cooperative security" heading. Their cooperative security budget varies only slightly from a
"collective security" proposal they put forward in Decisions for Defense, which involves the same
assumptions about deterrence, unilateral intervention, and continued Third World arming that shape
Aspin's analysis.

One reason for this anomaly is the rapid pace of change in international affairs. In mid-1991, when
Kaufmann and Steinbruner initially prepared their proposal, the cooperative security concept was
largely an optimistic afterthought to a traditional analysis. Now the Brookings authors are stressing
this new approach and beginning to flesh it out more fully.

The Kaufmann-Steinbruner analysis, like that of Aspin, is also limited by its unilateral design. The
standard question in Washington is, "What are reasonable options for the United States in regard to
military forces and spending, apart from what other nations may or may not do?" But in a cooperative
approach to security, it is essential to address interactive multilateral planning and action.

The difficulty of providing a wholistic view of security issuesÑa view that integrates multilateral
options with unilateral fall-back positionsÑdoes not make it any less urgent or appropriate. On the
contrary, with cooperation replacing confrontation as the norm on security matters, policy options that
involve international interaction are likely to be the forward-looking choices, while options that can be
implemented alone are likely to perpetuate Cold War habits of militarization and mistrust.

Toward a Fully Cooperative Security Policy

If the world's main arms producing nations wholeheartedly embraced the six "nonoffensive defense"
rules of thumb listed above and made a commitment to multilateral peacekeeping, the United States
could make far deeper cuts in forces and spending than those proposed by Steinbruner and Kaufmann.
The Brookings authors propose U.S. forces large enough for traditional forms of unilateral military
action by a superpower in a world without other major military powers. But that, of course, is not the
same thing as identifying the greatly reduced forces and spending that are possible with a fully
cooperative approach to peacekeeping, implemented jointly by the largest, wealthiest nations.

The ultimate goal of a cooperative approach to security should be to demilitarize the international
system: that is, to eliminate war and fear of war from the forefront of concern in the day-to-day
conduct of international affairs; to severely restrict the scale and duration of minor wars that may still
occur; to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction; and to minimize the economic and human burden of
preparing for war and keeping the peace. In such a world, national military forces would be limited to
small, stable, strictly nonoffensive defenses: a coast guard, a light air defense system, border guards.
The United Nations would command peacekeeping forces of somewhat greater range and power, whose
purpose would be to help keep the peace and to safeguard against the emergence of militaristic leaders,
bent on rebuilding aggressive military forces or acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

Today, we remain very far from such goals. The gap is not limited to disparities in hardware and
institutions: it also involves attitudes that are incompatible with the development of an enduring peace.
Peace cannot be established in a given area, for example, as long as a majority or large minority of
people in that area believe that war is a morally just means of advancing certain political or economic
interests or programs.

The transition to a stable, fully cooperative global security system will involve a whole series of
interlocking steps and changes. These will undoubtedly include major confidence building steps, such as
reductions and restructuring that make conventional military forces non-threatening to neighbors;
strong UN enforcement of international norms against aggression and genocide; and the spread of
democratic institutions to countries that do not yet have them. As a result of such changes, we can
expect to see a substantial strengthening in the international arena of the same norm regarding violence
that obtains within nations with democratic values: that is, the view that it is never just or legitimate
to use violence or armed force for any end except to defend against its (illegitimate) use by others who
have not yet accepted this standard. Ultimately, then, the foundations of peace will lie in the spread and
strengthening of a democratic commitment to nonviolence combined with the demilitarization of the
policies of individual nation states and the development of strong and effective multilateral
peacekeeping institutions.

At this early stage of international thought and dialogue about a cooperative approach to security, any
practical international proposal for cutting back on military forces and spending must inevitably
represent the initial phase of a longer-term rolling plan. The reason is that the larger the number of
nations that join in a cooperative approach to security, the smaller will be the peacekeeping burden on
those that have joined. Ideally, this should be a cumulative process, in which more and more nations
make a commitment to support cooperative security and multilateral peacekeeping, thereby reducing
the burden on each participating nation to help keep the peace.

As one possible instance of the first phase in moving toward a fully cooperative security system, we
might assume that initially the only countries that agree to adopt a cooperative . approach to security
are those that were directly caught up in the Cold War: the United States and Canada, the countries of
Europe, the former U.S.SR, and Japan. As it happens, these countries account for 85 percent of world
military spending and 97 percent of world arms exports.

With fully cooperative security policies, these countries would mutually eliminate the portion of their
conventional ground and air forces which they still maintain for defense and deterrence vis-a-vis one
another. For this role, they would replace their traditional armed forces with small, stable,
"nonoffensive" conventional defenses, which are useful for defending national territory but pose little
or no threat of cross-border attack. They would replace traditional ground forces, for example, which
could pose a threat of aggression, with modest border guards and national guard forces, oriented to
territorial defense and internal security. Similarly, they would replace large, modern air forces
capable of massive, long-range bombardment of other nations, with short-range air defense forces. And
they would replace large, ocean-going combat ships with small, short-range coastal defense forces.
Today in the United States, nonoffensive defenses of this kind cost only $2-3 billion per year.

Second, for international peacekeeping purposes, the former Cold War adversaries would retain
relatively small contingents of traditional ground, air, and naval forces. Taken together, all of the
industrial nations might retain two to three "Desert Storm-equivalent" forces. These forces would,
however, be divided up in such a way that (1) no single country could undertake a military
intervention on the scale of the U.S. action in the Gulf, and (2) an aggressive use of force by any single
country could be opposed by the others acting in combination. One possible implementation would be for
the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and Russia each to keep forces half as large as the Desert
Storm-equivalent, and the remaining industrial countries together would have forces as large as one
Desert Storm-equivalent.

This would create a situation in which there would be more than enough forces at the disposal of the UN
Security Council to respond to an act of aggression anywhere in the world, but no capability for large-
scale unilateral military intervention by any single nation. Since countries might differ in their view
of which crises merited action by forces under UN auspices, enough forces would exist to permit UN
action even if some countries decided not to participate. In situations commanding little active support
for UN action, however, little force would be available.

Third, the cooperating nations would agree to do everything in their power to foster adoption of
cooperative security policies and nonoffensive defenses in all parts of the world. They would ban
exports of weapons and weapon related technology, except for systems designed for air defense, coast
guard, and border guard. They would use diplomatic and economic incentives and sanctions to encourage
regional arms reductions and the establishment of nonoffensive defenses in the Middle East and South
Asia and on the Korean peninsula.

Finally, regarding weapons of mass destruction, the cooperating nations that now have nuclear weapons
would cut back to small, stable, "minimum deterrent" forces, to be maintained for a transitional period
until a cooperative security system encompassing all nations is firmly entrenched and working
smoothly. At the same time, the cooperating nations would work within the UN to outlaw any further
acquisition by any nation of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons or ballistic missiles, and to
establish an agreed spectrum of appropriate military and non-military actions in the event of such
proliferation.

Participation in a full-fledged cooperative security policy of this kind might cost the United States as
little as $70 billion a year by the year 2000. This would mean a reduction of $180 billion annually,
compared with President Bush's proposed budget for the late 1990s. Of the $70 billion fully
cooperative security budget, $5 billion would support the operation of 10 strategic submarines; $1
billion would go to maintain the existing U.S. air defense system; and $1 billion to national guard
forces. (The Coast Guard is already funded through the budget of the Department of Transportation.)

For the most part, the remaining U.S. military capabilities would be maintained to support multilateral
peacekeeping efforts, although they would remain under U.S. command. At a minimum, these
capabilities would include global surveillance and communications ($12.5 billion); the same airlift
and sealift that exists today ($14 billion); and ground, air, and naval forces one-third to one- half the
size of those proposed in Aspin's Option A or the Kaufmann-Steinbruner budget ($34 billion). In
addition, the United States might retain three aircraft carriers (of which one would always be quickly
available in a crisis), plus one division of Marines, together with a Marine air wing and amphibious
assault ships. In the past, such forces have been associated with unilateral intervention missions; but
they could also provide useful support in multilateral peacekeeping missions. These additional forces
would add another $16 billion to a cooperative security budget.

Today, the combined military strength of the former Cold War adversaries is probably 10 times the
size of a Desert Storm-equivalent force (assuming that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus had the fuel,
lubricants, supplies, and spare parts to employ the armaments on their territory). Cutting back these
forces to only 3-4 times the size of a Desert Storm-equivalent force represents one reasonable step in
an array of possible futures leading toward a fully cooperative security system.

Another reasonable step would be to involve some of the larger Third World nations in the process of
creating such a system. India, China, Egypt, and Brazil, for example, maintain large conventional
forces that could be oriented mainly to multilateral peacekeeping efforts.

An alternative cooperative security model might differentiate more among the roles played by various
nations. For example, the United States and the former Soviet Union might use their existing resources
to provide the bulk of global surveillance, communications, transportation, and logistical support for
multilateral forces, while the combat components, which face much greater casualty risks, could be
drawn in proportion to population from all participating nations.

Making the Transition

Although a cooperative security system cannot be created quickly or easily, developing the framework
for such a system would be a reasonable goal for the next decade. The United States could begin by
making the changes proposed by Kaufmann and Steinbruner or adopting Aspin's Option Abut announce at
the outset the intention of continuing to move further toward non offensive defense and multilateral
peacekeeping in subsequent years, assuming that sufficiently strong international support for this goal
is mustered in the interim. This would allow time for international dialogue and negotiation on the
purposes, organization, and command of multilateral peacekeeping missions.

Two areas of policy require immediate action in order to preserve the opportunity to move steadily
toward a cooperative security system. The first concerns arms exports. The expected reduction in
military spending of somewhere between 25 percent and 75 percent over the next decade is creating
tremendous pressure to increase exports of high-tech conventional weaponry, especially offensively-
oriented, long-range fighter-attack aircraft. The pressure is coming many sides: workers, corporate
executives, community leaders, congressional representatives, and government officials. Similar
pressures exist in Western Europe, and they are acute in the former U.S.SR and Eastern Europe.

A decade's worth of increased arms exports by the United States and the other industrial nations,
combined with the continued growth of emerging arms industries in India, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea,
Brazil, and other third world nations, will not necessarily preclude the establish of a cooperative
security system. But at the very least, it will delay and obstruct a cooperative approach to security. In
other words, the short-term job and income benefits of exports are likely to exact a high price in
reduced security and increased military spending over the long term.

This brings us back to the gridlock in Washington. To some extent, this is a function of the current
recession. When civilian jobs are growing, it will be easier to reduce defense-related employment. But
national support and planning for conversion are essential regardless of general economic conditions.
This was illustrated toward the end of the Vietnam war, when military-related employment dropped by
over two million, and the rate of unemployment doubled, a year by the year 2000. This would mean a
reduction of $180 billion annually, compared with President Bush's proposed budget for the late
1990s. Of the $70 billion fully cooperative security budget, $5 billion would support the operation of
10 strategic submarines; $1 billion would go to maintain the existing U.S. air defense system; and $1
billion to national guard forces. (The Coast Guard is already funded through the budget of the
Department of Transportation.)

For the most part, the remaining U.S. military capabilities would be maintained to support multilateral
peacekeeping efforts, although they would remain under U.S. command. At a minimum, these
capabilities would include global surveillance and communications ($12.5 billion); the same airlift
and sealift that exists today ($14 billion); and ground, air, and naval forces one-third to one- half the
size of those proposed in Aspin's Option A or the Kaufmann-Steinbruner budget ($34 billion). In
addition, the United States might retain three aircraft carriers (of which one would always be quickly
available in a crisis), plus one division of Marines, together with a Marine air wing and amphibious
assault ships. In the past, such forces have been associated with unilateral intervention missions; but
they could also provide useful support in multilateral peacekeeping missions. These additional forces
would add another $16 billion to a cooperative security budget.

Today, the combined military strength of the former Cold War adversaries is probably 10 times the
size of a Desert Storm-equivalent force (assuming that Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus had the fuel,
lubricants, supplies, and spare parts to employ the armaments on their territory). Cutting back these
forces to only 3-4 times the size of a Desert Storm-equivalent force represents one reasonable step in
an array of possible futures leading toward a fully cooperative security system.

Another reasonable step would be to involve some of the larger Third World nations in the process of
creating such a system. India, China, Egypt, and Brazil, for example, maintain large conventional
forces that could be oriented mainly to multilateral peacekeeping efforts.

An alternative cooperative security model might differentiate more among the roles played by various
nations. For example, the United States and the former Soviet Union might use their existing resources
to provide the bulk of global surveillance, communications, transportation, and logistical support for
multilateral forces, while the combat components, which face much greater casualty risks, could be
drawn in proportion to population from all participating nations.

Making the Transition

Although a cooperative security system cannot be created quickly or easily, developing the framework
for such a system would be a reasonable goal for the next decade. The United States could begin by
making the changes proposed by Kaufmann and Steinbruner or adopting Aspin's Option Abut announce at
the outset the intention of continuing to move further toward non offensive defense and multilateral
peacekeeping in subsequent years, assuming that sufficiently strong international support for this goal
is mustered in the interim. This would allow time for international dialogue and negotiation on the
purposes, organization, and command of multilateral peacekeeping missions.

Two areas of policy require immediate action in order to preserve the opportunity to move steadily
toward a cooperative security system. The first concerns arms exports. The expected reduction in
military spending of somewhere between 25 percent and 75 percent over the next decade is creating
tremendous pressure to increase exports of high-tech conventional weaponry, especially offensively-
oriented, long-range fighter-attack aircraft. The pressure is coming many sides: workers, corporate
executives, community leaders, congressional representatives, and government officials. Similar
pressures exist in Western Europe, and they are acute in the former U.S.SR and Eastern Europe.

