A Guerrilla Guide to the Computer Revolution

The war is over and they have won. The large-scale invasion everyone had feared was accomplished with very little difficulty. In fact, they had our full and enthusiastic cooperation. Now it's too late. The computer people are in control.

Don't look so innocent, you filthy collaborator! When you were first contacted, you could have given just name, rank and serial number. But no, you had to elaborate. You told them where you lived, how many kids you had, what your favorite TV show was, what your test scores were in high school. Face it; you gave them your authorized biography and a complete psychological profile.

That was the first wave. The information gathering. The reconnaissance. You went along because that was the system. Help them so they could help you. You did want that loan, didn't you? You did want to go to college. And you couldn't have done without all that insurance, could you? How could you have known back then that, in the Eighties, the most valuable commodity would not be gold or oil or even food--it would be information? Pure, raw knowledge. By the time you found that out, it was too late. And the information, our lifeblood, had been hidden away, stored in computer memory banks. They had access, you didn't. The coup had begun. It was now time to launch the second wave. That came in 1974.

You probably recall that attack. The computer people sent out thousands of drones. They were so small and harmless-looking that everybody welcomed them into their homes. Disguised as pocket calculators, these drones swept the nation--and the world. They hit us where it hurt the most--in our basic laziness. Like some sinister narcotic released in the water supply, they created a dependence in young and old. By the second year of their occupation, there were few among us who would even attempt long division anymore without their aid.

The success of the second wave was all that was needed. The computer people were encouraged. If the little drones encountered no resistance, who would be tough enough to withstand the onslaught of their big guns? So it was that the computer people constructed the Altair 8800, destined to be the most devastating weapon in the arsenal of drones, the first home computer. Home computer. Say it to yourself. It almost has a ring of respectability. Like family car. "Put one of these babies in your house and you got Fat City, son," they told us. "It's just a machine, a slave, really. It'll do all those menial tasks you wouldn't dirty your hands with. Don't you understand, I'm talking Easy Street?"

We didn't understand, but some of us bought the line--as well as one of the computers that succeeded the 8800. Now there are about 550,000 of them in our homes and businesses, and the number is growing. Even so, that half million or so represents the end of life as we knew it. Things are going to be radically different from here on. The computer people have us by the short hairs and they're not going to let go, not till every one of us is paired with a drone. The only thing left to do is to start some sort of underground, a guerrilla force of concerned people. We've got to learn everything we can about these drones in order not to be their drones. Starting yesterday.

•

Learning about computers isn't easy, because neither the computer people nor the drones speak English. Home computers speak BASIC, which isn't English. The computer people speak a dialect known as Acronym. It sounds like English but is peppered with unintelligible gibberish. A typical exchange might go:

"How much RAM and ROM in your PET?"

"Eight K in ROM, sixteen K in RAM, expandable, of course."

While a good deal of information is contained in that conversation, there are few people outside Silicon Valley, California, who could decipher it. Silicon Valley is ground zero in the computer explosion. It's located in Santa Clara County and contains one of the major complexes of computer manufacturing. Sort of a Stonehenge for the worship of the microprocessor chip. To understand computers, you must understand microprocessors. Luckily, they are very simple devices.

A microprocessor is a quarter-inch-square slice of silicon containing upwards of 20,000 transistors. Each is either a conductor or a nonconductor. That means, at any given time, some of them are off and some of them are on. In a happy coincidence, this on-off, positive-negative configuration corresponds to the binary system, a way of writing numbers using only two digits, I and 0. For example, seven in the binary system would read 0111, 50 would be 110010. Thus, it's possible to record numbers on a microprocessor chip simply by leaving some transistors on and some off. Those are the kind of chips in your pocket calculator. For a computer that reads words, you have to go a step further. You need the system for writing letters in the binary system. That is known as the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII). It gives every letter in the alphabet a binary counterpart of seven digits; A becomes 1000001, B becomes 1000010, and so on. ASCII (Asskey) also includes counterparts for things such as # and &, as well as codes for basic computer instructions.

