Subject: Computers&SocialChange: The Conferences

From: [email-masked] (Peter Miller)
Date: Sun, 7 Jun 1992 05:34:11 -0700

6/7/92 - 1

6/6/92

OK, folks, here is a draft on the conference(s). It's woefully inadequate to
the task but it does have some of the orientations and sensibilities I'm trying
for even if there's still lots missing. What I'd like to do is two or three
things with your help. First, some specific feedback and suggestions to
incorporate and add-in would be welcome, just about anything you think's
important. I'm sure I needn't point out gaps and please do disagree with any
"judgments" I've made. I'd like to incorporate and expand this for the upcoming
issue of Impact with an eye towards a second revision with more stuff on DIAC
for a CPSR and/or more general audience. I'd like to incorporate stuff directly
into the piece and also include sidebars on the workshops (or other aspects),
so you can be as expansive about anything you think would be useful to let
folks know about.

Resurgamus,
Peter Miller

COMPUTERS AND SOCIAL CHANGE: THE CONFERENCES

The second annual New England Computers and Social Change Conference was
officially scheduled for Friday and Saturday, April 24 and 25, at Northeastern
University, on the second and third floors of the Ell Student Center just
behind the main quad at the Huntington Avenue MBTA stop. It got something of a
quasi-official opening two days earlier, a few blocks farther downtown, on
Clarendon Street, in the New England Life Hall where the Boston Computer
Society's General Meeting hosted a panel on the the rise of Electronic Bulletin
Boards and threats to our First Amendment freedoms. With Mike Godwin from the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, Marc Rotenberg from the Washington office of
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR), Tom Hemmes (Foley,
Hoag and Elio), and Harvey Silverglate (Silverglate and Good), it was as good
as any program starring four lawyers could be.

The conference proper opened Friday at noon. The tables in the Resource
Room--actually the periphery of the main ballroom where all the keynote
programs and Saturday's lunch took place--were peopled by a good range of
community and technical group reps having as good a time talking with one
another as with the conference participants. The whole conference was like that
in a sense. Elyssa Abruzzo from Gifts in Kind/United Way was right at the
entrance, meeting in person folks she had talked with for years over the phone,
chatting about their software donations program and the terrible situation with
the national office. There was a smattering of for-profit groups which assisted
community-based organizations and nonprofits, there in large part because of
active cross-over ties--the Telluride Group (its President, Jeff Behrens, is
director of NPAP, the BCS NonProfit Assistance Program), BTC (Born to Code)
with its donor and volunteer tracking software (principal Shirley Terry has
been a Boston community activist for many years), and the Trieschman Center
(which had just received a boost from the BCS Public Services Committee for its
summer Mental Heath/Informations Systems Resource conference). The Institute
for Health Policy, Research and Education under the Department of Health and
Hospitals was showing off MicroMax, designed for human service personnel to
assist in locating benefits for low-income clients (Stefanie Whaley had worked
for many years at EDC, the Education Development Center in Newton, and was a
volunteer at the Somerville Community Computing Center).  Computer technology
assistance groupsQNPAP, the Information Technology Assistance Program (NH),
NonProfit Computing (NY), the Technology Education Council of Somerville, the
East West Education Development Foundation, CPSR, PeaceNet, Global Link, the
Lotus Philanthropy Program, the Coalition on New Office TechnologyQmixed with
community groups themselves, from UMass/Boston College of Public and Community
Service (recently evicted from their downtown center campus where they had
hosted last year's founding Computers and Social Change Conference), Community
Jobs, Survival News (official newspaper of the National Welfare Rights
Organization), Haymarket People's FundQand, of course, reps from many of the 40
or 50 BCS special interest and user groups. All told, more than half of the 42
or so conference cosponsors had a lively presence.

The first overall impression pretty generally shared by the organizers lasted
through to the end: "The numbers weren't great but everything else was." The
conference directory listed 181 workshop presenters and participants; this
year's was planned well enough to accomodate twice that number.  While it
wasn't the crowded chaos and intensity of version 1.0 at the UMass/Boston CPCS
downtown center, the networking was looser, much easier and just as rewarding.