A decade's worth of increased arms exports by the United States and the other industrial nations,
combined with the continued growth of emerging arms industries in India, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea,
Brazil, and other third world nations, will not necessarily preclude the establish of a cooperative
security system. But at the very least, it will delay and obstruct a cooperative approach to security. In
other words, the short-term job and income benefits of exports are likely to exact a high price in
reduced security and increased military spending over the long term.

This brings us back to the gridlock in Washington. To some extent, this is a function of the current
recession. When civilian jobs are growing, it will be easier to reduce defense-related employment. But
national support and planning for conversion are essential regardless of general economic conditions.
This was illustrated toward the end of the Vietnam war, when military-related employment dropped by
over two million, and the rate of unemployment doubled, growing from 3 to 6 percent, launching the
era of stagflation.

Conversion support need not take the form of intrusive or protracted government intervention in the
economy. What it should do is provide incentives for change to those most directly affected: workers,
communities, and corporations. The chief forms of conversion support might be labeled "the five its":
relocation, retraining, and early retirement, which can help workers make the transition; and
retooling and reinvestment tax credits, which can help communities and corporations make the change.
Keeping a large fraction of reduced military spending for 12-18 months for use in diverse forms of
conversion support would transform the pain of military cuts into a positive shot in the arm to civilian
growth. Thus, the second area in need of immediate action by Congress and the Administration is the
development of a whole battery of carefully-researched options for conversion support.

As the world's wealthiest and militarily most powerful nation, the United States has the opportunity and
the obligation to take the lead in working to replace deterrence with nonoffensive defense, unilateral
intervention with multilateral peacekeeping, and superpower domination with the democratic processes
of listening, sharing, and building consensus. If we seize the moment, we can use our national treasure
to secure a future worth riving for, both at home and abroad.

This article was reprinted, with permission, from Boston Review (Vol XVII, Nos. 3-4), May-June
1992. Randall Forsberg is Director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and one of the founders of the nuclear freeze movement of the early 1980's. IDDS is
located at 675 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA 02139 and available by telephone at (617) 354-
4337 or by fax at (617) 354-1450.

Comparison of Proposed Post-Cold War U.S. Military Forces

COLD WAR
BASELINE PROPOSED POST-COLD WAR FORCES BY SIZE AND COST

Allows Unilateral Intervention Multilateral Peacekeeping Only
(one-to-two Desert Storm-equivalent forces) (less than one Desert Storm force)

Desert
DEFENSE DEFENSE ASPIN BROOKINGS Storm- FORSBERG
DEPT DEPT Coop. not required Some coop. w Equivalent Full coop. with Russia et al.

Actual "Base Force" Opt. C Opt. A Russia et al. Force¤ Opt. 1 Opt. 2
1990 1997 1997 1997 1998 2000 2000
STRATEGIC NUCLEAR FORCES
Nuclear warheads - Total 11,658 4,700 3,000 1,920 240
Available war heads with half of subs at sea* 9,146 3,550 2,130 960 120
Warheads on:
ICBMs (Land-based missiles) 2,050 500 (Strategic forces 300
SLBMs (Submarine-launched missiles) 5,024 2,300 not specified) 1,740 1920 240
Bombers & air-launched missiles 4,584 1,900 960
Strategic Defenses
Air Defense Interceptor Aircraft 198 198 198 198 198

CONVENTIONAL FORCES

Ground Troop Divisions - Total 21 14 11 10 9 8 5 5
Army 18 12 9 8 7 7 4 5
Marine Corps 3 2 2 2 2 1 1

Tactical Air Wings - Total 41 30 24 14 18 13 8 5
Air Force 24 15 10 6 10 8 4 5
Marine Corps 3 3 2 2 2 1 1
Navy (one wing per carrier) 14 12 12 6 6 4 3

Sea Lane Control and Transport
Ships and submarines# 238 182 62 56 76 40 40

P-3C aircraft 260 260 260 260 260 130 130
Amphibious Lift Ships 41 41 50 50 41 30
Total Budget Cost, $ billion $336 $251 $234 $200 $161 $86 $70

Notes: For comparison with the President's proposed 1993 budget of 5281 billion, all budget figures
are in constant dollars at projected 1993 prices. The table shows active forces only.

¥ The number of available warheads under Forsberg Option 1 (960) reflects the current eight
warheads per missile on Trident submarine-launched missiles. The lower number shown under
Forsberg Option 2 (120), a true minimum deterrent, is what would be available if the current MIRVed
warheads were replaced by one warhead per missile.

# The naval forces shown exclude 18 ships and subs per carrier allotted to aircraft carrier battle
groups; and they exclude the amphibious lift ships shown separately. 5

¤For comparison, this column displays the "Desert Storm-equivalent" force developed by Congressman
Aspin.

Source: Randall Forsberg, Institute for Defense & Disarmament Studies, 675 Massachusetts Ave,
Cambridge MA 02139 Tel: 617/354-4337. Fax: 617/354-1450.

Technology Policy and Defense Conversion on Gary Chapman Coordinator CPSR's 21st Century Project

When Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility was founded about ten years ago, the world was
a very different place than it is now. The United States and the Soviet Union were sinking deeper into
Cold War hostility, and officials of the Reagan administration were talking openly of "winnable nuclear
war." The U.S. government was on the threshold of the greatest arms build-up in peacetime in history.
During the Reagan years, the U.S. spent about $2.5 trillion on its military. The military goals of the
early 1980s were staggering: modernization of the U.S. nuclear force, including the MX and Midgetman
missiles; military conquest of space through the "Star Wars" program and anti-satellite weapons; a
600-ship Navy; a fleet of B-2 bombers and wings of new fighter planes; new tanks, helicopters, and
fighting vehicles; maintenance and even massive improvement of huge U.S. forces in Europe and . South
Korea, armed with short-range nuclear weapons; and material and financial support for insurgencies
and counter-insurgencies all over the world, especially in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the
Philippines, and Angola.

CPSR focused on the contribution that computers made to this comprehensive effort to re-militarize
foreign policy. The organization called attention to the alarming dependence on computers for the
command and control of nuclear weapons, a dependence that became even more terrifying as the U.S.
intensified its commitment to first-strike nuclear weapons like the MX. CPSR addressed the imprudent
reliance on computers inherent in the "StarWars" system, which inevitably would be one of the most
complex computer systems ever developed but also untestable prior to its first, critical use. CPSR also
criticized the military's apparent headlong rush to adopt artificial intelligence in everything from
tanks to theater-wide "battle management" systems. And the organization pointed out that trends in
government funding for computer science research and development made the field more dependent on
the military and increasingly tied research to the specific goals of weapons programs. The
overwhelming dominance of military funding for academic computer science threatened the field's
intellectual autonomy and made it resemble an engineering branch of military science.

Now, of course, we inhabit a different world, one recently swept by unprecedented historical change in
an astonishingly short period of time. The last decade of the twentieth century has upended the century's
entire previous history. The Soviet Union is now a memory, state communism is dead as an inspiration
or as a model, the Berlin Wall has been dismantled and fumed into souvenirs, Eastern Europe is largely
democratic and returned to native government, and regional wars have been transformed from East-
West "proxy" conflicts into ethnic battles, or even ended outright through political settlement. The Cold
War is overÑa simple phrase that has not lost its power to amaze despite endless repetition. Even
though there is a regrettable and senseless political battle in the current election over who "won" the
Cold War, there is clear cause for universal celebration over the disappearance of the super-powers'
nuclear "balance of terror."

The end of the Cold War has unleashed many long pent-up human desires, both admirable and
abominable. The lifting of the lid of bipolar military stalemate has undoubtedly encouraged some
military expansionists, like Saddam Hussein, and also ignited ethnic grievances and ambitions, such as
in the former Yugoslavia. But the end of the Cold War has also opened up a vista of political and
economic opportunities that is so immense it is difficult to survey with our conditioned imaginations.
The utopia of a peaceful and democratic world of friends and equals seems significantly less naive and
more possible than it did ten years ago.

The Military-Industrial Complex

At the Republican National Convention in Houston this summer, President George Bush said in his
nomination acceptance speech that he wants the United States to be "a military superpower and an
economic superpower." Leaving aside the question of whether any nation can be both of these things in
the present age, Bush's "old thinking,' is blocking his contemplation of a new world without a need for
superpowers of any kind. A unipolar world, in any dimension, is unlikely to be fertile ground for the
real changes we need to make as a new global community. Superpowers have a lamentable history of
pursuing their own ends, their own will to power, instead of meeting real human needs.

Concretely, the Cold War produced a vast network of capital and labor, combined with a dominant
intellectual framework for its justification, that has come to be known as the "military-industrial
complex." This colossal enterprise, deeply embedded into the American economy, employs millions of
people and feeds on tens of billions of tax dollars every year. Whole industrial sectors in the United
States are dependent on the defense budget and as many as 30% of the country's engineers and scientists
are employed by military programs, along with 6% of the entire U.S. workforce, nearly seven million
people. The United States is now the largest exporter of weapons in the world, and arms are the
country's second largest export product, after agricultural goods. In the 1980s, while 600,000 jobs
were added to the defense manufacturing sector, over a million jobs were lost in commercial
manufacturing.

Some critics of the influence of the Pentagon on the economy base their arguments on what has come to
be called the "depletion" thesis: the dedication of huge sums of money, and the extra-market diversion
of large numbers of talented scientists and engineers, distort the American economy and "deplete" the
ability of the commercial sector to recover from down-turns or to invest in long-term improvements
aimed at stable growth. This is particularly true, the argument goes, when the economy is increasingly
dependent on cycles of technological innovation that spur increases in labor productivity. If the nation
dedicates between 45 and 60 per cent of its research and development spending to military priorities,
as has been true of the last three decades, there is a corresponding "opportunity cost" in lost technical
improvements to productivity. This is reflected in recent figures. From 1960 to 1973, the United
States had an average annual growth in non-farm labor productivity of 2.2%. That figure went to zero
between 1973 and 1979, and then rose to only 0.7% for each of the years between and including 1980
and 1990. The low growth rates in productivity correspond to a period of falling wages, in real,
constant dollar terms, for most Americans. Productivity growth rates in Japan, a nation that spends
less than 10% of its government-funded research and development budget on military programs, have
been three times higher than in the U.S. in the years mentioned above.

The current trouble with the American economy is the result of a combination of wallops, all related to
each other: poor productivity growth over two decades, with falling wages and a corresponding erosion
of the tax base creating reduced consumer demand and a frightening fiscal crisis for government; tax
cuts for the wealthy used for consumption instead of being invested in new capital improvements or
sustained research and development; huge arms expenditures contributing to ballooning budget deficits
that have turned the U.S. into a debtor nation to the tune of $2 trillion; and mounting and stubborn
consumer debt because of reduced wage growth combined with a fiscal policy designed to keep inflation
low. The undercurrent of fear and anxiety that is accompanying the current recession is stronger than
in other economic slowdowns of recent memory because many people believe that these problems will
not be self-correcting and in fact will have repercussions that may last generations.

There is widespread expert consensus, not to say unanimity, that the United States has to improve its
labor productivity, especially in manufacturing, and it can do so only through increased investment in
technical "infrastructure" and in the skills of the workforce, the two most important components of
productivity growth. However, powerful interests are positioning themselves to protect the status quo
of the defense economy and keep massive amounts of money flowing to unproductive defense programs.
President Bush has clearly announced his intention to maintain the country's military superpower
status if he is reelected. He has proposed defense budgets that are only modestly restrained from Cold
War levels, as outlined in Randall Forsberg's accompanying article, and he has pledged. continued
support for reconfigured but still unnecessary programs like the Strategic Defense Initiative. The
Democrats, led by Governor Bill Clinton, have promised defense. industry conversion but have
weakened in the face of defense worker and Congressional panic over unemployment, such as in the case
of Clinton's promise to continue the Seawolf submarine program, which even Bush wants to end. The
latest Democratic Party gambit is for the government to invest in so-called ``dual use" technologies
that will allegedly serve the interests of both military and commercial manufacturers.

The "Dual Use" Approach

"Dual use" is a recent phrase promoted by thinktanks and leaders in Congress with long-standing and
current ties to the defense technology establishment. The phrase embodies a set of policies for
government investment in high tech, particularly in the "sexy" technologies that both military and
industrial leaders see as most promising for their careersÑhigh definition television, high speed
computer-based communication, satellites, new materials, and fast new computers. These are the so-
called "critical technologies" that are viewed as the bedrock for both military and economic superiority
in the next century. It is no accident that these are the same technologies that have been researched and
promoted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is the Pentagon's lead
technology agency and for some a model for a new "dual use" investment program. DARPA is already
pursuing some "dual use" projects such as SEMATECH, the research consortium for the semiconductor
industry that gets half of its funding from the Pentagon.

The chief catalyst for "dual use" reform is Senator Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat from New Mexico who is
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Defense Industry and Technology. Bingaman
has introduced a series of legislative bills that push DARPA, which his committee oversees, toward a
new role as a "dual use" agency. For fiscal year 1993, Bingaman has introduced legislation, passed by
his subcommittee, which would change DARPA's charter to allow it a greater role in civilian technology
development, and change the agency's name to its original designation by dropping the word "defense."
Bingaman has also been instrumental in setting up the new National Critical Technologies Panel, an
advisory board of thirteen people who will help the Congress choose the top "dual use" technologies that
allegedly need government funding. The panel will be composed of six people selected from government,
six from industry, and the White House Science Adviser.