You can probably deduce one computer problem already. Even with 20,000 transistors to the quarter inch, using the binary ASCII code, you can just about fill up a chip with your name and address. The amount of space available in a computer's chips, therefore, is what determines its over-all power.

The unit of space needed to store one binary digit, a 1 or a 0, on a chip is called a bit, which is a short form of BInary digiT. Eight bits amounts to a byte; 1024 bytes equal a kilobyte. Kilobytes are abbreviated as K. The quantity K is the power or capacity of a computer. You can store about a page of text in one kilobyte. If your computer has a power of, say, 32K (which is, in fact, a good amount), that's only 32 pages. Obviously, that's unacceptable. So most of a computer's resident capacity (memory) is used for basic information storage. Those are of two fundamental types: Read Only Memory (ROM), which amounts to a permanent memory; and Random Access Memory (RAM), which is changeable, or, in the language of computers, programmable. For more bytes, you simply use additional storage systems.

Currently, two kinds of outside storage systems are in use in home computers. The first is ordinary cassette tape. Bits of information can be stored on the tape as electrical impulses and read by the computer just as they are read by a tape player. In the case of cassettes, however, the computer is a pretty slow reader. In the fastest mode, it would take a computer 15 seconds to read a tape. In the high-speed world of computers, that's about walking speed. To really fly, you need floppy discs, five- to eight-inch circles of Mylar plastic coated with a magnetic substance similar to that on tape. Those discs, like 45-rpm records, are used with a turntablelike device called a disc drive. A floppy disc can hold from 90,000 to 500,000 bytes. It can be read by the disc drive at a rate of about 100,000 bytes per second, compared with the fastest cassette time of about 540 bytes per second.

What that boils down to is: Take a microprocessor, turn some transistors on and some off with a typewriterlike keyboard, add a TV screen, so you can see what you've done, and--voilà!--you have a computer. In fact, knowing what you now know, you can already decipher the conversation between the computer people mentioned earlier (that is, once you know that PET is short for Personal Electronic Transactor, the newspeak name for a brand of home computer).

Now comes the fun part--getting the computer to do what you want it to do. Anybody who tells you computers are smart machines has been chewing yohimbé bark. They are categorically, pragmatically dumb. They will do only what you tell them to do and only if you say please. While they, as yet, have no feelings, they do have a personality. That personality is most like that of a goat or a mule. You have not known frustration or impatience until you try to deal with a computer.

•

For a good look at computer mentality, you have only to try one of the (continued on page 126)Computer Revolution(continued from page 122) many electronic games that have appeared since the development of the microprocessor. These games are escort drones the computer people sent out to entice you to accept the larger, more obnoxious scourge of the home computer.

In a fit of collaborationist fervor, I allowed one of those to come into my house. It calls itself, with no modesty at all, the Chess Challenger. It's made by an outfit courageously named Fidelity Electronics. The particular model I have is the Sensory Chess Challenger; you move a piece from square to square and sensors below the board record the move. Then the machine analyzes the position and shows you its move via a small light on each square. You must then move the machine's piece to the designated square. (A similar chess-playing drone called Boris Handroid actually has one of those science-fiction robot arms that moves its pieces, but that's a little overdesigned for my taste.) The Challenger has eight levels of play, ranging from beginner to the chess equivalent of hara-kiri. You can tell a lot about a person by the way he plays a game. Watch a golfer miss a two-inch putt and you'll get a good idea of how he'll handle any crisis situation. Chess, because it is a "pure" game, with no chance involved, and because it is easily reduced to simple logic, is the perfect game for learning how computers handle problems and how you may react to computers.

