The Digital Chronicle

THE SILICON TYRANNY: ARE WE TRADING OUR PRIVACY FOR SPEED?

By William Safire

As the decade comes to a close, we find ourselves surrounded by the quiet hum of microprocessors. From automated teller machines on main street to desktop terminals in local elementary schools, the rapid digitization of daily life is heralded by vendor and venture capitalist alike as an unmixed good. Yet beneath the convenience of instant data processing lies an uncomfortable truth about the world we are so eagerly building.

The recent panic surrounding malicious floppy diskettes arriving through the postal system should serve as a stark warning. We have hastily interconnected our corporate and civic infrastructure without considering the sheer vulnerability of open systems. By trusting digital media with our most sensitive records, we surrender meaningful control over our personal data to whoever happens to hold the master key.

When every record is digitized and every workstation is networked, the line between public convenience and private exposure dissolves. We do not advocate for a reactionary retreat to paper ledgers. However, if the coming decade is to be defined by global digital networking, our legal frameworks must evolve much faster than the silicon chips driving them.

THE MYTH OF THE PAPERLESS OFFICE

By William F. Buckley Jr.

For half a decade, computer evangelists have promised the imminent arrival of the paperless office. We were assured that magnetic tape and floppy disks would liberate the modern administrator from the tyranny of file cabinets and Manila folders. Instead, the ubiquitous laser printer has rendered the American office a sprawling wasteland of printed drafts and re-formatted memos.

The delusion lies in the assumption that electronic efficiency naturally breeds human restraint. When producing a ten-page report requires nothing more than pressing a keystroke, executives produce ten pages where two would have sufficed. Technology has not eliminated paperwork; it has merely democratized the capacity to generate paper clutter at unprecedented speeds.

THE DECENTRALIZED FUTURE OF WORK

By Ellen Goodman

While corporate executives fuss over laser printers, a quieter shift is occurring in the home. The arrival of affordable modems and home terminals is beginning to blur the line between the office and the living room. For working parents, the prospect of telecommuting offers a tempting promise of flexibility.

Yet we must ask what happens to community when the workplace dissolves into isolated home offices. When the water cooler is replaced by an electronic bulletin board, we risk trading human camaraderie for transactional efficiency. We may gain flexibility in our schedules, but at the cost of the social fabric that binds local neighborhoods together.

COMPUTERS IN CLASSROOMS: A NOBLE DISTRACTION

By George Will

School boards across the country are scrambling to allocate municipal budgets for desktop terminals, convinced that exposure to keyboard commands is the key to future prosperity. Yet learning to operate software is not the same as learning to think.

A computer screen can deliver data, but it cannot teach logic, rhetoric, or historical perspective. In our rush to make every student computer-literate, we risk displacing the foundational discipline of reading and writing. A generation that knows how to execute a command prompt but cannot construct a coherent essay is hardly an improvement over the past.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Re: The Home Lab Revolution

Your recent coverage of residential computing enthusiasts exaggerates the technical barrier to entry. Any motivated tinkerer can wire a serial link between two personal computers with a standard soldering iron and a thorough reading of MS-DOS technical manuals. The decentralization of computing power away from corporate mainframes and into home basements is the ultimate democratizing force of our era. Let the kids hack.

— Arthur C., Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Re: Modern Postal Threats

It is astonishing that software capable of locking hard drives can be distributed wholesale through standard international mail without oversight. Systems administrators should not have to double as bomb squad techs for digital media. Until magnetic media can be authenticated at the distribution level, no unverified diskette should ever make contact with a commercial drive head.

— Eleanor M., White Plains, N.Y.