The central deficiency with the "dual use" approach is that it is a half-measure of conversion reform
when what we need is a long-term plan for "dismantling the Cold War economy," the title of a recent
book by 21st Project advisors Ann Markusen and Joel Yudken. "Dual use" leaves many Cold War
assumptions intact, such as the presumed need for incessant technological refinement of weapons to
assure national security. "Dual use" is likely to generate confusing priorities, since for many
technologies the military and the commercial sector have conflicting requirements for the same
technology. For example, in robotics the military wants mobility and survivability, while commercial
manufacturers want flexibility and dexterity. Unit costs drive commercial technologies, while the
Pentagon is unlikely to ever generate significant economies of scale in expensive high tech weapons. And
"dual use" technologies will exacerbate the tensions between the Pentagon and high tech manufacturers
over the issue of technology transfer to other nations. If "national security" export controls are
extended to an even larger set of technologies than the current set, American manufacturers will be
hobbled in the international marketplace even more than they are now. And finally, we know from
abundant evidence that advances in weapons technologies will someday confront us, in the hands of
hostile forces, or at least be the source of continued misery among people unfortunate enough to be
plunged into war.

The war in the Persian Gulf demonstrated the invincibility of the U.S. military. The only excuse for
investing in better weapons is to counter people armed by our own weapons industry. This is not only
moronic and self-defeating, it is a criminal diversion of resources from finding solutions to very real
and very pressing problems.

The Search for a New Rationale

At a recent and extraordinary meeting at Harvard University, Congressman Joseph Kennedy of
Cambridge, Massachusetts, assembled the presidents of Harvard and MIT, the directors of the National
Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, the Dean of the Harvard Medical School, the
chief of Massachusetts General Hospital, the director of Draper Laboratories, and a few others, for a
panel discussion on the future of U.S. science and technology policy before of an invitation-only
audience of about 200 of the top corporate executives in New England. With the exception of the head of
Draper Labs, a retired Air Force general who argued that the Cold War isn't really over, the speakers
agreed that the United States needs a new rationale for investing in science and technology. The
rationales that we have been usingÑnational security and the Cold WarÑare no longer viable, and, as
yet, no substitute phrase has yet won their preeminent place. The speakers also agreed that without a
rationale, government policy for science and technology will default to pork barrel politics which
inevitably will cripple the nation's technological competence even further.

The leading contender for a rhetorical phrase around which to organize U.S. science and technology
policy is "national technological competitiveness." This phrase doesn't yet have the comprehensive
consensus that the phrase "national security" acquired, but it is well on its way. In the Congress, this is
almost all one hears when the subject of technology comes up in conversation. The phrase has been the
sole preoccupation of the influential Council on Competitiveness (the private organization, as opposed
to the committee in the White House chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle). It is also the focus of
intense lobbying by the Advanced Technology Coalition, led by IEEE-USA and the American Electronics
Association. And "competitiveness" is the raison d'etre of countless ``blue ribbon" study panels, most
recently one convened under the auspices the prestigious National Science Board.

Unfortunately, "technological competitiveness" is a vexingly vague phrase that can mean wildly
different things to different people. It is meant to address U.S. economic difficulties, but science and
technology policy typically doesn't have short-term effects on the national economy. A candidate
proposing R&D programs to help American commercial competitiveness won't be able to report results
for many years in the futureÑnot an attractive political prospect. "National competitiveness" as an
organizing principle is clouded further by the fact that many of "our" significant high tech
manufacturers are only barely "American"; they pursue their competitive advantage all over the world.
Finally, "competitiveness" doesn't adequately encompass the range of problems that government needs
to address through technology policy, such as environmental quality, social! justice, global equity, and
the general quality of our livesÑsome Third World countries are "economically competitive," but the
people in them live with poverty, repression, and mind-numbing jobs.

George Bush and Bill Clinton, and many of their closest supporters and advisers, tend to agree on two
basic assumptions about high technology: first, that high tech will continue to be the primary insurance
of military superiority, and that this is something that the United States cannot do without; and, second,
that high tech production is an end in itself, to be more or less regulated by government to fend off its
costs and enhance its benefits. High tech production is viewed by both Presidential candidates as
essentially more of what we're doing already, only with more sophisticated technology, better educated
workers, higher wages, more jobs, and happier people. Neither candidate has proposed democratic
reform of the elite management of government technology policy that has existed since World War 11,
nor have they discussed a reconceptualization of technology as a means to social goals other than
military and economic superiority. Both candidates advocate programs that will "pull up" the currently
disadvantaged to the status of current high tech consumers, without questioning, at least in public,
whether the high tech economy as we currently experience it is capable of sustaining social justice,
peace, and environmental responsibility. For the purpose of political consumption in this year's
election, technology's purpose has been boiled down to the rhetorical bones of "economic
competitiveness" and military supremacy. As a simple illustration of this point, Governor Clinton has
advocated increased public investment in transportation "infrastructure" such as roads, highways,
bridges, railroads, airports, and seaports. The need for such investment is justified exclusively in
terms of economic competitivenessÑ" infrastructure" is promoted as a necessary tool for economic
growth. But another approach, one with different values for its justification, might question whether
the estimated hundred billion dollars needed to improve American transportation infrastructure might
be used in some other way, such as to enhance community life and curtail energy dependence and
pollution by radically reducing the use of cars, trucks, trains, and airplanes.

Randall Forsberg argues in her article in this issue that a new conception of national security is
necessary in order to implement substantial cuts in the defense budget. As long as the United States
retains a claim to unilateral intervention overseas, to unipolar military superiority over any potential
adversary, both the international geopolitical system and the American defense budget will be stuck in
the paradigm of conflict, high military spending, and the dedication of science and technology to the
improvement of weapons. The historical opportunity we have now is to jettison that paradigm in favor
of cooperative, collective security based on principles of "defensive defense." Forsberg maintains that
this will not only free up huge resources of money and talent for other purposes, but will actually
provide more stable long-term security for the United States and for other countries as well.

The same argument can be made with respect to technology policy, which is of course tightly linked,
historically, to military policy. If we continue to justify government invest-. meets in technology with
a combative, belligerent organizing principle such as "economic competitiveness," we will miss
opportunities for improving the quality of life for people in the U.S. and overseas. MIT economist Paul
Krugman has noted that "economic competitiveness" lends itself very easily to Cold War rhetoric, with
new enemies. What is required now is a rationale for government support of technology that endorses
conversion of the defense technology base to peaceful, productive enterprise, but also avoids the pitfalls
of reviving the Cold War in a new costume. This is clearly a test of the American character. Henry
James once wondered whether the United States could ever accomplish anything great without ``the
moral equivalent of war." Now that our greatest military rival has disappeared, we need to discover
whether there is in fact an incentive for progress that does not depend on the metaphors and passions of
war.

Human Needs and Global Cooperative Development

CPSR's 21st Century Project is proposing a new rationale for technological investment that
incorporates three principles: needs-driven policy, democratization, and global cooperative
development. The contention of the participants in The 21st Century Project is that these principles
are better suited to the challenges of the new world and the next century than "economic
competitiveness" or obsolete concepts of national security.

Recent American technology policy has been, and many proposals for reform continue to be,
technology- driven This is best illustrated by the current fondness for lists of "critical technologies,"
catalogues that are meant to be used as guides for government funding and as "scorecards" in appraisals
of the country's competitive rank. So, as noted above, the Federal government has a new National
Critical Technologies Panel to draw up such a list for use by the Congress and Federal agencies, and the
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy now includes an Institute for Critical Technologies.
The Department of Defense is also required to submit to the Congress every year a list of technologies
Pentagon experts believe are essential for national security. In the short period of time in which such
slates of technologies have been generated, information technologies have dominated every list.

The assumption of such an approach is that the technological capability that is soughtÑhigher definition
television broadcasting and display, faster computer processing, -increased integration of electronic
circuits, etc.Ñwill provide social benefits that are worthy of public support. An even more basic
assumption, and one that is largely unexamined, is that greater technological capabilityÑin short,
improvement in whatever performance benchmarks we use in assessing purely technical featuresÑis
directly related to enhancement of the quality of life. Whatever social difficulties the increased
technical capability imposes are managed by post hoc solutions, such as post-production pollution
control, waste disposal, worker adaptation to new technologies, and government regulation of various
sorts that tends make adversaries of technological development and the public good.

An alternative route could redirect technology to the satisfaction of human needs instead of to
incremental improvements in technical capabilities. Policy debates over appropriate technological
contributions to the solution of human problems would probably sound different than the policy debates
of elite technical committees today. Instead of discussions about the distribution of funds between
improvements in MIPS, chip densities, or data transmission rates, we might hear discussions about
how to generate "holistic" approaches to problems in the environment, in

productivity, in democratic civic culture, and in social justice. Since these subjects are "non-
technical" in the sense that they embrace norms about which every citizen can have an opinion, the
needs-driven approach opens technology policy to new constituencies who have been left out of technical
debates so far. This would help avoid the impression that science and technology policy tends to serve
the exclusive interests of the technically proficient, professional and executive class in this country.
Dr. Bernardine Healey, director of the National Institutes of Health, said at the recent meeting at
Harvard that "any policy with a taint of elitism in the current political climate is doomed to failure."
The only way to avoid elitism in the development of technology policy is to provide for meaningful
participation, and the only way to do that is to change the terms of the policymaking debate. Experts
will need to find a common ground of discourse with non-experts. And because of the fiscal crisis of
government, we have to ensure that scientists and engineers funded by the taxpayers are discouraged
from "fiddling" with technically interesting projects and encouraged to explore technological innovation
relevant to public and environmental needs, as well as to the expansion of human knowledge.

The 21st Century Project is recommending replacement of the rhetorical principle "technological
competitiveness" with "global cooperative development." Many of our most critical difficulties are
global in nature instead of national, and they require cooperative solutions. Competitiveness is
certainly a useful goal in private enterprise, and many other domains in life. And some social goals can
be reconciled with private competitiveness, such as environmental quality since evidence suggests that
"clean is competitive." But in the public realm, where government is meant to act, cooperation should
be the clear preference.

The rhetoric of competitiveness has a belligerence to it that, at its extreme, suggests a form of "beggar
thy neighbor'' policy. It is inappropriate in an international economy of robust and even increasing
interdependence, and especially in an international economy in which a majority of the world's
population are not even in the game to compete, but merely to survive. The richest country in the world
should not resort to terms of exhortation that merely call for more wealth to be concentrated here.

"Competitiveness" tends to be environmentally negligent, since it urges this country to use more
resources, buy more goods regardless of their utility, and to generally heat up the economy more than
any other economy in the world. There is certainly the need for economic growth to provide good jobs
for people in this country and all over the world. But the rhetoric of national competitiveness
frequently promotes economic growth as an end in itself, without addressing the distributive justice of
the results of increased competitiveness or the increasingly apparent environmental hazard of
unchecked demand and waste.

"Global cooperative development" assumes that the world's richest countries have a duty and a
responsibility to share scientific and technological benefits with everyone who can use them in
improving the quality of life. A rhetoric of global cooperative development will have at its core a
concern for the depletion of natural resources and the pollution caused by production, waste, and by-
products. Global cooperative development will reflect our common destiny that is linked to
environmental protection and preservation. And this new rhetorical framework for science and
technology will be anchored to a concern for human needs, including quality work and the distribution
of wealth in the world at large.

The 21st Century Project's Program

There are three parts to the 21st Century Project's program. First, the Project intends to convene four
expert working groups to address critical issues that have been neglected by our long-standing
military-dominated technology policy. Second, these working groups will be linked local, grassroots
projects all over the country that can feed experience, models, innovation, and a democratic spirit to
the working groups, and the expert groups will help provide an intellectual and policy framework for
grassroots activities. Third, the Project will reach out to the press, to other organizations, to
policymakers, and to the public at large with publications, press releases, meetings, and legislative
testimony.

The four working groups will be organized around the subjects of Technology Policy and Democratic
Values, Sustainable Development, the Quality of Work in the Information Age, and the future of
Computers and Communications Infrastructure.

The working group on Technology Policy and Democratic Values will investigate institutional vehicles
through which the development of technology policy can be democratized. CPSR has submitted a
$100,000 proposal to the rational Science Foundation's Ethics and Values Studies Program to support
this study. The working group will be directed by Dr. Michael Goldhaber, founder and director of the
Center for Technology and Democracy in San Francisco, and Professor Philip Bereano from the
University of Washington in Seattle.

The study group on sustainable development will pursue research and development opportunities in
environmentally sustainable technologies, especially those related to information technology. As an
example, the configuration of the personal computer makes it an ideal technology to support the aims of
recyclability, modularity, upgradeability, and progress toward "paperless" communication. The
personal computer base in the United StatesÑover 43 million PCsÑuses over 400 million diskettes
every year, and it is at least technically feasible to consider moving toward the replacement of software
diskettes and paper manuals by high-speed downloading or on-line software "rentals." There is also
work to be done on the toxic impact of computer production, both in the fabrication of computer chips
and in the disposal of toxic-laden circuit boards and other components.

There are vast areas for study and research created by the intersection of computers and work. The
21st Century Project's working group on the Quality of Work in the Information Age will look at how
public ROD can address issues such as repetitive strain injuries, other physical hazards of working
with computers, productivity enhance- . meet, "skills-based automation," and "participatory design."
Both presidential candidates agree that high tech jobs are they key to America's future prosperity, and
the Department of Labor estimates that over three-quarters of the American workforce will use a
computer every day by the end of the century. But the quality of those jobs is still an open question.
Government-supported R&D could help build models of practice for the private sector that would
increase productivity but at the same time avoid the demeaning and physically debilitating effects of bad
computer system design.

