the wired-up society - a problem for control engineers

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I the Ulired Abstract-It is commonly envisaged -up Sori Control by C. K. Yuen and E. C. C. Wan that in the future industrialized society every household will possess a com- munication terminal for receiving and transmitting all kinds of information.This promises the prospect of “instant democ- racy,” with continuously gathered public preferences instantly directing political and economic activities. This paper points out the possible instability in the behaviors of such a society, which operates rather like a servomechanism. Communications technology has advanced to the point where one can now quite realistically envisage the prospect of a wired-up society. Every household will be linked in an all-inclusive network capable of transmitting virtually any kind of information. The household terminal will take the place of the telephone and the television set, already nearly indispens- able parts of very many homes in the world, but the terminal will be much more. Not only will it be possible to call up, and see, any person anywhere; not only will one be able to choose from thousands of television programs stored on video tapes and played back on request; but one will also be able to receive any other kinds of information one might need. If one wants today’s news, the weather at city X, the plane schedule for travelling to country Y, or the Dow Jones Index 35 years ago, the network will locate these and deliver them. If one C. K. Yuen is with the Computer Centre, Australian National E. C. C. Wan is with the Department of Anthropology, University of University, Canberra, Australia. Sydney, Sydney, Australia. Engineers e I wishes to read a book, or the London Times of Feb. 6,1936, the network computer will retrieve these from its backing store and display them page by page on one’s terminal screen. It will also be possible to order one’s weekly groceries from the supermarket,atthe same time authorizing the bank to transfer payment between the accounts, by sending out the appropriate message from one’s terminal. T a receive h-is educa- tion, a youngster, or an adult, needs only to switch into the appropriate lessons on the terminal. Hewill see, and be seen by, the teacher giving the lesson .from his home terminal. Not only can one avoid going to the shops or the school, but most white-collar workers can avoid going to the office too, process- ing their paper work at homevia the network instead. For the social scientist the prospect gives both promise and concern. As every individual performs much of his daily activ- ities through the network, these can be easily monitored, depriving him of privacy. On theotherhand, because each person can instantly state his views on iiny matter to the concerned authorities, a responsible government can be con- tinuously guided by the opinion of the public. It is, in fact, possible to imagine the network taking over ’the functions of the government, with political and economic activities directed by a massive computer program, executing according to a set of guidelines, taking into account current conditions and pub- lic opinion. Some possible scenarios are given in [ 11. While social scientists are analyzing the effects on public and private life of such “instant democracy,” we wish to suggest a problem for control and systems engineers. It is to study the stability of the behavior of such a society. To- see why this problem arises, let us refer to Fig. 1, showing the interactien between public opinion and prevailing conditions. The diagram is familiar to every engineer. It cor- responds to the block diagram of a feedback control system. We know that the system is dynamically stable only when the feedback is properly tuned. If it is too slow, too fast, too feeble, or too strong, then the system will show one kind of instability or another. The problem is of course common even now. An obvious example is that of market research, in which producers at- tempt to gauge their production on consumer preferences. Consumers, however, are influenced by the range, utilitarian value, and asthetic attractiveness of the goods available. Ex- ternal conditions like material shortage, climate, or overseas 17

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Page 1: The wired-up society - A problem for control engineers

I the Ulired

Abstract-It is commonly envisaged

-up Sori Control

by C. K. Yuen and

E. C. C. Wan

that in the future industrialized society every household will possess a com- munication terminal for receiving and transmitting all kinds of information. This promises the prospect of “instant democ- racy,” with continuously gathered public preferences instantly directing political and economic activities. This paper points out the possible instability in the behaviors of such a society, which operates rather like a servomechanism.

Communications technology has advanced to the point where one can now quite realistically envisage the prospect of a wired-up society. Every household will be linked in an all-inclusive network capable of transmitting virtually any kind of information. The household terminal will take the place of the telephone and the television set, already nearly indispens- able parts of very many homes in the world, but the terminal will be much more. Not only will it be possible to call up, and see, any person anywhere; not only will one be able to choose from thousands of television programs stored on video tapes and played back on request; but one will also be able to receive any other kinds of information one might need. If one wants today’s news, the weather at city X, the plane schedule for travelling to country Y, or the Dow Jones Index 35 years ago, the network will locate these and deliver them. If one

C. K. Yuen is with the Computer Centre, Australian National

E. C. C. Wan is with the Department of Anthropology, University of University, Canberra, Australia.

Sydney, Sydney, Australia.

