Book reviews

Mitchell's data on costs are a good deal better than one might expect from a US study conducted outside the telephone companies. Had the author had better access to costs models and data within AT&T, more precise cost estimates would no doubt have been possible. Nevertheless, his discussion of the direct cost of local call metering and billing is particularly interesting. It illustrates the very strong relationship between measurement and accounting costs, and technology. Estimates of the total cost of metering, on an annual basis, range from $50 per line for small electromechanical exchanges to $15 for the large AT&T No I crossbar exchange and between $2 and $5 for ESS electronic exchanges.

The results of applying Mitchell's analytical apparatus to the specific problem of local call pricing in the USA are striking. The full range of sensitivity analyses generate estimates of the change, in total benefits of telephone service ranging from +9% to --3%, but the extremely conservative assumptions used make the upper figure much the more plausible of the two. It implies that, in the USA as a whole, an overall gain in economic efficiency worth $250 million annually would result from introducing optimal usage sensitive

pricing. Adding differential peak/off- peak pricing to the scheme would double or triple these benefits. Mitchell also finds that, although price discrimination between residential and business subscribers is justified in a flat- rate pricing scheme, the greatest benefits of all would be provided by a usage sensitive scheme without discrimination.

Disappointingly, there is little discussion of the issue of 'equity' or the distribution of benefits between different social groups, which has loomed so large in public discussions of usage- sensitive pricing. This is all the more disappointing because the Rand study provides the 'raw material' for such an analysis: it estimates, for example, how far usage sensitive pricing would increase telephone penetration and depress calling rates among low-income groups.

Mitchell's results are so important - and so probably correct, in broad qualitative terms at least - that it seems churlish to carp at detailed points of method. One or two failings do stand out, however. The method used for deriving a family of household demand functions, jointly for connections and for calls, is highly ingenious, given the minimal data. However, several of the simplifying assumptions (such as the

linearity and the common origin value assumed for each of the curves) seem decidedly arbitrary. It would be reassuring to know how far the numerical results would be sensitive to changes in them. Perhaps a weightier criticism is that little or no justification is given for the procedure - very controversial among economists - of aggregating estimates of benefits for individuals or households to give a measure of 'total welfare'. Such an aggregation can be justified in these kinds of cases by an appeal to Kaldor and Hick's principle of 'notional compensation'; but the use of such a procedure surely ought not to be taken for granted without discussion.

Despite these problems, the Rand study will, one hopes, mark the end of the era when telephone planners could get away with vague assertions about the 'social utility' of this or that service, investment plan or pricing scheme. Cost and benefits can be calculated, if only imperfectly. Therefore they should be.

M~haelTyler, Comrnun~ations Studies and

Planning, London, UK

Telecommunications and isolation - view from the past

THE NAKED SUN

by Isaac Asimov

Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Connecticut, 1957

Any review of a 20 year old book demands explanation. A review of a science fiction novel demands more. But The N a k e d Sun is its own justification. Long before the beginnings of 'video teleconferencing', the book described a 'trimensional viewing system'. While this alone might be worth considering, The N a k e d S u n represents Asimov's attempts to probe the sociology that might emerge when a whole planet adopts telework and telesocialisation as its norm. While Asimov's approach is pure speculation, it is at least good speculation, and it deserves special

attention in these days when telework is becoming a popular concept.

The N a k e d S u n is a murder mystery (the roboticist did it) set on the planet Solaria, a former Earth colony. Although Solaria is as large as Earth, its population is rigidly maintained at 20 000 people. The nearest houses are 200 miles away and most are much further. Each Solarian's house is maintained by a large staff of robots.

Massive distances generate massive communica t ion needs. Solaria addresses its needs with the trimensional viewing system (TVS), which creates the illusion that the other party is in the room with you. The system is so perfect that the story's protagonist, Earth's Plainclothesman Baley, is shocked when his first interviewee suddenly disappears.

As a side note, Asimov's reliance on

three-dimensional viewing causes us to wonder about the current general assumption in the teleconferencing literature that television conferencing (which is only 2-D) is 'the next best thing to being there'. The experimental literature has so far failed to uncover striking differences in users' reactions towards 2-D video systems and 1-D audio conferencing systems. Perhaps both video and audio are unconsciously viewed as lying close together on the spectrum of dimensionality - unlikely, admittedly, but an interesting thought.