There is already a tremendous amount of activity going on in the development of a new U.S.
telecommunications network, one that will include a replacement for the Internet, wireless telephone
and modem connections, fiber optic cable transmission, and huge increases in bandwidth for every
broadcast or transmission media. In other words, the U.S. is on the threshold of yet another revolution
in communications made possible by technology and large investments. The High Performance
Computing and Communications Program, jointly sponsored by Senator Albert Gore and the White
House, is already the most expensive R&D program in the history of American computer science,
budgeted at over $800 million for fiscal year 1993 and with a total budget of about $3 billion. CPSR is
proposing to pull together a working group to make recommendations about how to maintain some
concept of the "public interest" in the development of a new, integrated, national, multi-media
communications system. This group will also try to incorporate the work done by many groups around
the country who have built local civic networks to support public participation through electronic
communication.

All of the work of these expert groups should be informed by the work of local activists, particularly
the members of CPSR who are building programs congruent with the aims of The 21st Century Project.
In Seattle, Washington, and Boston, for example, CPSR members are helping the creation of new public,
civic networks, and CPSR staff member Richard Civille is shaping policy on networking in Vermont
(see his accompanying article in this issue). CPSR's international conference on participatory design,
scheduled for November at MIT, will help expand awareness of the contribution of this design paradigm
to productive information-based systems and user morale. CPSR's work around the country and
particularly in Washington, D.C., on privacy, access to public information, civic participation, and
grassroots innovation, will help build a "bottom up" agenda for R&D at the state and Federal levels. And
there are many other projects waiting to be developed by volunteers.

Dr. Joel Yudken, a research fellow at Rutgers University and a longtime activist on defense conversion,
is currently writing a booklet on the ideas embodied in The 21st Century Project, a document that will
spell out the program of a public interest R&D agenda for the next twenty years or more. Rebecca
Hellerstein, a new Harvard College graduate interested in technology and social issues, is building a
comprehensive database of people to whom Joel's booklet and other 21st Century Project material will
be mailed this fall. At the same time, several public interest organizations working for defense
industry conversion are talking to each other about building a loose coalition in order to focus work on
this issue and help build a substantial funding base. And, finally, discussions are underway with the
Clinton campaign for input into the transition process, should Governor Clinton be elected in November.

A Unified, Positive Approach

Throughout most of the Reagan years, the American peace movement was confronted with colossal
military expansion, and consequently found itself battling weapons programs at every turn. This
resulted in the peace movement acquiring an "oppositionist" reputation, meaning that, in the eyes of
critics, the peace movement was simply opposed to almost everything under consideration by the
government, and largely bereft of a positive program of its own. There was talk of defense conversion
planning throughout the Reagan administration's tenure, but it was usually drowned out by protestsÑ
necessary and important protestsÑover the MX, "Star Wars," the B-2 bomber, short-range missiles
in Europe, and other systems.

The world has changed since then, and the peace movement has changed with it, and that has included a
changing role for CPSR. Thoughtful people in the peace movementÑsuch as Randall Forsberg, Michael
Closson of the Center for Economic Conversion, Greg Bischak of the National Commission for Economic
Conversion and Disarmament, Ann Markusen and Joel Yudken at Rutgers University, and othersÑhave
anticipated the new opportunity for a positive, progressive agenda provided by the end of the Cold War.
The leaders of CPSR have seen this too, and the result has been The 21st Century Project.

It may be possible now to build a comprehensive new agenda for both national and international security
that is based on principles that have been in gestation in recent years. These principles include those
advocated by Randall Forsberg in her article hereÑcollective, cooperative security built on "defensive
defenset"Ñthe principles articulated in this article for science and technology policy, and a
comprehensive dismantling of the arms industry around the world, as opposed to a mere adjustment due
to overcapacity. The obvious "fit" of these multi-authored principles can be the foundation of a broad
and compelling alternative to half -step reform, an alternative that still needs consolidation and more
detailed articulation. A fully developed paradigm based on such principles could even have more
persuasive power than the oldÑsome might say imposedÑ"oppositional" strategy.

Passage into a new century, now only a few years away, will have a powerful impact on global
consciousness. The transition to the 21st century will be not only a centennial event but a millennial
one as well. Even in the early days of the current century, the 21st century was viewed as the age of
science and technology regnant, the realm of science fiction come to life. The approach to the new
century will undoubtedly stimulate countless reflections on the nature and purpose of the human
project on this planet, especially given the bloody and cataclysmic history of this century, the nearly
universal concern over global environmental calamity, and the inescapable rule of technology.

Our political leaders are almost congenitally incapable of engaging the public with long-range visions
of an ethical futureÑthe short-term requirements of electoral off ice tend to suppress such imagination
in politicians. So the job falls to public organizations like Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility. Our task, along with that of our colleagues in other fields, is not over, now that the Cold
War has ended; we now face our biggest opportunity and challenge.

Gary Chapman is coordinator of CPSR's 21st Century Project, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He
can be reached at (617) 625-6985, or via Internet e-mail at chapman@lcs.mit.edu.

Computers' Ethics' and Social Responsibility
Terry WinogradÑCPSR/Palo Alto

The following article was delivered as the keynote address at the first National Conference on Computing
and Values, held in New Haven, Connecticut, in August, 1991. It will appear in Terrell Ward Bynum,
Walter Maner, and John L. Fodor(eds.), Computing and Human Values: Proceedings of the 1991
Conference, New Haven: Research Center on Computing and Society, 1992.

It is a great honor to have been invited to give the computer science keynote address at this landmark
conference: the first in what will surely be a long series of important events and activities produced by
the Research Center on Computing and Society. It is a tremendous opportunity to meet with a community
of people who have shared their concerns about computing and values over the years, and to join
together in developing new directions and new possibilities for future collaboration.

I am especially pleased to be able to share in the honoring of Joseph Weizenbaum for his pioneering
work and continuing efforts to bring considerations of values into the work of computing. Long before
most of us here were even aware that such a topic was possible, he was bringing it into the heart of the
technological world, and getting people to listen. Several years ago at the annual meeting of Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility I was honored to be able to present him with the Norbert
Wiener Award for Social and Professional Responsibility, and it is a pleasure to be with him as he again
receives well-deserved recognition.

What Can a Computer Scientist Say?

Let me begin by admitting that it wasn't exactly clear to me just what the content should be for a
"computer science keynote." The path seems clear for my colleagues who will present keynotes on
philosophy and sociology, since those fields include ethics and values in their core subject matter. As a
philosopher, one can develop theories of ethics. As a sociologist one can study the ways that people
ream, change, and exhibit values. But as a computer scientist I don't study ethics and values; I study
computers and computing. As we are all weld aware, "ethics" and "values" aren't the kind of things to be
addressed with the theories and techniques of computer science. For the computer scientist, they are not
an object of study, but a domain in which we interpret and assess our actions as professionals.

My role, then, is not as an observer, but as a subject. As a computer professional and a teacher of
future computer professionals, my concern is very personal. The questions aren't academic, but
practical: not "What is done?" but ``What should we do?"

So I will enjoy the liberty in this paper of not having to precisely define the difficult concepts we speak
about or having to argue the logical merits of a particular theory. Instead I will talk about how issues of
computing and values show up in the work of our profession. You might think of it as being ichthyology
from the point of view of the fish.

Also, in talking about these issues I will not try to draw a careful line between terms such as "ethics,"
"morals," "values," and "social responsibility." These distinctions can be important for some
purposes, but I will proceed for the moment to interchange them freely with more of a concern for the
ring of the sentence than for the precise differentiation of the concepts.

The Personal Connection

When I speak of my own work, I include more than the narrow pursuit of research and development in
computer science. For almost ten years now I have been a participant in the work of Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility, an organization that has brought together people from around
the country (in fact, around the world) to share understandings and to act collectively in many of the
areas that are being discussed at this conference. That activity is not a diversion but a critical part of
the work of a computer professional. One of the things I want to highlight is the way in which
organizations like CPSR and NCCV play a central role in ethical conduct for computer professionals.

In addition, over the past three years, Helen Nissenbaum (now at Princeton) and I have developed and
taught a course on "Computers, Ethics and Social Responsibility" for undergraduate computer science
majors at Stanford. As all of us in academia know well, there is no better way to expand your own
understanding than to throw yourself into a room full of bright undergraduates who want to master a
difficult topic and expect you to help. Much of my understanding has grown from the generative
interaction that comes in teaching, and that too is a central part of my work as a computer scientist. It
has forced me into some hard and productive thinking about the questions being raised at a conference on
Computing and Values.

What I Will Say

In this talk I will present and contrast some common views of how ethics and values are related to
computing and see what these views imply for the activities we can undertake to promote ethical
behavior and social responsibility. My emphasis will be on the fundamentally social nature of ethical
concerns: with looking beyond the role of the individual to the larger context of discourse and action that
generates the world in which individuals make choices and to act. Rather than focusing on the isolated
individual faced with an ethical dilemma, I want to direct our gaze to the larger swirl of human
discourse, which is the source of the interpretations, values, and possibilities that make ethical choice
meaningful.

The announcement for the NCCV conference declared a vision:

To integrate computer technology and human values in such a way that the technology advances and
protects those values rather than doing damage to them.

This will require acts of individual moral courage, and it will be based on a lot more. We need to create
an environment in which the consideration of human values in our technological work is not a brave
act, but a professional norm. We need to produce a background of understanding in which it is simply
taken for granted by all computer professionals that value considerations are foremost. We need to
forge everyday practices and ways of teaching that reinforce that understanding.

In that spirit, I will argue that the kind of inquiry and discussion that motivate the conference, and that
have been at the heart of CPSR's ten years of work, are a primary form of ethical behavior.

Being a "Good" Computer Professional

First, let us go back to the basic question of what values, ethics, and social responsibility have to do
with computing. I said above that ethics and values constitute "a domain in which we, and others, view
and assess our actions as computer professionals." What do we mean by "assess our actions"?

Assessments and competence

In every area of purposeful endeavor, there exist communities of assessment within which it is
possible to meaningfully describe, compare, and evaluate action. As a computer scientist I am part of a
scientific community with standards of practice, and practices of assessment. There may be no straight
forward quantitative measure of whether I am a "good computer scientist," but there are ways in which
all of us measure the achievements of others and of ourselves. In the academic world these include
publication records, peer review, awards, election to various professional and honorary societies, and
the like. They also include less tangible but still consensual domains of reputation, status, and in the
longer run your "place in the history of the field." I identify myself as belonging to a scientific
community and I participate in its consensual processes for assessment. For example, my kids may
think I'm a fantastic computer scientist because I could get Tetris running on our Macintosh, but I don't
value this in the same dimension as the judgment of colleagues whom I consider part of the community.

When we look to the computer science community in general we see a notable lack of concern for many
of the values addressed at the NCCV conference. There is an implicit definition of "good computer
scientist" that dismisses people like Joe Weizenbaum as bothersome troublemakers, and accepts
without qualms people who are oblivious of the value consequences of their actions. One of my
colleagues, in a note rejecting my questioning the sources of research funding said he feared I would
describe him, as "Having the moral fiber of a styrofoam cup." In judging whether people are "good
computer scientists" the professional norms are strongly attuned to particular concerns and kinds of
action and not to others.

But in our common sense assignment of "good" and "bad," we take a broader view. A "good baseball
player" isn't just one who hits home runs, but one who contributes to the efforts of the team as a whole.
He may be a great source of spirit and enthusiasm, a kind mentor to younger players, and a contributor
in many other ways to the success of the team.

But in talking of the success of the team we're back to assessments again: What constitutes "success" for
the computer science team? Again there is a gap between what we see in many of our work settings and
what we are striving for here. Our measure of success needs to be the one quoted above:

To integrate computer technology and human values in such a way that the technology advances and
protects those values rather than doing damage to them.

With this as our measure, we are ready to look for "good computer science."

What Is the Domain of Ethical Action?

If our goal is to "advance and protect human values," then what kind of actions will further it? Ethics
isn't an immediately obvious domain of actions. If you ask what competence is being developed in a
cooking class, it is evidently "cooking." We can identify people at specific times as being engaged in
cooking. But we are never "ethicking" in that simple sense. We may be performing an engineering job,
making a living, doing scientific research, (or, for that matter, cooking) and find ourselves in
situations where our actions raise some kind of ethical question. How do we identify those situations?

In some sense this is an ``academic question." We all grow up with a tacit understanding that there can
be things we do that are "right" and others that are "wrong," and that as autonomous individuals we have
responsibility for choosing between them. We all have a sense that we should do what is right, even
though that isn't always what we end up doing. We also grow up in today's global pluralistic society with
an awareness that although everyone has a sense that there is a difference between right and wrong,
there is no agreement on just what actions should fall under which category. There are tremendous
disputes between different cultural, religious and political groups, which have led to arguments, wars,
and disagreements at all levels of society throughout history. But, on the other hand, there seem to be
commonalities. Nearly everyone would agree that it is wrong to simply walk up to someone on a whim
and inflict pain, and that it is right to help others in need.

People have debated for thousands of years what moral and ethical standards should be. Is there a
universal ethics that applies to all people in all ages? Or is ethics a purely relative matter in that what
is considered a fundamental moral principle by one people at one time may be equally validly rejected
in another culture?

Now if I were a philosopher I would feel compelled to try to make sense of all this: to come up with a
coherent moral philosophy that could serve as a basis for understanding what we see in the historical
discourse about morality and for making decisions about our own actions. But, as I said at the beginning,
I am taking the easy way out. I will leave the philosophical analysis for our colleagues who are much
more skilled and knowledgeable, and will appeal to a rather commonsensical basis of agreement. I think
we can all accept that in at least some interesting range of cases it makes sense to talk about doing
"good" and "bad," and furthermore that we all, to some degree, accept the value of "doing good."