My own reactions ranged from furor to rage. When the drone arrived, I sat for several hours playing game after game. I was enthralled. The machine not only played a good game, it played a perfect game. I lost, constantly. Now, chess is a game that taxes ego as well as intellect, physical stamina as well as mental endurance. In a top-level game between grand masters, the defeated party is often physically exhausted, mentally drained and humiliated just short of suicide. But at least he was beaten by the better man, not by a box of chips and wires. I am no grand master, but the stakes are the same. To add insult to injury, I was playing at level one, the sandbox level. It didn't take me long to realize why I was losing. I was playing casual, friendly chess; the machine was playing hardball, by the book. I'd make what I thought was a devastating, intimidating move. The machine would sit there coolly, blinking the little light that says it's "thinking," and when it had analyzed the board and all possible combinations, it would make the perfect move for that situation. Crunch! Pow! I began to think of my opponent in such terms as sadistic, mean and ruthless. Now we were getting somewhere. Mentally, I took off the gloves. I, too, can be sadistic, mean and ruthless. I can also play by the book. Two days and 30-odd games later, I whupped the sucker at level eight. It was beautiful. It was orgasmic. It was the ultimate triumph of man over machine. It was 4:30 A.M.

When you beat the Challenger, in humble acknowledgment of its defeat, it flashes all 64 lights on its sensor board. I must have sat watching that joyous display in those early-morning hours for a good 15 minutes before shutting it off. And that's when I learned the truth about the machine: It was brutally logical and cold as a handshake at the door. It was neither mentally nor physically exhausted as I was. It had no feelings, so it was certainly not humiliated. The damn thing did not even care that it had lost! My glorious triumph was unceremoniously erased by the pressing of the Reset button.

Granted, my reaction to a simple machine may be considered by some to be irrational. I plead guilty. To multiple offenses. I admit I have been known to kick a vending machine or two when it steals my quarter. I pound on the steering wheel when my car won't start. And I once had a television set that, I swear, would not work properly without a good shot just to the left of its channel selector. Maybe you don't know what I'm talking about. Maybe things work for you. So send yourself a Candy-gram.

If, on the other hand, you understand, as I do, that machinery in general is usually awkward, bothersome, inefficient and the spawning ground for untold evil, then surely you will appreciate the grim prospects in store for a machine that can "think." For those of us in the know, the idea of having one in our home is a fate worse than a tax audit. Besides, this is not just any machine we're talking about. Microprocessors were developed only ten years ago; home computers, only six years ago. By 1985, the seers tell us, 20 percent of all American homes will have some kind of microprocessing unit in them. The sheer speed at which this juggernaut is moving and its potential power in our society are enough to send waves of insecurity, even paranoia, through the strongest of us.

The phenomenon is not like the advent of the car or the television set. Those were merely adjuncts to our lives. The home computer, at its worst, was meant to be the center of our lives, our friend, our helper and our link to the outside world.

•

The raw material for microprocessor chips is sand. Not counting what the Arabs are currently hoarding, we have a supply adequate for the next few centuries, at least.

It would appear, then, that the odds are in favor of the computer people. But before they can complete their takeover, they're going to need something further from us. Our money. That's going to be a little hard to get with their present offerings. The much-heralded drones are simply far too complicated for casual use. You've got to really want to use one to put up with the complexity of the most simple programs.

Part of the problem is that the prototypes were originally designed by computer people for computer people. Nobody really bothered to retool for the common folk. Computer people are a weird lot. First off, they're puzzle junkies by vocation and, in most cases, by avocation as well. They get off on complexity, while the rest of us crave simplicity. They're also pretty whimsical. There is little attempt made to standardize computer manufacturing. Each manufacturer has his own idea of what one should look like and how it should operate. If some jokester decides that it would be nice to have a bud vase built into the central processing unit, all subsequent machines from that maker will have one. And it's up to you to pluck the daisies for it.