After welcomes by conference chair Coralee Whitcomb and BCS Public Service
chair Dan DiBartolomeo, the Technology at Work panel officially began the
conference program as the first of four scheduled keynotes and 27 workshops,
lead by three women, in contrast to all the white males leading off the
previous year: Elaine Bernard, Executive Director of the Harvard Trade Union
Porgram; Judy Perrolle, Professor of Sociology at Northeastern, and Barbara
Garson, author of The Electronic Sweatshop, about how computers are
transforming the office of the future into the factory of the past.  Barbara
told the story from her book about the transformation which took place in the
Boston Welfare Department when computers arrived, a move which had been
initially lobbied for by the social workers themselves but whose actual
implementation was ominously signified by the change in title from Social
Worker to Financial Assistance Worker or Eligibility Technician.  Wayne Clark,
conference program coordinator and panel moderator, introduced Judy Perrolle as
author of a book entitled Computers and Social Change (true) which was about
the same theme as the conference (false). Judy demured from explaining that her
book was really a theoretically ambitious attempt to show how to begin to think
about computers in an academic context (sociology), using Max Weber as the
visionary guide on theme. The jovial, good-natured exchange between Wayne and
Judy reflected the ambiance of the conference itself. The three panelists later
ended up in one of the afternoon workshops together. As Barbara Garson put it,
just the opportunity for the three of them to meet and talk with each other was
worth the trip.  She left an armload of her books at the registration table
when she had to leave for New York later that afternoon; they sold out quickly.
      
In contrast with the previous year, there was more active organizational
involvement from the community group sideQCPCS, Survival News, Haymarket
People's Fund, and the Mass Association of Community Development Corporations
(MACDC), in particular, though given the large number of community group
cosponsors, their more active and widespread involvement in the future would be
extremely useful. CPSR, thanks in large part to Coralee, who also serves as
president of the Boston chapter, was much more involved this year with
organizers, workshop leaders and participants. CPSR's presence was also strong
because of Gary Chapman's work with the 21st Century Project and the
substantial Rockefeller grant to support this effort for redirecting research
and development efforts towards civilian and peacetime needs.  Although the
Massachusetts Environmental Lobby has not come as far along as its promise of
last year and the active presence of SEIU and other unions from last year was
absent this time, the workshop "Toward a Responsible National Technologhy
Policy: Redirecting U.S. Industrial Policy Toward Rebuilding Communities,"
jointly presented by Gary and Rand Wilson, who is with the Campaign for
Responsible Technology and the Labor Resource Center indicated the growing
environmental and labor involvement and alliance with computer technology
progressives concerned with its democratic use and development.

There were some organizational losses, to be sure.  The BCS handicapped special
interest groups which had both conference planners and workshops the previous
year couldn't manage either this time. Last year BCS President Tracy Licklider
was a vocal leader in calling for the delivery of good technical assistance and
support to the community; in his place this year was a somewhat less
substantial, about-to-be-announced new BCS president. Nonetheless, overall the
BCS itself has actually become much more involved. The board and staff are much
more supportive of the conference being an important part of BCS Public Service
identity. The BCS Mac Group--thanks to Pete Smith and Ken Sargent--and the BCS
PC group, thanks largely to its president Bill Claff as well as the active
presence of the BCS Women's Group which sprang from its IBM-PC users, are now
much more integrated not only into the conference but also into BCS public
services in general. NPAP, the Non-Profit Assistance Program, has grown since
last year and was active in the workshops as well as the Resource Room. BCS was
not only about to get a new President but also its first public service staff
coordinator.