Further, we seem to have some general understanding of what kind of "doing good" constitutes an ethical
or moral act. If you take a course on programming languages, you may learn that it is "good" to have a
grammar that can be parsed by an LR(1)) parser, and "bad" to have ambiguous constructs. But this
domain of assessment, which is proper to the computer professional, doesn't seem to have much to do
with the kind of human values we are discussing here. Something is missing in the equation.

Taking the naive view again, it seems obvious that the missing element has to do with a regard for the
interests of others. There is a popular refrain about acts that are "illegal, immoral or fattening." The
distinction between law and morality is an important one we will not go into here. But it is clear that
there is something different about "fattening." It may be stupid or unhealthy or unwise to fill myself up
on chocolate bars and potato chips, but few of us would consider it unethical or immoral. In general we
take moral questions to involve a potential for conflict of interests. In the case of religious morality,
the Òother" may be a deity. For secular ethics, it is among people (and perhaps other life forms or
embodiments of intelligence).

To be fair, this is a very complicated issue, but again in the spirit of simplification, we can accept that
for most of the issues that attract our interest, our actions have consequences of value to others.
Consider, for example the four clusters of values that are the focus of this conference: Privacy,
security, ownership and fair access. In each case it is easy to identify the different parties and potential
conflicts of interest, and we do so as a matter of course in teaching about these topics.

Finally in completing this background discussion, I want to make a key point about the role of
intentions. Putting it generally, the domain in which an action is assessed is not necessarily the same as
the domain in which the actor interprets it. If I ask what some person is doing, you may say that she is
busy "establishing an image of authority" even though she is not consciously acting in that realm.
Someone can be assessed as a "great teacher" when what she sees herself doing is having an argument or
commenting on a talk she is listening to.

Similarly, acts can be observed in the domain of ethics with respect to standard practices, independent
of whether the person characterizes them that way. The fact that someone didn't think about the
consequences of an act doesn't remove them from being subjected to moral judgment about it. In fact, we
can take ethical obliviousness as a key sign of "bad" behavior.

But thinking a moment further, it also doesn't seem appropriate to assess an act as wrong if there was
no background of understanding in which it could show up as such. If we now see harmful consequences
of the farming practices of primitive tribes, it doesn't mean that they were acting unethically to do
them.

Again, we must look to the social context. A person does not exist in a vacuum, but as part of one or
more social collectivities, with their shared interpretations of actions, values and assessments. A
person cannot be held responsible for considerations that lie completely outside the range of vision
opened up within these backgrounds. There may often be cases where an individual rejects the current
consensus of society and appeals to a larger context of human meanings and values. But in doing this he
or she is responsible for participating in the social discourse and not simply ignoring the concerns of
his or her co-denizens. This means that a key component of moral action is the development of
understanding within a social background, which is what provides the relevant field of choice for
individuals. Three Cartoons For How to ÒEthicÓ Well

So far we have been taking the view of the observer: one who interprets and assesses the acts that have
been done by someone (who may be him/herself) in the past. Let us shift to the view of the doer: the
person who is engaged in action that can have consequences in areas of values and morals. Faced with a
particular range of possibilities, how does one "ethic" well.

One of the things that becomes clear in teaching this material to students is that people come to this
question with a variety of tacit pre-understandings of what we are trying to do. They draw on images
that are deeply embedded in our culture, and i want to present some of them in the form of cartoons that
exaggerate, but also point out some of the key features. For each of the images, we need to ask several
questions:

What are the assumptions that lie behind its perspective?

What problems does it raise?

How from that perspective do we develop people's competence to act?

The Angel/Devil Debate

The cartoon shown in Figure 1 (next page) is the familiar angel/devil debate you've all seen on
Saturday morning TV. A character is faced with an ethical choice and is obviously having trouble
deciding what to do. Sitting on one of his shoulders is a little pointy-tailed demon whispering into his
ear "C'mon, take it, he'll never know you did." and on the other shoulder a haloed cherub, sweetly
whispering "You know you shouldn't steal." In the end one of them is brushed away with a flick of the
fingers and the other dances gleefully in victory.

There are several assumptions implicit in this view of morality:

1. You know what is right or wrong in the particular case.

2. Some part of you wants to do the thing that is wrong.

3. You need to exert moral strength to overcome this impulse and do what is right.

If, in fact, this view were the whole story, then the teaching of computer ethics would be a very
different matter from what we see here today. Education directed to this kind of ethical competence
might include sermons, examples (stories of sinners sizzling in Hell), and practices such as self
denial. In fact much of the resistance to the teaching of computer ethics within computer science
departments comes from the impression that this is what it will consist of, and a skepticism as to
whether such moralizing has any positive effects.

The fallacy in the angel/devil view is obvious if we look at Bynum's characterization of the goals for
teaching computer ethics. (Bynum, 1992)

1. To sensitize students to computer ethics issues

2. To provide tools and methods for analyzing cases

3. To provide practice in applying the tools and methods to actual or realistic cases

4. To develop in the student ``good judgment" and ``helpful intuitions" for spur-of-the-moment
decision making as computer professionals and computer users

Faced with an ethically problematic situation we must first recognize it as such. It doesn't appear with
angels and devils drawn in the corners, but must be seen through a background of interpretation in
which ethical issues have been distinguished and made a part of our everyday discourse.

Of course I know I shouldn't kill other people. I walk around every day doing the right thing hundreds of
times by not killing someone. But it isn't an ethical issue for me, it's part of the taken-for-granted
background. But when I need to decide whether to build a worker-monitoring system or take research
funding from a military agency, I am in the situation of debating what is in fact right and what the
underlying issues are. It isn't a simple matter of steeling myself to be righteous. We must be able to
recognize our specific situation as it fits into the context of issues and other cases that has shown up
historically. These activities are skills to be learned and development, not character traits like Òmoral
will."

The Morality Computer

Having shifted the question from moral character to understanding and analysis, we find ourselves
closer to the cartoon shown in Figure 2, the "morality computer."

Faced with a decision, you don't know which is the right action to take. Should you steal a horse to chase
the bandit? Should you cut off life support to relieve suffering? Should you work on nuclear physics
knowing the results may produce economic prosperity and also may lead to a weapon of mass
destruction?

So you type the information into your morality computer, which has been programmed with the correct
moral rules. It sifts the facts, weighs alternatives, makes judgments and pops out after a few
microseconds with "Here's the right thing to do...."

What are the assumptions lying behind this picture?

1. If you can figure out the right thing to do, then you will do it.

2. There is a basic set of moral rules from which to deduce the rightness of action in any given case.

3. You may know the rules but not know how to apply them in this case, and more data, knowledge, or
computation is needed.

In the "morality computer" view, the problem is determining what is the ethical action. Competence
consists in knowing the moral axioms and having deductive skill in applying them to cases where the
question "What is the right thing to do?" comes up. This approach appeals strongly to people with a
background in science and engineering. When they encounter ambivalence and ambiguity they see it as a
symptom that the problem has not been well formulated, or that we do not have enough knowledge. The
fix is the kind of fix that works in technical domains: get the rules right, find the correct methods of
applying them, and the right answers will come out. It offers the possibility of a "technical fix to the
ethics problem."

Education in this perspective, as in other forms of education in science and engineering, is a matter of
giving students the right principles and giving them practice in applying them to cases. At times we
hear frustration from some of the students who take our course because we are not providing them with
this kind of structure: we aren't able to give them the precise rules and methods, so they can learn to
plug in the data and come up with answers.

But, of course, it doesn't take sophisticated philosophical reading to recognize that despite millennia of
debate, humankind doesn't seem close to reaching agreement as to the general grounding for moral
reasoning at all, much less the specific rules. Within any moderately diverse group of people you will
find a wide range of beliefs: Some will believe that morality is grounded in some form of divine
intention, others that it is a feature of human psychology, and others that it is some kind of
"optimization" principle concerned with the welfare of the species. Some will base their moral
reasoning on a structure of absolute principlesÑdo's and don'tsÑwhile others see it as some kind of
calculus of costs and benefits.

Regardless of which approach you take, no matter how certain you are about the basic principles and
rules, you find yourself puzzled by individual cases. One of the things we have become painfully aware
of in nearly a half century of work on artificial intelligence is that there is a huge distance from
abstract rules to real situations. Before rules can be applied, there must be interpretation as to how
the terms in them actually fit the situation) and in doing so there is a wide- open field of human
judgment and implicit understanding that has not yielded to logical analysis.

This all may be painfully obvious to those who have been working in the field of computer ethics, but
let me give an example to clarify what I am pointing at.

Assume that you accept some form of the rule "Thou shalt not steal." Then in order to apply it, you need
to know when an act is "stealing." We may define it as something like "taking property that belongs to
someone else, without their consent." That's a good start, but what is "property?" There are clear
examples such as someone's wallet or car, but| what about their "ideas." Are those the kind of things
that can be property at all? Now we are in a complicated realm of definitions, which has occupied
philosophers (and lawyers) for centuries. The apparently simple notion of "property" has different
interpretations in different cultures, legal systems, and traditions. Further, what do we mean by
someone's "consent." What kind of consent is implied by opening a box that has a label on it saying "By
opening this box you hereby agree to...."?

In reading the literature on computer ethics' we encounter many more such examples and become
painfully aware of how difficult it is to come up with consistent principles and standards for applying
them to cases we encounter. The point should be obvious: we are not able to provide the kind of rules and
methods that work in normal science and engineering, to come up with answers to problems. The
morality computer is an idealized fantasy, and can mislead us if it shifts attention to a quest for the
"right answer," away from the questioning activity that is required of each of us and involves us in a
never ending dialog with others.

A Troupe of Jugglers

And this leads us to the cartoon of Figure 3, a troupe of jugglers. It may seem that juggling is too
frivolous an activity to be a relevant analogy, but let us look more closely at several key features of the
situation.

1. Engaged activity

First we note that the jugglers are constantly engaged in action. The first two cartoons directed our
attention to conscious moments of decision, and put the locus of ethical action in determining the
outcome. This cartoon suggests that we are always "thrown" into acting and that the assessments of
ethics apply to these actions, not just those where we stop to ponder. This is suggested by the fourth of
Bynum's descriptions of what we are doing in teaching:

To develop in the student "good judgment'' and "helpful intuitions" for spur-of-the-moment decision
making as computer professionals and computer users.

This "spur of the moment decision making" is the basic condition of acting in the world. In fact, it often
does not show up to the actor as decision making at all. We all remember the interviews with someone
who has jumped into a river to save a drowning child, when the interviewer asks "What made you decide
to do it?" and the hero or heroine says "Decide? I didn't decide, I just jumped in?" In order to be
skillful at "ethicking" we need to develop the kind of continuing judgment in action that a juggler
exhibits, not just the kind of careful argument that a logician applies in constructing a proof.

2. Social context

Second, the focus is not on the isolated actions of an individual, but on the coordinated actions of the
troupe as a whole. What I do makes senseÑis "right" or "wrong',Ñin the context of what others are
doing. When I look to alternatives, I need to consider not just what else I might do, but what we all
might do through some kind of agreement and coordination. As I suggested earlier, this is a key feature
of ethical action. If we wait until someone is put into a true moral dilemma, we may get exciting drama,
but we will not further the overall pursuit of values as much as if we develop standard practices that
make it natural rather than heroic to do the "right thing."

One of the most powerful ethical acts we can each do is to participate in creating a social context in
which the future actions of ourselves and others are consistently in line with our values. This includes
educating our colleagues and students, working to develop professional standards, exploring new
technologies and identifying their consequences for values. Even though we may not face hard individual
ethical decisions as part of that work, we are actively engaged in the juggling process.

3. Evolving understandings, practices, and standards

Finally, we recognize in a juggling troupe the eternal need to learn and change. There is no ultimate
"right" way to juggle. Clearly, any form of juggling will have to conform to the laws of gravity and
physical motion. Less obviously, but plausibly, there may be perceptions of what is "good" that are
grounded in the nature of the human animal and will be true across cultures and times. But within this,
the community evolves practices and standards in which its members are trained, and by which their
actions are assessed. Part of the skill we recognize in a community of jugglers is their ability over
time to recognize new possibilities, develop skills in areas that hadn't been previously explored, and be
sensitive to the changing environment in which they perform.

In some cases, this may require focus on detail: evolving a new concept of just what constitutes
property and ownership in a new domain such as software, interfaces and algorithms. At other times,
we can make major leaps. When Gandhi proposed nonviolent civil disobedience as a way of furthering
the human values he cared about, he created a new "clearing"Ña new way of looking at possibilities and
taking actions, which could have meaning and power in the world of the late 20th century.

Now it should be clear that I favor this third cartoon, and to be fair, we should apply the same questions
as we did to the other two. First, what are the assumptions?

1. There is a social activity in which we are engaged, in which characterizations and assessments in an
ethical domain can be made.

2. There is no formal system that determines what is right, but there is an ongoing structure of
discourse within a community, in which rightness is the issue, and in which there are stable areas of
agreement.

3. An individual is never fully aware of what is possible to do, what effects an act will have, or how it
will be assessed, and nevertheless will continue to act.

In a way this is comforting and in a way it is challenging. It is comforting because it does not posit some
unachievable ideal: either the ideal of always having the strength to clothe right thing, or the ideal of
being able to determine just what is the right thing. Instead it puts the emphasis on being committed to
entering into discussion with others and to taking seriously their concerns and understandings.

At the same time, for the same reason, it is challenging. It says that we will never have the satisfaction
of knowing exactly when to apply our social and ethical concerns, or being confident that "Now we have
it figured out." We are always being thrown into activity which may, in unanticipated ways, have
implications for values, and we are part of a community that is always responsible for evolving new
understandings and ways of "juggling" to maintain those values. It's exciting, but at times can be a little
shaky.

What Does It Mean to DO Ethics and Social Responsibility?