That fact has not escaped the attention of the computer people, however. That's why current marketing practices include selling the sizzle and not the steak. The sizzle in this case is computer games. Everybody has them. Most have what amounts to an electronic penny arcade. The idea is: Suck them in with the games and later they'll learn how to do real work with the machines. Truth is, few of us can resist a rip-snorting, buzz-whir electronic pinball package. And by the time the infiltrator is unmasked, you've plunked down a couple of grand for a baby sitter. So forget the games and let's look at a bona fide, no-nonsense drone:

The Commodore PET 2001 is such a machine. It's a top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art home computer. There are simpler computers; there are more involved models, too. But the PET is typical of (continued on page 197)Computer Revolution(continued from page 126) the drones the computer people say we're going to have to learn to live with. It's an impressive-looking piece of hardware. You wouldn't be surprised to find it sitting on the command deck of the Starship Enterprise. It looks powerful, well designed, clean and efficient. The model I was privileged to experiment with came with a cassette drive, a disc drive and a printer. The printer types at high speed anything you punch into the typewriter keyboard. It also has software, or programs. Software is a disc or a cassette tape that contains the programming for various computer functions. Because I fancy myself a man of letters, the word-processing software seemed a good place for me to begin. But the PET also has software for myriad other uses. It comes with a 400-page owner's manual that rivals any trigonometry textbook I've had the displeasure to look at. But that's mostly for doing your own programming. To operate using prethought-out programs, you simply pop a disc into the disc drive. Then the fun starts.

First you type in the BASIC code:

LOAD"*", 8

That instructs the machine to search the disc until it finds the program you are "loading." This will appear on the screen:

SEARCHING FOR *

LOADING

READY

You then type RUN, which is the BASIC code for "run the program." This appears on the screen:

***THE CBM Text Editor***

Lines available: 382

Then it asks you a series of questions about how you want the text to be processed:

How many [lines] for main text?

Printer Device #?

Printer; PET, ASCII OR Spinwriter?

Disc Drive Device #?

When those questions are answered, the following appears:

CBM Text Editor, :X:I:S:C:N: C=1 L=1

It is then necessary to tell the computer how you want the page of text to look when it is printed out. The instructions would look like this:

v lm10:rm70:jul:pp 56:pg 50?

The machine is then set up for you to use.

It is possible in the word-processing mode to insert words into already written text, change paragraphs around, search and replace one word for another, delete sentences, words or whole paragraphs and perform a host of other niceties. Each is accomplished by using equally mysterious commands. That will give you an idea of what you are up against. You will, after some time and practice, memorize the various input codes and the process will go fairly quickly. It is, however, essential that every input code be given the way you're supposed to give it and in the order it should be given. Screw up one, or press the wrong button at the wrong time, and you'll be obliged to start all over again. As I said, you've really got to want to use the damn thing.

What manner of man would deliberately put himself under that kind of pressure? I talked with several. Most gave every outward appearance of being in control of their faculties. A family man, for instance, told me he had purchased his machine to balance the family books. He hasn't been able to get near the thing. The kids play with it all the time. It seems that children have a bizarre affection for it. It's as new to them as it is to their parents, but then, everything in their lives is new to them. They've not existed long enough to know the natural perfidy of machines. "I bought them educational programs," the man told me, "and they are actually using them. Their grades have improved, anyhow. I never have to remind them to do their homework. Of course, they get a lot of use out of the game cassettes, too."

Of course. What's more fun to play, Space Invaders or Boolian algebra?

Another gentleman, who seemed somewhat on edge, is in the process of recording every aspect of his life. If he loses his credit cards, he has account numbers, current balances and the phone numbers of the cancellation offices. He has the birth dates of all extant relatives, with notations on appropriate remembrances. He can tell you to the penny how much he paid for deodorant last year. Or gas. Or heating oil.

Here, obviously, is a programmer. A renegade at that, since by day be brokers stocks. He had no formal training beyond that which came with his job. He learned by reading and practice on his home equipment. His programming is done at night (presumably with the shades drawn). His mission is simple: "I want to know as much about my life as I possibly can. I want to know what the patterns are. People do that when they buy stocks. They investigate and they wait for a trend to emerge. And they act on that information. I want to do that with my life. There are trends there that must be identified and acted upon.