Solarians differentiate between 'viewing' someone over the tri- mensional viewing system and 'seeing' the person face-to-face, or as they put it, 'in personal presence'. At first, the difference was probably mild, but by the time Baley visits the planet, social mores have crystallised around the

360 T E L E C O M M U N I C A T I O N S POLICY September 1977

distinction. On a light note, when Glenda Delmarre steps naked from a shower while Baley is vieWing, she is surprised by his embarrassment. 'I 'd never do anything like that', she says, 'I mean, just step out of the drier, if anyone were seeing me. It was just viewing' (Asimov's emphasis, p 59).

Other distinctions are more sobering. Over the centuries, Solarians have grown unaccustomed to seeing one another and actually find personal presence painful. Husbands and wives live apart, meeting only for procreation, and seldom even for this reason. These are the lucky Solarians. For others, seeing is such a traumatic shock that they never mate. Words like 'baby', 'children', and 'love' are unmentionable in polite Solarian society, and occupations that require seeing, such as medicine and child care, have less social status than garbage collection in our society. Although Solarian children are at first naturally gregarious, seeing and even touching one another indiscriminately, they are soon socialised into the solitary life.

Asimov explains how the radical

social structure of Solaria evolved. The small population originally made viewing necessary, as noted above. Viewing probably became a status symbol first but gradually changed the social fabric. Dr Aucomt, the planet's sociologist, described the end result this way:

... a Solarian takes pride in not meeting his neighbour. At the same time his estate is so well run by robots and so self-suffiicient that there is no reason for him to have to meet his neighbour. The desire not to do so led to the development of ever more perfect viewing equipment, and as the dewing equipment got better there was less and less need ever to see one's neighbour. (p 117)

A review cannot do justice to the depth and sensitivity of Asimov's social commentary. But one comment bears special mention. When asked what Solaria has lost, Baley replies, 'The tribe, sir. Cooperation between individuals. It is a world of isolated individuals ... The human touch is gone.' In the end, Baley discovers that this isolation has sapped the pioneer strength of Solaria and of Earth's independent former colonies as a group.

Book reviews

Their star is setting, while crowded Earth's star, eclipsed during the early days of space travel, is now rising and bright.

Solaria exists in a distant and improbable future. But the social trends Asimov points to may not be so atypical in their milder manifestations. I know several people who work at home, and they seem to fail into two categories. The first type works frantically to maintain human contact, travelling frequently to share at least lunches. The other type prefers quiet isolation and becomes more isolated as time goes on. Perhaps the isolated ones really were antisocial to begin with and are merely conspicuous because they naturally took to telework first. But, on the other hand, perhaps they are the vanguard of our own Brave New Rural Society.

Raymond R. Panko, College of Business Administration,

University of Hawaii, Honolulu,

Hawaii, USA

Computer misuse - d o we need to legislate?

PRIVACY AND COMPUTERS

by Paul Sieghart

228 pages, Latimer New Dimensions, London, 1976, £6.50

This book is a mixture. It runs to 228 pages, but 89 of these are references, bibliography, glossary and the texts of various reports, laws and regulations on the subject from Europe and the USA. Its five chapters are interestingly entitled 'Privacy'; 'Computers'; 'How can computers put privacy at risk?'; 'How can the risks be guarded against?'; and 'Control r~gimes'. In other words, it is an introduction to the subject by a lawyer who became interested in the general topic in the late 1960s and then continued this general interest into the particular field of computers and privacy. He played a considerable part

in the drafting of the December 1975 White Paper which had been awaited following the July 1972 Younger Report and is now a member of the Data Protection Committee which is charged with the task of suggesting draft legislation to control the use of personal information using electronic data processing machines.

For those who come to this book pristine in their ignorance it is a good, if not comprehensive, introduction. The opening coverage of privacy itself, as a concept, is thought-provoking and, being general and philosophical in its nature, encourages the new enquirer in the (correct) assumption that this is a matter where his own ideas are not necessarily going to be run over by the technology. The layman's guide to computers is useful for those who have kept themselves apart from the definition of this modern phenomenon. And it is here that, with data

transmission, the matter enters maims of specific interest to this journal's readers.

It is in Chapter Three with the implications of computer technology for privacy protection that we get to grips with the real problem of the book. It is in the description of the reasons why computers make a difference, in so far as they do, that the writing loses something of its tightness.

I speak as one who professionally has an interest in privacy only in so far as computers are concerned, but, in my civic dimension, I am also aware that the general area is equally important. The subsequent description of the possible means of controlling computers is comprehensive if limited and the nature of the control methods, together with the examples of methods currently being employed in Sweden, Germany and the USA particularly, gives a general review of the current position,

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