The afternoon workshops were sparse in places and, interestingly, the one that
drew the most interest was on electronic networks, the way in which electronic
mail and resources help communities of common interest organize themselves, how
the Internet, the network of networks, is evolving, and how Mass On-Line, an
effort to make Internet access available for public interest use, is coming
along.  Since Ed Markey, chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications,
was rescheduled from Friday to Saturday morning, the afternoon was open to end
fairly casually and upbeat in the Resource Room. No formal evening event was
planned, and Friday night found the conference organizers all celebrating at
Skipjack's on Route 9 in Brookline, hosted with spur-of-the-moment graciousness
by Andy Shapiro and the Interface Group.

Conference planners already knew that Ed Markey, who had been rescheduled to
Saturday morning a few weeks previously, would not be coming nor would any
representative from his office, the last of whom called two days before the
conference to ask for travel money. This was the week which began with word of
Markey's involvement with the bounced checks in the House of Representatives.
In his place the conference had already arranged for Geoff Sears, President of
the Institute for Global Communcations, parent organization for PeaceNet and
EcoNet.

Geoff Sears signified both the growing IGC/PeaceNet presence in the Boston area
as well as the general growth in Boston/Bay Area community computing ties
which, despite the commonalities and shared culture between the 128 Belt and
Silicon Valley, are very recent as far as the technology and social change
movement goes (with the exception of CPSR). Last year Howard Frederick,
National Director of PeaceNet, keynoted the first New England Conference (BCS
Update, November 1991) and, as one result, keynoted the New York conference a
few months later (Impact, January 1992), a conference, incidentally, which did
not take place this year. Charlie Rosenberg was introduced as the official
PeaceNet rep in the area (617/524-6273, [email-masked]).

As to the wider ties, Tom White, circulation director for the Whole Earth
Review, sent a box of the winter '91 Questioning Technology issue as an
expression of solidarity and best wishes for the conference. Copies were given
to conference organizers with the remainder distributed by an announced drawing
open to any conference participant.

Geoff is modest. Upon being asked for a biographical blurb for intro purposes,
he sent the following:

Born in California 6/15/61.  degrees in mechanical & civil engineering from
stanford U.  studied russian at Leningrad State U; used to speak Russian very
well; now it's pretty rusty.  built & tested solar heating equipment for small
engineering company. lived 2 years in Philippines as VIA volunteer; traveled
extensively in Philippines, Indonesia.  worked at IGC since April, 1988;
director of IGC since July 1988.  discovered use of modems for social action
while in Philippines.

hope that's enough!
- geoff

I was involved in two workshops on Saturday--on the Community Computer Center
Movement in the morning, Assisting Nonprofits with Computer Technology in the
afternoon. Both were incredibly well attended by panelist/presenters as well as
participants, though I have yet to see any of the evaluations. Mel King's
keynote closing was refreshing for his awesome presence and suddenly the
audience was as integrated as any community technology group I've ever seen, a
fitting close.

The organizers will be getting together sometime soon for a criticism/
self-cricism good time review and in preparation for next year.

One Week Later: Computers and Social Change Conference II, Berkeley, CA

"DIAC" or the "Directions and Implications in Advanced Computing" Conference is
by no means a "Computers and Social Change" West.  It's sponsored by Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility and cosponsored by a number of other
organizations, some with a lot of vowels in their acronyms, like IEEE, AAAI,
ACM SIGCHI, ACM SIGCAS, and the BCS Social Impact group, so the social change
emphasis comes squarely from the side of the professionals.

This was DIAC #4. It's grown in stature and prominence over the years as has
CPSR. Originally begun as the scientific/technological opposition to Star Wars
in the early 80's, in 1984 CPSR/Boston organized a demonstration outside a
local seminar on "Battlefield/AI (Artificial Intelligence) Robotics" which
attracted national media attention because of the inclusion among the marchers
of a rented R2-D2 robot with a sign reading: "Don't worry--nothing can possible
go worng."