"You laughed about the deodorant. But insignificant things like that are where the money goes. Add 'em all up and they're not so insignificant. I have a candy bar every day I work. It's just a habit. It costs 25 cents. If I eat one every day for the 50 weeks I work, that's $62.50. Suddenly, that candy bar becomes significant. Not that I say, 'Oh, I've gotta stop eating candy bars,' but I do have a useful piece of information. You know where you stand and where you're likely to go. Sure, you could do it with a calculator or with paper and pencil, but the computer can analyze it and you see it in color right on the screen in front of you. Really, when you do it successfully, it's kind of a thrill."

Seeing one's weaknesses itemized in living color may provide thrills for some, but it could prove injurious to the self-indulgent. Especially the enthusiastically self-indulgent. Clearly, though, the home computer can be a boon to some. While checking out a computer at a local shop, I saw an excited old lady coming at me, talking without introduction, as certain old ladies are wont to do, pointing at the machine. "This is it," she said, wagging her finger at the display. "This is just what I needed. I do trees, you know. Genealogy. This will be perfect."

She turned from me and just stared at it. In ecstasy--60ish--and ready to do battle against the forces of revisionism with the latest in high-tech weaponry. It's positively inspirational.

And a little sad. Because few of the people I talked with had the endurance to work out the kind of program she needs. Most relied on preprogrammed systems.

The difficulty of programming has given rise to an all-out battle in the software field. A good program is gold to the computer people. The masochist who developed one of the best chess programs, Microchess, is now a millionaire. It's been estimated that a good program for the strategy board game Othello represents more than a year's work, four to eight hours a day. Since all you need do to rip off somebody's program is type LOAD, it's no wonder piracy is common and a black market has developed. Computer people have taken to putting access codes on their material so it can be read only by those who have the code.

But as valuable as programs, as I alluded to earlier, is information. Just about everything imaginable in terms of raw information has now been converted to computer files. Those libraries, called data bases, have sprung up all over the country. Using a computer and a modem (modulator-demodulator), which amounts to a telephone hookup, you can dial into a data base and your machine will absorb whatever it has in its memory banks. Not surprisingly, you pay for the privilege.

One such public-access data base is called The Source. The Source has in its banks everything from the daily wire services to your horoscope, including movie reviews, market reports and flight schedules. It also has an electronic bulletin board so you can leave a message for a friend across the country, provided he also has a computer, a modem and the price of membership. If you can see the beginning of electronic mail there, you're not alone.

It's obvious the phone lines will soon be humming with rapidly exchanged information. It's also clear that those who have access will have a decided advantage over those who don't. Picture, for example, a scientist working out a new formula. He wants to know if it will work, so he dials into a scientific data base, where, with a simple code, he calls up the work of other scientists who have pondered the same problem. Now he has the benefit of the other scientists' labors, and he has it in the twinkling of a chip. No more will he have to search through volumes of dusty information in ordinary libraries. He won't even have to leave his laboratory. His information is also up to the minute, not sitting in some publisher's mailbox. If the scientist works for a commercial firm, he has saved it time and money. His "computer literacy" makes him a superemployee.

Let me reiterate: This computer explosion is not science fiction. It is happening now, and it's happening at such an incredible rate of speed that new products are often obsolete before they hit the stores. There is no market for used computers. Nobody wants last year's model. The only saving grace is that any computer you buy will still perform the functions for which you bought it, even though a better or different model comes along. Already, for instance, the computer people have developed voice-synthesizer units that allow the computer to talk and voice-recognition systems that allow you to talk back to it.

Keyboards are gradually being simplified, so it's not necessary to use complex commands for simple functions. Disc technology is being combined with laser technology to allow computers to read new high-capacity metal-surfaced discs faster and more efficiently.

Even the basic microprocessor will soon be changed. The speed with which computers can now operate is dependent on the speed of electric signals. Currently, that's about one third the speed of light. In the complexity of a microprocessing board, that speed adds up quickly, sometimes to seconds. We obviously can't wait seconds for something to happen. So a British scientist named Brian Josephson has developed superconducting circuits that make ultrahigh-speed switching between transistors possible. The Josephson Junction switches will allow computers to be made both faster and smaller, because they do not generate as much heat as ordinary switches, and so can be put closer together. IBM calculates that a Josephson computer seven inches on a side would have all the computing power of one of its top-of-the-line, main-frame computers, such as the 370-168, but could do 70,000,000 instructions a second compared with 3,500,000 for the 370-168. A commercial version of that computer may be on line within ten years. Bet you can't wait.