In the final section, I want to look at what all this implies for the kinds of activities engaged in by
individuals and organizations committed to making connections between computing and values.

All along I have been emphasizing the "doing" side of ethics: the way in which our actions more than our
deliberations speak to our values. There are three key components in ``doing" ethics and social
responsibility:

1. Identifying social/ethical issues

2. Entering into serious discourse about the possibilities, -with yourself and with others

3. Taking actions

Each of these has both an individual and a social component. There are cases where one person alone is
faced with recognizing a problem, considering what to do, and doing it. Many of the most powerful pieces
of literature in our culture grip us because they let us feel what it is like to wrestle with this ultimate
responsibility of the individual.

But in this paper I want to focus more on the ways in which each of these components is situated in the
actions of larger groups, and in particular the kinds of organizations represented by NCCV and by CPSR.

The activities with which I am most familiar are the work over the last ten years of Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility. Initially we were motivated by what appeared to be a mad rush
towards nuclear war on the part of our government. As with man, groups that emerged in the early
1980s with the words "social responsibility' in their names, we felt that the only responsible thing to
do in that climate was to work wherever we had the most possibility of influence, in order to avert
catastrophe.

In fact, there were many clear connections between computing and nuclear war, and in particular we
came to focus heavily on the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Star wars" system. As computer
professionals, we were sensitized to the problems of reliability and complexity that made the plans
unrealistic, and| could lead both to tremendous wasted resources and to a false sense of security then
could dangerously destabilize the nuclear situation.

We approached this problem in a number of ways. CPSR members, individually and together, wrote
papers analyzing the problems and bringing them to the attention of policy makers, both directly and
through publication in newspapers and magazines. A number of us were active in the movement to have
scientists pledge not to take research money from the SDI office. It was clear that the promise of
research funds was being used as a lure to get tacit approval from the scientific community for the
project. One person in particular who recognized this was David Parnas, who resigned from the panel
that was convened to develop an analysis of the computing requirements, and later made public his
analysis of the problems and of the ways in which the Pentagon was trying to influence scientists'
assessments.

I mention all this not just because it is an important piece of CPSR's history, but to illustrate the range
of activities that constituted "ethicking" for people involved with the issue. Some of the actions, like
Parnas' resignation, can be viewed as explicit and difficult ethical choices made by individuals, and are
noteworthy as such. But the impact they had was magnified by the fact that they were part of a
coordinated campaign, in the context of organizations that could bring them to public attention and
connect them the basic issues being fought. if one scientist quietly decides not to do SDI research, the
impact is on that person and his other work. If a whole community is involved, not only is the political
impact greater, but the thinking of the entire profession is moved. The ability to recognize the potential
of issues with consequences for values and ethics is increased for all those who become party to the
discussion, even if they don't take direct action at the moment.

As the imminent danger of nuclear war appeared to subside, CPSR was able to take into fuller
consideration the recognition that "social responsibility,, really does cover more than just preventing
annihilation (even though that is certainly a good place to start). Our concerns have overlapped
strongly with those that form the core of the NCCV conference: Privacy, security, ownership and fair
access. For example, we recently took part in a successful nationwide campaign to block the sale of a
product proposed by Lotus that would have made it possible to find out private information about
millions of consumers. In that case computers played a helping role as well, with much of the education
and awareness about the issue being transmitted by electronic mail.

There isn't sufficient space to go into detail here on all of the CPSR program areas, but I have recounted
this history to serve as an example as we look back at the three components of "ethicking" listed above:

1. Identify social/ethical issues

The first is to identify social and ethical issues to which computers and computing are relevant. Each of
us needs to ask how our actions as a computer professional might have ethical and social consequences,
and there are a variety of answers. In some cases, as with every profession, the consequences grow
directly from specifics of conduct. If I am asked to write apiece of life-critical software then I must
proceed in away that is responsible: taking care as best I am able given current software practices, and
being honest with the clients about the risks and limitations. If I do less, I am cheating.

In some cases, harmful consequences come not from the quality of the work itself, but from the uses to
which it will be put. If I am asked to build a program that makes it possible for employers to invisibly
monitor the details of a worker's activities, I need to be aware of the consequences such programs can
have in the workplace. Often, there is no clear boundary between beneficial and harmful technologies. A
data base system used by the FBI to track drug dealers may have a positive effect on reducing the drug
traffic, but can also be used to keep track of people with unpopular political beliefs. Even then, if I see
the danger as great enough (what if those beliefs are racist and violent?) it may be a net gain to society
if I produce such a system. But where is the boundary?

To go a step farther, there will be cases where the work itself is positive, but there is a larger context
in which it can play a harmful role. Much of the research sponsored by the Strategic Defense Initiative
is of a general kind that most of us would assess as having positive applications. The developing of
computer networking, although originally sponsored by military agencies, has had a tremendous affect
on our ability to function as computer professionals, and is rapidly becoming available to the entire
population.

But what about the larger context? When a General testifies before congress that the scientific
community is in favor of the SDI plans, as evidenced by the number of them who are actively working
on research for it, what consequences has our research had? When a tremendous proportion of the
research in computing in general is directed by the military, what long-term effect does this have on
the kind of problems that are posed, or on the role of military thinking on the direction of our national
economy?2

There are rarely easy answers to such questions. In order to make responsible decisions about values,
an individual needs a broad understanding of the consequences his or her actions might have in this
overall situation. Such an understanding develops only through extended open discussion that brings in
people from outside the computer profession as well as within it. It also extends beyond those who
engage directly in it. The "styrofoam professor" I mentioned earlier has become conscious of issues of
research funding through having interacted with me about my own rejection of military sponsorship.
Even if he disagrees, the fact that the discussion exists (and has engaged his students as well) gives it a
new standing in his "moral calculation."

2. Enter into serious discourse about the possibilities

The second step in "ethicking" was to enter into serious discourse about the possibilities. I use the word
"discourse" here instead of "thinking" to emphasize the social construction that is at the heart of
decision-making even when a person does not directly enter into conversation with others. In a real, if
extended sense' I am in discourse not only with the people I speak with but with those who have written
the things that have influenced me, and those I have talked with, and in turn those in the future who will
be influenced by what I say and write.

This includes people within the computer profession, and also in the larger society within which we
work. The job of "public education" is a key part of creating the background of expectations that
constitutes the fabric of ethical and social responsibility.

It should be obvious in looking at this conference, both at the participants and the materials that have
been prepared and will be produced, that the weaving of the discourse is a function of groups of people
who gather together (literally or through communications media) to think things through (or should
we say "talk things through"?). This is a key role played by institutions and organizations devoted to
issues of computers and ethics.

3. Take actions

Finally, the bottom line is the actions we take, both individually and collectively. It would be futile to
try to catalog all of the different kinds of actions that have ethical implications. There are obvious
individual acts such as whistleblowing, in which a clear value statement is being made in spite of some
potential damage or loss to the actor. There are many other acts, such as choosing whether or not to
work on a particular project or to take a job with a company that pursues projects of social concern, in
which the decision is more subtle and the ethical factor may be one of many, which cannot be untangled
in looking back at why the decision was made.

As members of a profession and its professional organizations, we also take acts that are intended to
affect the direction and activity of the profession as a whole. They often don't have the visceral quality
of whistleblowing or rejection of funding, but they contribute to creating the atmosphere in which
those acts can be given sense. These include teaching, public education, working with professional
organizations, developing standards and many other forms of everyday "ethicking."

Some of these activities have an overt political objective, such as lobbying for legislation or providing
expertise to lawmaking and judicial bodies. Others operate at a broader cultural level, helping people
both in the profession and in the public learn to see the issues, understand their consequences and apply
human values to technical decisions. Although it is easier to get an individual to consider "Is it ethical
(or socially responsible) to work on a bomb project?" It is equally important and more frequently
relevant to ask "Is it ethical not to contribute my part to being responsible for how the public and the
profession guide the ways in which computers will be used?" At the CPSR annual meeting last year, the
slogan on the posters was ``Technology is driving the future. It's time to find out who's steering." In the
end, we all have a hand on the wheel.

Conclusion

Looking back at the three cartoons we might come up with different views of what we are engaged in
when we participate in a conference on Computing and Values. From the angel/devil perspective, we
could see it as a "revival meeting" at which we encourage each other to act in accord with our values,
and tell stories that will help us to be resolute and remain steadfast, From the morality computer
perspective, the conference is a think tank: it is our job to come up with the right rules and
descriptions that will form the knowledge base that computer professionals can use to figure out what
they should do.

These both have some particle of truth, but I much prefer to see our activity as a working session in
which we are engaged in juggling the issues, ideas and discussions that generate the world of
possibilities in which we and our colleagues live and work. We are creating those possibilities,
increasing our own understanding and commitment to their value, and building a community that can
continue to create and learn in the future.

Notes

1. For a wide variety of cases, see the papers in Ermann and Williams, Dunlop and Kling, 1991,
Parker, Swope and Baker, 1990, and Johnson and Snapper, 1985. For a list of syllabi covering a broad
range of topics related to computing and ethics, see Friedman and Winograd, 1989.

2. For further discussion of the issues of military funding, see Winograd, 1989 and the papers in
Mitcham and Siekevitz, 1989.

References

1. Bynum, Terrell, "Human values and the computer science curriculum," in T. Bynum, W. Maner and
J. Fodor (eds.,) Computing and Human Values,, RCCS: 1992.

2. Bynum, Terrell Ward, Walter Maner, and John L. Fodor (eds.), Computing and Human Values:
Proceedings of the 1991 Conference, New Haven: Research Center on Computing and Society, 1992.

3. Dunlop, Charles and Rob Kling (eds.), Computerization and Controversy, Boston: Academic Press,
1991

4. Friedman, Batya and Terry Winograd (eds.), Computing and Social Responsibility: a Collection of
Course Syllabi, Palo Alto: Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, 1989.

5. Johnson, Deborah G. and John W. Snapper, Ethical Issues In the Use of Computers, Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1985.

6. Mitcham, Carl and Philip Siekevitz (eds.), Ethical Issues Associated with Scientific and
Technological Research for the Military, New York, NY.: New York Academy of Sciences, 1989.

7. Parker, Donn, Susan Swope and Bruce Baker, Ethical Conflicts in Information & Computer Science,
Technology and Business, Wellesley, MA: QED Information Sciences, 1990.

8. Winograd, Terry, "Strategic computing research and the universities,. in J. Jacky and D. Schuler,
eds., Directions and Implications of Advanced Computing, Volume I. Norwood NJ: Ablex, 1989,18-32.
Reprinted in Dunlop and Kling, 1991, pp. 700-716.

Terry Winograd is a founding member of the Board of Directors of Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility, and past president of the organization. He is Professor of Computer Science at Stanford
University and director of the Stanford Project on People, Computers, and Design.

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION - Grant Information

Studies in Science, Technology, and Society (SSTS), supports research on the nature and processes of
development in science and technology (past and present) and the differences in the nature of theory and
evidence in various scientific and technological fields. It also supports research on the interaction
between science and technology and their impact on society, and on the interactions of social and
intellectual forces that influence science and technology. Through a special component of SSTS, Ethics
and Values Studies (EVS), NSF encourages an exploration into the ethical, value, or policy aspects of the
interaction between science, technology and society. EVS research projects often examine issues of
scientific or professional ethics, and controversies surrounding societal impacts of or on technology
and the sciences.

SSTS and EVS studies often integrate and test theories and methods from: research traditionally
employed in the humanities; social scientific empirical and statistical research; description and
assessment of new developments in science and engineering; other approaches that promise to yield
insight into the interactions of science, technology and society.

Support for SSTS and EVS projects is available through regular grants including: SSTS and EVS
Scholars Awards, supporting individual researchers; grants for collaborative research, infrastructure
or education projects; professional development fellowship, supporting researchers who wish to
improve and expand their skills in the areas of SSTS and EVS; support for extraordinary expenses of
dissertation research; support for instrumentation.

All applicants should obtain the SSTS-EVS Program Announcement from Forms and Publications Unit,
Room 232, NSF, 1800 G Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20550; telephone (202) 357-3619. NSF
publications may also be requested electronically: via internet, pubs@nsf.gov; or via bitnet, pubs@nsf.
For further information contact Rachelle Hollander or Ronald J. Overmann, SSTS, Room 320, 202-
357-9894.

Target dates for submission of proposals to SSTS are February and August 1.

Design at Work Book Review Jeff JohnsonÑCPSR Chairman

Greenbaum, Joan and Kyng, Morten (eds.) Design at Work: Cooperative Design of Computer Systems.
1991, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates. 294 pages.

A few years ago, the Computers in the Workplace project of CPSR/Palo Alto, with help from
CPSR/Seattle, organized the first U.S. conference on participatory design of computer systems
(PDC'90). We had heard about this interesting new design approach and wanted to know more about it,
so we invited the recognized experts to come tell us and others about it. Since I served as conference
Cochair, some of my collegues now assume that I am an authority on participatory design. As anyone
who has ever chaired a conference knows, conference organizers spend so much time making sure that
everything is running smoothly that they don't have time to actually pay attention to the content of the
conference. Nonetheless, I am now sometimes asked to suggest "a good participatory design reference" to
a collegue who wants to use the term "participatory design" in a paper.