Through the 80's, CPSR chapters formed across the country and the organization
developed. CPSR became involved with groups like International Physicians for
the Prevention of Nuclear War and undertook numerous anti-SDI research, writing
and demonstration projects with CPSR/Seattle member Jon Jacky publishing "Star
Wars Defense Won't Compete" in the Atlantic Monthly in 1985. Other programs
were developed--in Civil Liberties and Privacy, leading to the establishment of
a Washington office headed by Marc Rotenberg (brother of BCS founder John); on
computers and the workplace, leading to a recurring national conference on
Participatory Design (think of what would have happened had those Boston Social
Workers been able to help design the system there were to use); and examining
federal funding for scientific research which led to the 21st Century Project.
CPSR has developed programs in computers and education, women in computer
science, and initiated DIAC as a biannual national gathering.

Actually, it's not quite true to say that the social change orientation of this
year's conference came solely from the side of the professionals.  The Los
Angeles riots sparked by the Rodney King decision began Wednesday night. There
was a massive demonstration and bust of hundreds of demonstrators at Glide
Memorial Church in San Francisco. Just south of the Berkeley campus, the stores
on Telegraph and Dwight were boarded up for many blocks and on Saturday noon
there was a growing gathering at People's Park, eerily reminiscent for those
who had been in Berkeley in earlier decades.

"The current federal R&D budget is a welfare program for computer scientists,"
said Gary Chapman, speaking for himself, in one of the more dramatic moments of
the conference. Saturday was a solid day of keynotes which all 80 or so of us
went through together except for lunch.

One of the major things I learned was that when you say "community computing"
or "computers and social change" in the Bay Area and in certain other circles,
it's inevitably an on-line project of some sort (though within a certain
community computing karass Glide Memorial does present a project of major
interest). That was clear from the opening address, "Innkeeping in Cyberspace,"
on building communities with online tools, with John Coate, well-known
Community Builder at the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), now Director of
Interactive Services for 101 OnLine.

The 225 page book of DIAC proceedings, with summaries and papers from all the
keynoters and workshop presenters, is an incredibly useful resouce.  While the
second keynote, "Computer Networks in the Workplace: Factors Affecting the Use
of Electronic Communications," reiterated the preoccupation with online
resources, it also pointed up the weaknesses of CPSR's academic orientation
("Faculty who are given on orientation to on-line systems tend to use them more
than those who don't.") The presentation by Hal Sackman from Cal State
University at LA, on "Computer Workstations: The Occupational Hazard of the
21st Century" demanded comparison with Karen Van Kooy's Coalition for a New
Office Technology workshop on "Computers and Repetitive Strain Injury" a week
earlier in Boston. Sackman's paper and presentation were expansive and
definitive--key words, musculoskeletal and repetitive motion illness, visual
morbidity at the VDT, potential workstation hazards with eletromagnetic fields,
psychoneuroimmunological stress syndromes, references. The CNOT workshop was
presented in a context of groups actively involved in the struggle against new
office technology and trying to define and shape that technology in more
liberating ways.

Pavel Curtis, Xerox PARC, gave the first of his three presentations before
lunch. As an individual (as well as showman), he defined this conference as
much as anyone, beginning here with a presentation on MUDDING: the social
phenomena in text-based virtual realities. According to the abstract: "A MUD
(Multi-User Dungeon or, sometimes, Multi-User Dimension) is a
network-accessible, multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose
user interface is entirely textual. Participants (usually called players) have
the appearance of being situated in an artificially-constructed place that also
contains those other players who are connected at the same time.  Players can
communicate easily with each other in real time. This virtual gathering place
has many of the social attributes of other places, and many of the usual social
mechanisms operate there. Certain attributes of this virtual place, however,
tend to have significant effects on social phenomena, leading to new mechanisms
and modes of behavior not usually seen 'IRL' (in real life)."

The paper and the presentation relate Pavel's experiences and observations from
having created and maintained a MUD for over a year.

So much on telecommunications seemed quite a distance from Computers and Social
Change, the most extended presentation and discussion part of the session
revolved around the whys, combinations, and permutations of male and female
players taking male, female and gender-neutral names and identities. Much of
the MUDDING/virtual reality discussions which took place throughout the
conference after this returned to those who spend 20, 40, 70 hours a week
hooked to fanciful, online worlds. The occasional points about on-line
pathology gave an interesting perspective on the conference and its
participants.