One group of people who can't wait is the Japanese. If you want to scare the wits out of any American, especially an American businessman, all you have to do is whisper two words into his ear: "Japanese technology." We admire German technology, scoff at Russian technology, ridicule French technology, but deep down, we know that no matter what we produce, the wily Japanese can make it faster, better and cheaper. Already, Japanese-made silicon chips are being touted as having far fewer problems than American chips. The Japanese are organized. Private companies, often backed by matching funds from the government, are focusing the fabled Japanese technological expertise on semiconductor research. They've taken the Josephson Junction one step further by finding a way to manufacture it that not only is simpler but results in a more durable product. The real problem with the device in any configuration is that it will operate only at temperatures approaching absolute zero (-273° centigrade). That much ice is a bit unwieldy, so the smart money in Tokyo is on the Fujitsu company's gallium-arsenide circuits. They don't have to be cold to work. Even at room temperature, they can process at a rate of 20 billion units per second. But if you should cool them a bit, that's Ok; they will simply work at twice the speed. Fujitsu is aiming for a switching time of about half that of the Josephson Junction. Its factory should be churning them out by 1983.

The cramming of large amounts of information into very small spaces may seem an esoteric, if not useless, exercise to the untrained eye; but the smaller a computer is, the more portable it is. By the time this technology filters down to home computers, there will be no excuse for anyone not to have his own private drone. Won't it be lovely?

•

How is one supposed to react to this influx of drones? What will the impact be on our personal lives, our businesses, our educational system, our pocketbooks? Like any sane neurotic, I went to the head doctors to find out. I talked with two psychologists who are also computer experts. Such a combination is not unusual. The workings of a computer brain can tell us much about its human counterpart. The first was Dr. Herbert Simon of Carnegie-Mellon University. Dr. Simon is a Nobel laureate and the creator of the computer language BACON. He writes books using his home-computer word processor. The second was Peter Frey, a Northwestern University psychology professor who writes computer programs for Othello.

Simon, at least, was reassuring enough to work in anybody's psycho ward. The question of psychological adjustment to the drones was addressed first.

He didn't see any real problem in that. "We're going to get used to computers. We got used to Mr. Darwin telling us we weren't different from other species. I don't think we're going to suffer any permanent deflation of our egos from being told that there are nonhuman beings that are pretty good at certain kinds of thinking. It's partly a question of whether we think of ourselves as participants in the whole business or we just think it's being done to us. I don't think we should get upset just because a machine can do arithmetic better than we can. I believe most of us will interact with computers as things that will help us with the tasks we face in our lives. When I get up in the morning, I can use my computer to dial in the A.P. wire, if I want. I don't usually want to, but I can. I don't look at that as imposing on me any more than the newspaper boy is when he throws the paper on the porch."

Will we become dependent on them as we have become on calculators? Why not? says Simon. "If you go to India, you'll find a whole lot of people who can do all kinds of arithmetic in their heads that you wouldn't want to attempt. The reason is that paper and pencils are so scarce people have to learn to do things the hard way. I've never been good at addition, so I'm pleased to have the little pocket calculator to do it for me. I carry one around with me all the time."

One of the major concerns people have about the computer revolution is what it's going to do to our privacy. Will all that information stored in computer banks come back to haunt us? Simon isn't worried. "For as many years as I've been an adult, people have been keeping track of whether I pay my bills. I don't know who it is, but somebody! And they've been keeping it on little scraps of paper somewhere. I've never seen those little scraps. Now they're converting it to computers. I could get real worried about that and say these people are going to invade my privacy, keep a dossier on me, blackmail me! Well, all those are possibilities. And since they are possible, the society should do something about it. For example, the society should regulate what can go into such files and it should regulate what access to them should be allowed. Some such regulations have already been passed not only for private files but for Government files as well. I had the pleasure of getting my FBI record recently just to see what the hell was in it.