Until now, I wasn't sure what to suggest. It is tempting to suggest "Computers in Context," a videotape
produced by California Newsreel in the mid-Eighties that presents three case studies of participatory
design in Scandinavia along with some analysis by the experts. It is one of the clearest explanations of
the approach I've seen, but of course, citing videos isn't kosher in academia. The book usually cited in
reference to participatory design, Computers and DemocracyÑA Scandinavian Challenge (1987), seems
to me to be more about a goal of the methodÑi.e., workplace democracyÑthan about the practice of
design. Another possible candidate for "a good participatory design reference" is the Proceedings of
PDC'90 (still available from CPSR), but because it had to be assembled quickly, it isn't comprehensive
enough to be more than an interesting teaser on the subject. A more comprehensive book based loosely
upon the PDC'90 proceedings, Participatory Design, won't be available until late 1992. Pelle Ehn's
tome, Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts (1989) is yet another possibility, but somewhat
daunting, and I must admit that it's been sitting on my shelf, unread, for over a year.

Now, finally, I have a reference I can suggest with confidence: Design at Work: Cooperative Design of
Computer Systems. Hopefully, some of the people I recommend it to will actually read it rather than
just citing it, because editors Joan Greenbaum and Morten Kyng have produced a truly valuable
resource. It is, to my mind, the only elucidation of participatory design yet written that does a better
job than "Computers in Context" at giving readers some notion of what participatory design is (and
isn't) and how (and why) it is done.

That is not to say that the book provides a foolproof recipe that need only be followed to yield systems
that satisfy users and management. One of the points of the book is that no such recipe exists. What it
does mean is that here, in one place, are the collected experiences and reflections of many of those who
have been working to create a new approach to designing computer systems.

For over a decade, a scattering of computer system designers and researchers in Great Britain,
Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway have been investigating the problems of traditional ways of
designing computer systems for factories and offices, and developing alternative approaches. Though the
alternative approaches vary, they share several important features: 1) an emphasis on understanding
the work that computer systems are supposed to support, 2) reliance on active user involvement in the
design process, 3) the belief that computer systems should be tools that amplify users' skill and
knowledge, rather than automation that replaces it, and 4) the goal of improving the quality of working
life how users feel about their jobsÑas well as that of work products. Design approaches that share
these features are referred to, variously, as "participatory," "participative," or "cooperative." The
editors of Design at Work use the third adjective, but in this review I'll stick with the one I first
encountered: "participatory."

Traditional approaches to system design, the book argues, are lacking in the above features. Many
systems are designed by simply giving programmers a simple description of a task and having them
write software for it. In such cases, there is no explicit analysis of the job or tasks that the application
is to support. When designers do bother to try to understand what goes on a workplace, they often do so
in terms of data-flow and task decomposition. Such analyses yield idealized views of workplaces that
ignore the numerous exceptions and problem-solving situations thatÑlike it or notÑare a significant
part of any job. Such analyses also ignore users and their motivations, perceptions, and other feelings.
The factors thus ignored are those that are most important in determining whether work is
accomplished efficiently or inefficiently, whether work-product quality is high or low, and whether
workers like their jobs or not. Of course, "know the user" and "test early and often" are familiar
slogans of traditional system design, but they are often ignored due to lack of time or resources. When
users are given a role in the design process, it is usually as objects of testing rather than as active
participants who have expertise to contribute to the design, and the focus of such tests is often on
whether a system is "idiot proof" instead of on whether it is useful in performing a job.

Traditional system design is also seen as computer-centric. It views work in an office as a darkened
room with a spotlight on the computer: users come to the computer, use it, and leave; the things they do
with the computer are disconnected, and those they do without it aren't important. They word-process,
they create graphics, they perform calculations, they enter and retrieve data. Where does the input
come from? Unimportant. What is the output used for? Irrelevant.

In contrast, participatory design views the computer as embedded in a work-context. It views work in
an office as teams of people working together, weaving many paths in and through an office, with some
of the paths intersecting the computer at various points. The highlighting is on the users and the task-
paths, not on the computer. The users are viewed as having skill and talents that the computer should
support, e.g., graphic artists know not only how to operate their tools, but also what to draw with them.
Such a perspective induces designers to ask different questions from the outset. Instead of asking, "What
do we want this system to do?", they ask "What are the work processes, how can they be improved, and
what kind of computer system would support the desired work processes?" When one asks these sorts of
questions, it becomes obvious that users should be involved in helping to answer them.

Design at Work is a collection of chapters describing: why the authors felt the need for a new approach,
the theory and philosophy that guided their thinking, some of the techniques that they use, and their
experiences in applying these techniques. It is divided into two parts, the first part focusing mainly on
motivation, theory, and broad descriptions of the approach, and the second part mainly presenting
experiences, case studies, and specific techniques.

A major point of the book is that participatory design isn't easy. According to the editors' introductory
chapter, early attempts in Scandinavia to involve users in computer system design failed because of
naivete': simply bringing workers, management, and computer engineers together into a room doesn't
result in good designs. People having different backgrounds, goals, and vocabularies must be taught how
to work together and share their expertise. The situation must be structured to encourage mutual
reaming and to build mutual respect and trust. However, though participatory design isn't easy and may
have higher up-front costs than traditional methods, the authors argue that it usually repays the
investment by yielding better designs and reducing the high downstream costs and risks that are
associated with traditional design methods.

I found that different chapters of the book appealed to different aspects of my persona. As a researcher
in human-computer interaction (HCI), the chapters by Bannon (a critique of traditional HCI and
Human Factors design approaches) and Ehn and Kyng (a demonstration that much can be accomplished
with very simple prototypes) interested me most. The political-activist in me found the chapters by
Wynn (an argument that the assumptions implicit in traditional systems analysis are both elitist and
wrong) and Bodker, Greenbaum, and Kyng (a description of preconditions for effective worker
participation and management support) to be the most interesting. The introductory chapter by the
editors (Greenbaum and Kyng) is a very informative and interesting introduction to participatory
design; readers who read only that will learn a great deal.

As I read the book, I made a list of criticisms to include in this review. When I got to the last chapter,
an epilogue by the editors, I found that it includes a self-critique that already says everything I was
planning to say. To summarize:

No direct contribution from users: The target users of the book are system and application designers,
yet few such usersÑother than the authorsÑwere involved in the design of the book. In particular, the
book may be...

Too academic The authors are mostly researchers, with a fairly academic orientation. The typical
application designer isn't. The book's extensive reference to philosophical and linguistic theory (e.g.,
Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Winograd and Flores) may run counter to designers' practice and background.
Do designers have to know and understand these writers to do particpatory design? If so, participatory
design may fail. And if not, why devote so much space to it?

No aesthetics of design: The book describes techniques for involving users in the design process and the
reasons why user involvement is desirable, but says nothing about criteria for judging good vs. bad
designs.

Many practices missing: Participatory design isn't a technique, it is a (growing) collection of
techniques for achieving certain ends. Many techniques that have been used successfully aren't
described, due to limited time, space, and author experience.

Too few good products of participatory design to show: The same examples are used over and over. More
participatory design projects (and case studies) would make the book more convincing.

Not enough on redesigning work: Some readers may get the impression that the authors advocate simply
giving users tools that aid current work practices. In fact, the authors believe that computers--like all
tools--inevitably affect work practice, so system design includes (or perhaps is just a part of) work
practice redesign.

Not enough on workplace democracy or organizational politics: This book, unlike some of the others,
doesn't say, much about the political issues raised by enlisting workers as co-designers.

At PDC'90, one of the Scandinavians said that as people outside of Scandinavia (especially in the U.S.)
hear about participatory design and want to know more about it, its main practitioners and promoters
are asked to go "on tour." however, she said that they don't like to go 'ten tour" much, because when they
leave Scandinavia for extended periods of time, participatory design slows there. I remember thinking
at the time: "Aha! Then it isn't really the Scandinavian approach to design; it's the Kristen Nygaard,
Pelle Ehn, ,Susan Bodker, Kari Thoresen, etc. approach to design." hat was significant, because a high
percentage of Scandinavia's practitioners of participatory design (as well as those of other countries)
were at PDC'90. I remember daydreaming about what was going on in Scandinavia while they were all
in Seattle: "Allriiight! Now that those bleeding hearts are away, we can forget this fuzzy stuff about
cooperating with users and design these babies the normal way!"

Now that Design at Work is available as a vehicle for distributing their accumulated knowledge,
experience, and wisdom, the practitioners of participatoryÑor, if you prefer, cooperativeÑdesign can
spend less time on tour and more at home, promoting, practicing, and refining the art.

Jeff Johnson is a researcher at Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto, California, and the chairman of CPSR.

CPSR's Local Civic Network Project in Vermont

Richard Civille, director of CPSR's Local Civic Network Project, met with an Ad Hoc Committee on
Public Participation in Vermont Telecommunications Policy and Planning on August 21st. The group
reviewed a recently completed study by the Legislative Committee on Telecommunications on a proposed
Vermont Ten-Year Telecommunications Plan. This report was based on public hearings held around the
state this past summer. Much of the report's findings incorporate views from 41 pieces of invited and
60 pieces of public testimony.

The legislative report and all public testimony can be found on an anonymous FTP archive at the
University of Vermont at the Internet address emily.uvm.edu. A readme file is in the directory
/usr/pub/telecom.

The Ad Hoc committee, begun in January 1992 by CPSR and the office of Congressman Bernard Sanders
(Ind.) has served as an influential, non-partisan forum for public discussion of Vermont
telecommunications. CPSR has worked hard with the Ad Hoc committee to promote public interest
communications policy in Vermont through white papers, press statements, public testimony and
promotion of local civic networks in Burlington and Montpelier. Based in part on CPSR testimony last
spring, the Vermont assembly passed a law establishing a "summer study Legislative Committee on
Telecommunications" to conduct public hearings and prepare a report guiding the Department of Public
Service group drafting of the Plan.

On August 20th, a local civic network organizing committee met at the Burlington library to discuss
creation of public access systems in both Burlington and Montpelier. David Punia of University of
Vermont's Department of Electrical Engineering and CPSR's Civille spoke on a cable talk-show
describing how such a project could influence state public access policies and how the community could
become involved. The show will air in late September.

Much of the Legislative Committee's findings are favorable to testimony provided by CPSR and Ad Hoc
Committee members. The report largely supports the "Vermont Principles" which CPSR helped draft,
which call for universal service, public access, privacy and connectivity. These four principles can
help shape future public interest communication policy, at the local, state and federal level.

The following proposals of the Vermont Legislative Committee on Telecommunications merit serious
consideration in development of public interest communication policy:

¥ Public, education and government access should be available through all telecommunication systems
providing voice, data and video services to the publicÑnot just cable TV. This finding was based largely
upon testimony by CPSR and several public access cable groups.

¥ Establishment of a gross-receipts tax on all telecommunications providers to ensure affordable
public, education and government access to the communications infrastructure. This proposal was
developed by the legislative committee but largely inspired by our testimony promoting public access.

¥ Incorporating touch-tone, or "push-button dialing" service within the basic rate without raising
prices. This was a key CPSR proposal, given in all of our oral and written testimony. The reason is
four- fold. First, the new networks operate more efficiently if touch-tone is used everywhere to route
calls. Second, touch-tone service is approaching ubiquity and should be part of basic service. Third,
touch- tone is an excellent policy ``hook". It could be the first non- voice basic service establishing
precedent forotherdigital services. Finally, everyone knows what touch- tone is, there is no learning
curve needed to discuss it. Thus it serves as a good way to acquaint decision-makers, the public and the
press to communication policy issues.

¥ Promote new telecommunications capabilities which help to promote community interaction, the
sharing of knowledge and information, and commerce, so long as those new capabilities to not detract
from the foremost principle of universal access to basic services.

CPSR activists in Oregon heard about our work in Vermont and alerted us to a telecommunications plan
being drafted in that state. The Oregon study goes to the assembly for adoption in January 1993. It has
good suggestions for establishing community communication centers around the state and proposes the
establishment of an Oregon Telecommunications Foundation to implement the Plan's objectives.

Thanks to the Portland CPSR chapter we were able to promote and distribute copies of the draft Oregon
plan to members of the Ad Hoc Committee. In an August 24 press release praising the legislative
committee report, the Ad Hoc Committee endorses the vision statement made in the Oregon Plan:
"Ensure rural and urban [citizens] have both affordable access and adequate support to make effective
use of voice, data and image information services for meeting their economic development and quality of
life aspirations".

The Ad Hoc Committee is now comprised of close to one hundred participants, including
telecommunications experts, public interest and social action non-profit groups, state agency officials,
educators and citizen activists. It has become a respected voice in the ongoing telecommunications
strategic planning debate in Vermont. CPSR serves the committee as an advisor and has testified twice
as an interested party in public hearings. CPSR and the Ad Hoc committee now plan to organize regional
public forums around the state to educate interested citizens in the issues and to further broaden public
participation in the planning process. Several Ad Hoc committee members, including CPSR's Civille
have been invited by the Public Service Commission to prepare materials for specific inclusion in
Plan.

If you know of any similar telecommunication policy planning initiatives in your state or would like
help in promoting one, contact Richard Civille in CPSR's Washington, D.C. office. Do you know of any
local civic or community networking initiatives in your city or town or would you like help in planning
one? If you do, or if you'd like more information get in touch with CPSR's Local Civic Network Project
in Washington D.C. Find out how you can make a differenceÑand help create a public interest
communication policy agenda for the 21st Century.

For information contact Richard Civille in the CPSF Washington Office, at (202) 544-9240, or by
Internet e-mail at civille@washofc.cpsr.org.

Volume 10, No. 3 The CPSR Newsletter Summer 1992

Inside CPSR

The purpose of "Inside CPSR" is to supplement the main body of The CPSR Newsletter, informing
members about what is going on in the National organization and in the chapters. For content, especially
on chapter and regional activities, we rely on you, our members. Send news items for future issues to
inside-cpsr@csli.stanford.edu. "Inside CPSR" is edited by a rotating staff of editors: Aki Namioka, Jeff
Johnson, and Paul Hyland. This issue was edited by Aki Namioka.