Gary Chapman's comment about "Funding Computer Science R&D" being a form of
welfare came during the afternoon panel and put the unsuspecting Joel Yudken on
the defensive for his defense-funded project on regional and industrial
economics at Rutgers, and one sensed that many in the audience had only
infrequent occasion to direct their anger at any individual in particular. The
first day ended with a panel discussion on, of course, Virtual Society and
Virtual Community, closing remarks by CPSR President Eric Roberts, and a
cocktail party to welcome Evelyn Pine to her new position as Managing Director
of CPSR, over at the International House, on Piedmont on the other side of the
campus, giving those who chose to walk another (or a first) opportunity to see
the boarded up store fronts south of campus.

There were six or eight or so of us at DIAC from Boston. I had received a
mailing during the week before to elect CPSR national board members for the
coming year, and was pleased to see a ballot sheet for Steve Miller, formerly
with the media project at Urban Planning Aid, at the UMass/Boston School of
Continuing Education, later with the Lotus Development Corporation where he was
founding editor of Lotus Magazine, later at the Kennedy School of Government,
now with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Office of Technology Planning.
Steve organized last year's Computers and Social Change workshop on Getting
Access to Public Information. I was invited to DIAC to do a workshop proposal
on "Defining the Community Computing Movement: Some projects in and around
Boston" and got officially sent by the Technology Education Council of
Somerville as Director of the Somerville Community Computing Center and by the
BCS as a Public Service Activist.

Sunday consisted of three parallel workshop sessions with four or five
concurrent offerings and a closing panel of special interest to computer
professionals of all sorts on what's happening with the jobs.

The early afternoon workshop on "Examining Different Approaches to Community
Access to Telecommunications Systems" was listed as being given by Evelyn Pine,
up until recently Director of Community Memory, with terminals in laundromats,
libraries and throughout town to promote community dialogue, bartering, job
searches and other services. The workshop ended up including a presentation on
Community Memory (see page ____), CruzIO in Santa Cruz which has tied together
people who are on different electronic networks, SFNet which has home
subscribers and terminals in local bars and coffee houses with quarter slots,
and the I-Tel 101 OnLine project which gives people an easy-to-use, portable,
toaster-size terminal which attaches to their phone jacks when they purchase
information, education, and recreational services and is based on a similar
system in France.  It's not surprising that an electronic discussion
group/mailing "community-access" list/conference has emerged from this
workshop.

After the what is happening with computer jobs panel, DIAC was closed by
Coralee Whitcomb, who had opened Computers and Social Change conference eight
days earlier on the other side of the country. She gave a moving and eloquent
statement of the timeliness and opportunities at hand, both personally and for
the movement. Two years ago the idea of virtual reality, the theme of the last
DIAC Conference, was academic esoterica--recently the Boston Computer Museum
was flooded by visitors to its day-long virtual reality exhibit.  Three years
ago Coralee wasn't even a member of CPSR; now she was on its national board.
Within two weeks she would be the first BCS Public Service program coordinator.

As for me, I got to extend my stay and visit IGC/PeaceNet, the Whole Earth
Review/WELL, and Daniel Ben-Horin, who's the director of CompuMentor, which the
BCS NonProfit Assistance Program is affiliated with and which helps programs
across the country match up and manage technically-skilled computerists with
nonprofits and community groups which need assistance. I got to talk with
people at Apple Community Affairs and HandsNet. My workshop had gone modestly
well and I gave another version farther south a few days later.  There's some
interest in extending/developing conferences for social change constituencies;
there's interest in setting up community computing centers in Santa Cruz, East
Palo Alto and Toronto. I've learned about new publications resources, and
Impact now has a west coast editor. Local activity is on the rise and people
are communicating with one another over vast distances. There's a true "Think
Globally, Act Locally" movement going on. The infrastructure is being built and
the new Committees of Correspondence are forming. All this talk about the
electronic frontier and the early days is really true--the laws have yet to be
established. Yes, it's a time of opportunity indeed.