"So you could say that things are pretty much the way they've always been. But, no, they've changed in one respect: You can establish some kind of reasonable regulation over what a computer has in its files just because it's so systematic and orderly. But you'd have a heck of a time establishing a comparable regulation over those little scraps of paper. I do think, though, that one of the policies we ought to have with computers is to make sure that on important matters, the information they provide is widely available."

But isn't it likely that a great number of people will find it profitable to circumvent any regulations or restrictions? Computer crime is not unheard of. What kind of safeguards can we adopt? Simon scoffs at the prospect of computer criminality. "Sure, there have been some dandy embezzlements, but there were embezzlements long before computers. Any security professional knows that security is measured in hours. You can keep some things more secure than others, but sooner or later, it all leaks out. Our society is full of games like that. We put bars on windows, but somebody has a saw. We'll have crime with or without computers."

The drones invaded our schools long ago as teacher's helper and as the teacher itself. One nightmare vision has students sitting row upon row, staring blankly at their cathode-ray tubes. We've always held that a certain amount of human contact was beneficial in the learning process. Are these kids going to be alienated from their peers--uncommunicative and withdrawn from the lack of this contact? Simon admits there may be a problem. "We should be concerned about anything that would radically change the balance of close, human, one-on-one contact. But I really don't know of anything that says the socializing effect of sitting in a classroom full of students is any greater or any less than sitting in a classroom with students and computers."

Frey takes a slightly different view. "Young people are going to start growing up in an environment that includes computers as a daily tool. They're going to find it a comfortable thing that they can carry under their arms just as they now carry books. True, if you look at the individuals who have been involved in the development and use of computers, there is a tendency for the introverted personality to be the one that's most comfortable in that environment, as opposed to a person who enjoys interacting with other people. But one of the things you must keep in mind is that the new computer revolution goes hand in hand with the revolution in telecommunications. It may be that we'll have to modify extensively the way we define social interaction. We may be communicating less and less on a face-to-face basis. But there will still be some very rich communications. The meeting of minds will occur but on a different level.

"It's also true that the culture shock may be occurring more rapidly than that associated with the auto or the TV. But take the TV. Everybody has been so upset about the fact that Johnny can't read that no one has taken into consideration the fact that that's the older generation's idea of what it means to be an intelligent person. Anyone who can't read is thought to be uneducated. But what's interesting is that we have a whole generation of people growing up in a television environment and it turns out that's the way they learn about the world. The way they're getting their information is very different from the way a person who's 40 or 50 years old gets his. For them, the book is the ultimate source of knowledge. Yet these young people are very savvy and a large portion of their knowledge comes from the TV.

"The major problem in education right now is that very few institutions have started to restructure the way they impart information. We're trying to force kids to use a horse-and-buggy method when they've already had a chance to ride in a convertible.

"I read recently that in Boston, one out of three kids is not in school. They think they can learn more from the television than they can in school. Johnny probably can't read and he can't add, either. But he doesn't need to. There are a lot of skills we have now that are going to be unnecessary in the future. But there are also a lot of skills we have now that we never thought of having. We're going to have to learn to communicate, to educate in a number of ways. We're going to have to modify the basic concept of education. The people on top in the education hierarchy are going to have to scramble to keep up with the people who are coming in to learn or the institution of learning is going to go the way of the dinosaur. After all, the question is, Why should people get together to go to a university when they have computers in their homes hooked up to the Library of Congress through telecommunication devices?"

One of the current catch phrases in computer circles is computer literacy. The implication is that being able to use and talk with a computer will soon be its own exclusive brand of knowledge. The implication is also that a new class will surface among us, a computer class, a new division between the haves and the have-nots. Simon doesn't see the problem as unique. "I don't see this revolution as splitting society into people who have computers and those who don't. You can already divide it into people who have books and people who don't, those who have newspapers and those who don't, people who talk to their neighbors and people who don't."

