GRAVITY TWENTY -- Monday, October 5, 1992

Yesterday's note was something of a bombshell, as I ventured into one
particular brand of idealism without backing it up. Many of you are
perhaps wondering what relevence the Nine Principles have to the
information technology I'm calling Gravity.

I need to clarify my intentions.

Seven years ago, I took a course with Steven Goldman called "Science and Technology in Society". In this course, I learned one very important thing. The social implications of a new technology are paramount, and ought to be considered. The high degree of specialization that we find today is unfortunate, even dangerous. The toolmakers don't have the time or the training to consider the social implications of their inventions, and the "humanists" don't have the technical know-how to foresee what might be made and what good this can achieve. This is a problem. We need to spend some time thinking about what to use our technology for.

The new electronic medium will have enormous social implications. Just as television, radio, and print have greatly changed our society, this new medium will have a huge impact, especially because of its interactive nature. I'd say it's a fair bet that the consumer-minded world we live in was a direct result of television, radio, and mass-produced print. What started innocently enough with dancing cigarette packs during the Ed Sullivan show has turned into a vehicle for mass-hypnosis... and this scares me. I believe that much of what is wrong (or at least uninspired) about our society has to do with the ideals that were (perhaps unintentionally) incorporated into our existing mediums of information.

Here's my point: We now have power to change things. We're on the verge of a vastly influential medium, one that will profoundly effect our society, and by discussing ideals along with technology, we now have the power to alter the outcome... to solve some of our problems... to make the world a better place to live.

Gravity as a technology can be discussed without the principles. It can be used quite effectively without any talk of ideals. But the principles are vital to our current discussion because they tell of my intentions, and because all along I've wondered What To Do With It.

A revolution is beginning, a cognitive one. My intention is to underline the fact that we need to build some useful idealism into our technical tools before the big changes come.

Which ideals are best? Let's discuss this along the way.

Tomorrow: back to the nitty-gritty.

From: Joe Lucia , Lehigh Computing Center