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Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 12:51:35 -0500
From: Bryce Eustace Wilcox <wilcoxb@NAG.CS.COLORADO.EDU>
Subject: File-- CPSR lives down from my expectations

I am writing both to spread information to others, and to gather some
more for myself.  (This is the CuD paradigm isn't it?)  The subject of
my message is the organization known as "Computing Professionals for
Social Responsibility".

  I have seen this organization touted by cyberspace advocates, in CuD
and elsewhere, as an effective political lobby that tries to advance
goals that almost all cyberspace denizens share-- freedom from
censorship, I assumed was meant.  But when I investigated the CPSR
with an eye toward joining I discovered what seemed to me to be a
radical socialist/welfare-state lobby with a thinly veiled and very
active political agenda.  As evidence for this I refer to an article
by James I. Davis, first printed in _The CPSR Newsletter_, Fall, 1993,
and then reprinted in CuD 5.89, entitled:  "Computers and the Poor: a
Brand New Poverty"

       "Short of some radical restructuring of society that work,
       as traditionally conceived, can no longer be the measure
       of how necessities will be distributed, the government's
       ability to respond [to certain social problems] is limited."

  The rest of the article plainly supports the idea that appears as an
implicit assumption in this sentence: that "necessities" are some sort
of collective possession which are not under the control of those that
produce them, but are under the control of some unnamed entity that
will "distribute" them.

  This idea is morally repugnant to me, not to mention personally
threatening, and I quickly lost interest in giving the CPSR my
support.  The reason I am writing CuD is two-fold:

  First, to warn others that CPSR is not simply a cyberspace civil
rights lobby. and

  Second, to ask for some more information.  Is the ideology expressed
by James I. Davis the official stance of the CPSR?  Is it the
prevailing ideology among the membership?  What actions does CPSR take
or intend to take to foster the kind of social change advocated in the
article?

I appreciate any information and constructive discussion that may
ensue.

Bryce Wilcox wilcoxb@cs.colorado.edu

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