Frey, on the other hand, sees far-ranging problems. "There will be culture shock involved for a lot of people. If you're concerned about your economic worth to society, whether you're in journalism, business, education, medicine or whatever, those people who have computer skills are going to be a lot more valuable than people who don't. Those who don't will be like someone on a bike competing with someone in a car. There are going to be more and more problems with people who are uneducated. There may be two classes in the end--a welfare class and those who are productive citizens. The computer will increase even the present dichotomy, because there will be less and less use for unskilled labor."

What's the upshot? Should we all go out and buy ourselves a drone? Simon takes a passive view. "Some people should have them. Some may stay away from them. I, for example, haven't looked at a television in I don't know how long. What we have is another technological alternative in the world that we haven't had before. Just like the steam engine in the last century. On the whole, we'll be a lot better off having a wider range of technological possibilities. I like the world better today than I think I would have liked it before steam engines. And I think our descendants will say the same thing about computers. It'll be a more productive world, there'll be less poverty. Maybe computers will help us better understand how the mind works. I don't think we have any more right to be frightened of another computer's being born in the world than in another person's being born."

Frey's outlook is slightly more ominous. "I think everyone will have a computer, not should. The price doesn't matter. Just as it was once thought that only the wealthy would have cars, now there is no one who would think of going around without a driver's license. The computer is going to be an indispensable part of our daily life. In a very short time, people are going to be able to communicate with it by voice. They'll call it Charley. 'Charley, what do you know about the market report for today?' 'Charley, what's the weather going to be like?' Individuals will not be decreased in value; they will be increased, because there will be more they can do. As it turns out, there's nothing we can do about these changes. They are going to occur and the question is whether we adjust to them or fall by the wayside. We've already witnessed what can happen in the American auto industry. For years, unions resisted automation, sometimes with sabotage. Now they're going out of business and cars are coming in from Japan, where they had the foresight to deal with the problem years ago."

•

To buy a home computer now is to get in on the ground floor. The home drone is not going to go away. It will be essential that you have some facility for the multitude of products and services that are going to include this technology.

The fact is that anything and everything can be activated with a memory chip. Some new articles will be useful and some will simply be exploitive. Witness the rash of silly products that came after the introduction of the calculator. Have you ever really found a use for that AM/FM calculator pen you bought several years ago? Already, there is a dishwasher on the market that lets you program it up to six hours in advance. Now, there's something we've been waiting for.

If you decide that you want to become a full-fledged collaborator, there are a few things you should know:

• Computers are expensive. They cost anywhere from $200 for the stripped-down model to several thousands for the top-of-the-line drone with all the peripherals (modems, printers, drives, etc.).

• Software is expensive, $20--$100 per program disc or cassette.

• Repair is expensive. If you liked TV repair, you'll love computer repair. Some of the fastest-growing and highest-paid professions in the world right now are computer programmers and computer-repair people. And fear not; your drone will break down.

If you go to look for one, therefore, stay out of department stores. They seldom have the backup personnel to help you. Instead, go to a reputable outlet. Get friendly with someone there. In fact, if your brother-in-law sells computers, buy one from him and then make the bed in the guest room. For the first few weeks after you get your drone, you're going to need someone around to help get the kinks out of it and you.

• Before you choose a computer, have in mind some specific use for it. Don't depend on games! It might be word processing, or household accounting, or you might want to dial in a data base. Whatever it is, you can then shop around and read around to find the machine that best fits your needs.

• Buy from an established, multifaceted computer company. Right now, there are hundreds of companies operating out of garages. They won't be able to stand the heat in the economic kitchen in the near future. The shakeout should occur sometime in the next couple of years. You don't want to be stuck with a nifty piece of hardware that can no longer be repaired. And you don't want a central processing unit that doesn't interface with new peripherals.

There are still a few battles going on, but the war is technically over. By the end of this decade, the computer revolution will be history. If you're going to survive the occupation, you'll do well to arm yourself now.

"The home computer, at its worst, was meant to be the center of our lives, our link to the outside world."