DISQUS

Ordinary Guy · 1 year ago

This is an amazing find and a great article. I place a blog post on my blog pointing back here. I recently wrote an article about PCI and RFID tag tracking on my blog (http://ramblingordinaryguy.blogspot.com/2008/03...) and find our failure to pay attention to this prediction 41 years later both frightening and amusing at the same time.

A great article.

Dane · 1 year ago

OOPS! This isn't Arthur (A.) Miller the famous author -- this Arthur R. Miller is a legal guru. Notice how the cover has "lawyer's critique." Either way, it's a fantastic find!!

Not telling · 1 year ago

Great read. Still very much applicable today.

zippyspincycle · 1 year ago

Terrific find--will share this with my students. But why, oh why, did you not include Bob & Ray's take on the topic (p 58 of that issue)? (OK, fair use and all that...)

Filepromptdotcom · 1 year ago

Nice piece of history, and still true

http://www.fileprompt.com

Charlie · 1 year ago

zippy: Just haven't gotten to it, I will soon.

RB · 1 year ago

Amazing article that gets one thing wrong - the danger is even greater than Miller predicted.

spootmonkey · 1 year ago

Great find and a amzing article... Could I repost it with link on you?

nlpnt · 1 year ago

Scary.
Perhaps the biggest change is that day-to-day exposure to PCs has givien a well-deserved beating to the notion of The Computer as omniscient and infallible!
I had seen on "Countdown" just this night that the government has been giving credit bureaus access to the terror watch list...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/2390845...

Tim · 1 year ago

Taking distrust and paranoia to unprecedented levels in 1967. Nice.

Charlie · 1 year ago

Tim » You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

Warren Keiner · 1 year ago

Coincidentally, the other Arthur Miller, the author of the Crucible, also has important roots
to The University of Michigan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Miller

Benzene · 1 year ago

The best part of this article is that he correctly assumes that people don't change along with the technology. Every other "inventions of tomorrow" article seems to think we'll all melt down our guns to make computer chips and flying cars and start an automated utopia. Miller realizes that people will continue to be jerks and correctly assumes that a national network might require regulation and security.

ARPAnet was built just a couple years after he wrote this. In a way, he got this in just in time.

Albatross · 1 year ago

"Arthur Miller" is apparently a pseudonym for Cassandra ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra )

Warren · 1 year ago

Cassandra. Very good allegory :) Thanks!

Toronto · 1 year ago

So, can we get a link to the Bob and Ray article, too?

/pd · 1 year ago

This one brillent find .. thank you for sharing !!

Barbara R · 1 year ago

There was a series of Reith Lectures on the BBC years ago, which focussed on the proliferation of data, both "good" and "bad" and it's propensity to clog everything up, since the "bad" data was indestinguishable from the "good" many times. The arguement, put crudely, was that in an oral society ideas that proved useless tended to get forgotten and good ideas were passed around, providing an evolution of ideas. Once information was permanently recorded the rubbish would mount up and be almost impossible to get rid of. Just check out the Internet to verify this.
I used to wory a lot about this, but you know what? Human ingenuity usually prevails and good ideas are still passed around, albeit often informally. Just make sure your friends are not too gullible and exchange information with them freely and it will probably all work out ok.

Hello World · 1 year ago

nice post my main hombre man supreme pimp ya

Mike · 1 year ago

Our cell phones, ez-pass and other devices, track where we are, every email and comment is saved, our credit card purchases are tracked, our grocery stores keep track of how much milk we buy, but I wouldn't worry too much. I mean they are doing it for our own good... right?

Marc · 1 year ago

zippyspincycle, Toronto: Here's apparently a copy of "Boby & Ray's take on it":

http://limulus.net/blog/eric/2005/05/12/the_day...

(otherwise try searching for the title "The day the computers got Waldon Ashenfelter")