Upcoming CPSR Events in 1992

Oct 17-18 CPSR Annual Meeting; Palo Alto, CA

Nov 6-8 Second conference on Participatory Design of Computer Systems (PDC'92); Cambridge, MA

For additional information on any of these events, contact GPSR (415) 322-3778,
cpsr@csli.stanford.edu.

CPSR/Washington, DC Submitted by Larry Hunter

On June 3, a group of CPSR-DC members pieced together a plan to increase CPSR presence at DC area
universities. Chapter co-chair Joel Wolfson organized the meeting, and described his goals for getting
more students involved in CPSR projects, and for making it easier for our geographically diverse
members to attend CPSR events. The group hopes to hold DC chapter meetings at six area universities in
the upcoming year.

CPSR-DC members have also been working on the CapAccess (previously known as Capital Area
Freenet) project. CapAccess "The National Capital Area Public Access Network" is a metropolitan
information system that will offer a wide variety of free public information to users, either through
their own computers and modems or through public access terminals located in libraries, schools,
government buildings, etc. Information will be provided by a variety of sources, from local
governments and federal agencies to social service agencies, universities, and other non-profit
organizations.

While CapAccess will be affiliated with the National Public Telecomputing Network (NPTN) and will
start by using the Freeport software (as do Cleveland Freenet and some other NPTN nodes), we don't
want to limit our options solely to being a part of that system.

CPSR, along with such other like-minded organizations as Essential Information and the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF), has been participating in the planning and organization of this valuable
community service. Richard Civille from the Washington office and Paul Hyland are both heavily
involved in the committees that are setting this up. Current timetables has the project recruiting some
information providers and setting up/testing the system over the summer, with a limited launch
tentatively planned for the fall.

Paul Hyland, of CPSR-DC, was responsible for establishing the CPSR Listserver on Internet that is
designed to archive CPSR-related materials and make them available on request, and disseminate
relatively official, short, CPSR-related announcements (e.g., press releases, conference
announcements, and project updates). It is accessible via Internet and Bitnet.

As a local chapter, CPSR-DC is struggling to find the right combination of activities to get its members
involved in socially responsible action. Of more than 100 chapter members, there is a core of only
about half a dozen people who produce (and attend!) chapter activities. Over the last year or so, we have
had more than half a dozen speakers, on topics ranging from the use of computers in the Holocaust, to
mining the transactional records of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to ethics and civil liberties in
electronic media. We organized several practical projects that needed volunteers for a variety of tasks
taking just a few hours at a time, but haven't found any members with the time and inclination to do the
work. We're still looking, and putting in as many of our own hours as our busy home and work lives
will permit.

We recognize that our members are busy professionals who donate money to the organization so that
CPSR's national office can continue to keep up the good work. We hope that this chapter of socially
responsible computer professionals can make a contribution to its community as well. We thought that
we might be able to get the membership more involved by turning the tables: There are at least half a
dozen of us who put in at least a couple of hours a month. Do you have a good project for us? We welcome
your input.

CPSR/Palo Alto Submitted by Amy Pearl

The CPSR Palo Alto chapter has been running along pretty smoothly, despite recent turnover in our
steering committee. Steering committee members Lesley Kalmin and Todd Newman are resigning from
the steering committee to devote themselves to their national CPSR positions of board treasurer and
secretary. Also, ax-chapter chair and longtime steering committee member Cliff Johnson is resigning.
All three have been tremendous contributors and we'll miss them on the committee. We've worked hard
to recruit replacements, and have found some wonderful people to work with the people remaining on
the steering committee.

The steering committee, which has nine members and a job rotation wheel, has lately been rotating the
chapter meeting program planning job as a trio (three people plan three months of meetings at a time).
This has worked extremely well, and we've managed to get meetings planned several months in advance.
This summer we've had some good meetings: in May, Evelyn Pine, the new CPSR national Managing
Director, came and spoke. In June Dr. Paul Billings from California Pacific Medical Center gave an
excellent and thought-provoking talk on the risks of genetic databases. In July Anita Borg, a researcher
at DEC WRL, talked about an international mailing list of women in computer science she has been
managing for 4 years, called "systers." August is our annual social/barbecue, and in September Jim
Davis of the Berkeley chapter, and the Western Regional Representative is talking about the changing
face of the computer profession.

On October 8, we are hosting a forum on Technology and Public Policy with our congressional district's
candidates for the House of Representatives. We're very excited about this special meeting and are
hoping for a large turnout. We also hope it will raise our visibility and contact as an organization with
whoever is our next Representative. In addition to the Democratic and Republican candidates (Anna
Eshoo and Tom Heuning), there is a Libertarian (Chuck Olson) and a Peace and Freedom (David Wold)
candidate registered and invited to speak. If you have any experience and/or suggestions about holding
such an event, call Amy Pearl at 415-336-2840 or send e-mail to amy.pearl@eng.sun.com.

Finally, in the spirit of planning our chapter meetings more in advance, we are interested in
identifying interesting speakers for meetings who are not local. We want to contact them about speaking
al chapter meetings if they're visiting the bay area. If you have heard speakers on relevant topics that
you'd recommend we contact, please call Amy Pearl at 415-336-2840 or send e-mail to
amy.pearl@eng.sun.com.

CPSR/Seattle Submitted by Aki Namioka

CPSR-Seattle has been working on establishing a community-access network, loosely modeled on the
FreeNet systems, in the Seattle area. The tentative name of the system is the "Seattle Community
Network (SCN)."

We had a very successful initial presentation to 40+ members of the community on June 30th, and now
we are in the process of following-up on responses we got from the participants. So far we have talked
to the University of Washington - computer services department, the Seattle Public Library, the
director of telecommunications for the City of Seattle, Northwest Net (the local Internet people) and
ACLU-Washington.

We have also recently established a policy committee which will take on the responsibility of writing
the formal policy statements for the SCN. The ACLU has volunteered to help us write our policy
statements, and as a result of their input we have established a very rough first draft. The policy
committee is part of a functional committee structure that the SCN project has established, which
already has a coordinating committee, a services committee, an outreach committee, a staff and
facilities committee, and a hardware/software (or nerds) committee.

Currently we are grappling with the task of concurrently writing grant proposals, doing more
community outreach, trying to establish a virtual office, and coordinating the activities of the different
committees. We are planning a special presentation of our project to a group of educators in late
September, and we have an appointment with Sharon Nelson of the Washington UTC on September 15th.

If there are other CPSR chapters working on this type of project, we would like to hear from you.
Perhaps we can share tips on formulating policy statements, fundraising, etc. Contact: Aki Namioka
aki@atc.boeing.com (206-8653229) or Douglas Schuler douglas@atc.boeing.com (206865-3832).

In June, Jayney Wallick, a member of CPSR-Seattle, gave a talk on teaching South African union
workers how to use DOS, Windows, and Word for Windows. Jayney talked about cultural differences and
how that affected teaching techniques, along with of the problems of teaching in an impoverished
community. Jayney also gave us some insight and background to the current turmoil and recent strikes
in South Africa.

In August, we had our annual picnic/potluck at Gasworks park.

In September, we plan to elect a new president since the outgoing president has recently been elected to
the national board.

CPSR/Boston Submitted by Tom Thornton

Although there can be long intervals between CPSR/Boston newsletters and meetings, the chapter has
been and continues active in several ways. This report presents some old unreported business as well as
a bit of what is coming. After our traditionally stagnant summer, the approach of fall promises new
activities.

In the realm of old news, a couple activities deserve mention. First, thanks to Gary Chapman's presence
here, a chapter working group on the 21st century project meets periodically and provides a means to
present general chapter business. Gary is at "chapman@lcs.mit.edu." Second, thanks to Ed
Frankenberry, and the use of an Electronic Frontier Foundation Internet node, the chapter mailing lists
are a successful alternative to paper newsletters. If you wish to use the announcements list, send an
email message to "cpsr-announce-request@eff.org."

A nagging chapter problem has been that we have published no paper newsletters other than notices for
chapter meetings. The chapter executive committee labors have been other than editorial.
Coincidentally, the chapter chair Coralee Whitcomb is now a coordinator at the Boston Computer
Society, where she finds the BCS- Social Impact Group has a newsletter and editor, but ironically few
other activities. So, this month a CPSR/BCS cooperative newsletter issue is an interim measure to get
out our news and provide it to others.

In August, we requested and obtained a free booth at the Boston MacWorld Expo. Conferences tend to be
our most frequent projects, and produce many good contacts. Over the past few seasons we have
accumulated good material to furnish a booth and have developed a show routine. When an opportunity
arises, we just need volunteers. They all agree it is a nice way to see conference.

As chapter members return to town after the summer, we plan a September chapter meeting to present
several possible chapter projects. Such projects may include cooperative efforts with BCS, community
bulletin boards, state legislation, and the 21st Century project. Meanwhile, the chapter executive
committee gets together regularly if only for an informal visit.

Do not forget the 1992 Participatory 'Design Conference to be held in Cambridge November 6th & 7th.
Preliminary programs are available. For more information, contact either co-chair: Michael Muller at
(908)699-4892 or at michael@bellcore.com; or Sarah Kuhn at (508) 934-2903, or at
kuhns@woods.ulowell.edu

FROM CPSR National Submitted by Evelyn Pine

The CPSR Annual Meeting, October 17 & 18 Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

CPSR Board Member Jim Davis is chairing the CPSR Annual Meeting on October 1 7th and 1 8th at
Stanford. The first day program includes an address on Teledemocracy. and Citizen Participation, a
panel on cryptography, an examination of the social impact of converging technologies, and a discussion
of envisioning technology policy in a democratic society. The keynote speaker at the banquet is David
Liddle of Interval Research, addressing Computing in the 21st Century.

The second day of the Annual Meeting concentrates on building organizational power to tackle tough
issues, including an in-depth look at the ways we've had impact and tactics for expanding our
effectiveness. Look for case studies on successful CPSR grassroots campaigns, issue-centered
workshops as well as workshops on leadership development, chapter development, and "the electronic
organization."

The CPSR Board of Directors will meet Friday, October 16 in the San Francisco Bay area.

For registration materials, more information or to volunteer, contact the CPSR National Office at
(415) 322-3778 or e-mail cpsr@csli.stanford.edu.

Putting Our Money Where Out Mouth Is

CPSR members have been exceptionally supportive with their money in the past three months. Fifty-
eight members gave money as part of the spring appeal, including a number who had never contributed
above their dues before. In addition, nine other members have contributed over $10,000 to match any
contribution to CPSR over $100. If you'd like to contribute in response to this leadership match, and
make your financial contribution to CPSR go twice as far, contact Evelyn at the National Office.

Experts, Nerds, Activists

We've received over 220 completed membership surveys and are in the process of compiling the
results for the Annual Meeting. Thanks to all the members who filled them out. Your comments have
been incisive, profound and, often, delightful. We appreciate both the kind and encouraging words and
the top level thinking about how we can work together to become even more effective.

New Publication

CPSR National Office Manager Nikki Draper has been working closely with the CPSR Publications
Committee to expand our list of educational materials. The Committee has just published: Telephone
Privacy in the 1990's: Selected CPSR Publications on Calling Number ID. The work includes articles
and testimony by Marc Rotenberg, CPSR Washington Office Director, Jeff Johnson, CPSR Chair, Ronni
Rosenberg, CPSR Boston, and Erik Nilsson, CPSR Portland.

Telephone Privacy in the 1990's is available for $15.00 plus postage and handling.

What Do You Know?

In the past three weeks the national office has fielded questions about social security numbers on
driver's licenses, video dialtone, the privatization of digitized information, privacy protections in
government databases, sources of used hardware, the impact of computers in primary schools,
conversion strategies for military computing, ethic issues for systems operators, how to gain access to
an internet node, to mention only a few. Many CPSR members generously volunteer their time to
answer questions about important technical issues from the press, policy-makers, and the general
public. If you're willing to share your expertise and serve on the CPSR Experts list, contact Nikki at
the National Office.

Librarians and Latino Policymakers

I spoke at the Latino Issues Telecommunications Forum about community networking and citizen
participation. The state-wide audience was primarily leaders from local government and community
organizations.

I also participated in a panel discussion at the American Library Association with representatives from
Pacific Bell, the cable industry, the newspaper publishers association, University of California, and
Apple. The topics: phone companies getting into information services and the development of National
Research and Education Network (NREN). Afterwards the librarians stuck around to say marvelous
things about the work of Marc Rotenberg and the CPSR Washington office.

Thank You

Thanks to all the remarkable CPSR members who have shared information, ideas and enthusiasm-with
me in my first hectic five months on the job.

Miscellaneous

The CPSR Newsletter is published quarterly by:

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility P.O. Box 717 Palo Alto, CA 94302-0717 (415)
322-3778 (415) 322-3798 (FAX) Internet address: cpsr-staff@csli.stanford.edu

Also located at:

CPSR 666 Pennsylvania Avenue Suite 303 Washington, D.C. 20003 (202) 544-9240

This newsletter was produced on an Apple Macintosh 11 using the desktop publishing application
Pagemaker 4.2. The hardware and software were donated by Apple Computer and the Aldus Corporation.



Make Plans to Attend the 1992 CPSR Annual Meeting

The 1992 CPSR Annual Meeting will be held at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, on October
1 7th and 18th. Speakers will address "teledemocracy," the social issues surrounding digital multi-
media, and a '`technology platform" for promoting the humane development of technology. Call (415)
322-3778 for more information, or see the flyer attached to this newsletter.



If You Move...

Please be sure to notify the CPSR National Office with your new address. The CPSR Newsletter is mailed
bulk rate and the post office will not forward bulk mail. And CPSR can't afford to forward it to you with
first-class postage.