Date: Sat, 19 Dec 92 20:49:50 PST Reply-To: Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain From: cocot@osc.versant.com (Captain COCOT) To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (SURFPUNK Technical Journal) Subject: [surfpunk-0021] CPSR: Call for Comments About Computing and the Future Keywords: surfpunk, CPSR, public policy, 21st Century Project ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ From: Gary Chapman Subject: Call for Comments About Computing and the Future To: Multiple recipients of list CPSR PLEASE CIRCULATE THIS WHEREVER YOU FEEL IT IS APPROPRIATE BUT ONLY WHERE YOU FEEL IT IS APPROPRIATE AN OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE YOUR SAY ABOUT COMPUTING IN THE FUTURE This is Gary Chapman, director of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, office of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. I edit The CPSR Newsletter, a quarterly publication that goes to all CPSR members and about 400 other people, including a lot of policymakers, members of Congress, administration officials, etc. We're going to try something unusual for the next CPSR Newsletter, and I'm putting out a call for help. We're going to publish a special issue on "What the Clinton Administration Can Do For The Computing Profession and the Public." I'm sending out this message to ask people to send me SHORT contributions to this issue, just brief comments about what the new administration can do to help support computing in the United States, or perhaps the world. Here are a few basic guidelines for these submissions: 1. SHORT MEANS SHORT -- In order to publish as many of these as we can, we need to keep each contribution to about 100-150 words, max, one or two paragraphs. In fact, anything longer will probably be eliminated out of fairness to others. 2. YOU MUST IDENTIFY YOURSELF -- Again, briefly, with just your name and one line that says something about you, such as Joe Blow or Sally Smith, Programmer, BillyBob Corporation, or Centerville, Ohio, or something like that, whatever you prefer. 3. ADDRESS ISSUES OF PUBLIC POLICY -- In order to make these contributions relevant to the Clinton administration, they should concern issues about which government can or should do something, or stop doing, whatever. These include major issues such as privacy, access to information, computer networks like the Internet or NREN, R&D priorities, equitable access to computers, intellectual property, defense policy, risks to the public, etc. We're not really interested in contributions that are self-serving, parochial, excessively arcane or trivial, belligerently and unconstructively critical, and so on. We will favor messages that discuss the intersection of computing and major issues of concern to the public at large. 4. PLEASE INCLUDE A WORKABLE E-MAIL ADDRESS -- In case I have to get back to you about the text. We won't publish e-mail addresses, I promise. 5. GET ALL CONTRIBUTIONS TO ME BY JANUARY 15, 1993. My e-mail address is chapman@silver.lcs.mit.edu. This is not limited to people in the United States, although overseas contributors will have to make a case for what the Clinton administration should do to help international computing -- the focus will be on U.S. government policy. We're going to try and get this issue into the hands of the key players on computing and high tech policy in the new administration. For the most part we already know who those people are, and we're talking to them about the issues that CPSR is working on. This newsletter will give them a good impression, we hope, of the concerns of the computing profession and people who use computer networks. Consider this an opportunity for a kind of "hard copy" town hall. Thanks for your help! Get those messages coming! Gary Chapman Coordinator The 21st Century Project Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Cambridge, MA chapman@silver.lcs.mit.edu ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ The SURFPUNK Technical Journal is a dangerous multinational hacker zine originating near BARRNET in the fashionable western arm of the northern California matrix. Quantum Californians appear in one of two states, spin surf or spin punk. Undetected, we are both, or might be neither. ________________________________________________________________________ Send postings to , subscription requests to . MIME encouraged. Xanalogical archive access soon. Once or twice is good for your soul. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________