Engineers

e I

wishes to read a book, or the London Times of Feb. 6,1936, the network computer will retrieve these from its backing store and display them page by page on one’s terminal screen. It will also be possible to order one’s weekly groceries from the supermarket, at the same time authorizing the bank to transfer payment between the accounts, by sending out the appropriate message from one’s terminal. T a receive h-is educa- tion, a youngster, or an adult, needs only to switch into the appropriate lessons on the terminal. He will see, and be seen by, the teacher giving the lesson .from his home terminal. Not only can one avoid going to the shops or the school, but most white-collar workers can avoid going to the office too, process- ing their paper work at home via the network instead.

For the social scientist the prospect gives both promise and concern. As every individual performs much of his daily activ- ities through the network, these can be easily monitored, depriving him of privacy. On the other hand, because each person can instantly state his views on iiny matter to the concerned authorities, a responsible government can be con- tinuously guided by the opinion of the public. It is, in fact, possible to imagine the network taking over ’the functions of the government, with political and economic activities directed by a massive computer program, executing according to a set of guidelines, taking into account current conditions and pub- lic opinion. Some possible scenarios are given in [ 11.

While social scientists are analyzing the effects on public and private life of such “instant democracy,” we wish to suggest a problem for control and systems engineers. It is to study the stability of the behavior of such a society.

To- see why this problem arises, let us refer to Fig. 1, showing the interactien between public opinion and prevailing conditions. The diagram is familiar to every engineer. I t cor- responds to the block diagram of a feedback control system. We know that the system is dynamically stable only when the feedback is properly tuned. If it is too slow, too fast, too feeble, or too strong, then the system will show one kind of instability or another.

The problem is of course common even now. An obvious example is that of market research, in which producers at- tempt to gauge their production on consumer preferences. Consumers, however, are influenced by the range, utilitarian value, and asthetic attractiveness of the goods available. Ex- ternal conditions like material shortage, climate, or overseas

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Page 2: The wired-up society - A problem for control engineers

I EXTERNAL CURRENT

J

EVENTS COH)ITIONS . . OPINION . Fig. 1.

fashion also play an important part. The mutual interactions of these are quite complex, very different from the corn- paratively simple engineering models, but the same instability problem is present. Gluts and shortages occur, owing mainly to producers’ inability to respond sufficiently rapidly to external events and trends in preferences. Similarly, citizens frequently complain of outmoded legislation or community attitudes, which sometimes cause certain people to adopt extremist actions, which, in turn, generate repressive measures. And we have also seen acute shortages of certain kinds of workers followed soon after by gluts, such as school teachers and Ph.D’s.

In short, we already have the stability problem due to current conditions not changing fast enough with external events and general opinion. I t is, however, far from easy for anyone to think of ways of speeding this up, and certainly it is not the job of control engineers. However, in a wired-up society one could have the problem of general opinion in- fluencing conditions too drastically. Instabilities thus caused would be much harder to live with, but it will be within the competence of engineers to devise ways of damping them.

Let us look at an example, that of stock market trading. In a wired-up society it will obviously be unnecessary to actually handle share scripts. Holdings can be registered electronically. A prospective buyer would poll all the people owning the kinds of shares he wants, or query the file registering prospec- tive sellers. If the prices are right the buyer wiil ask the shares to be registered in his name and have his bank transfer the payment. All this can be done in-an instant.

In this configuration we may consider state of the economy and performance of individual corporations as external effects, trading price trends as current conditions, and traders’ judg- ments as general attitudes. In theory, the external conditions should determine an “inherent value” for each stock, and supply and demand would keep prices close to such inherent values, with higher prices attracting sellers and lower prices attracting buyers. In reality, everybody wants to buy when prices are rising, and sell when they are falling. (That is, the rate of change of prices is often more influential than prices themselves.) In either case general attitudes work towards faster and greater changes in current conditions, rather than damping them.

With the possibility of instantaneous trading, price fluctua- tions would become even faster, and probably more violent as almost everyone can join in the hunt for fortunes, without even leaving their homes.

We can imagine more ludicrous scenarios. For example, suppose an electronic referendum is taken on the question: ‘‘Should we go to nuclear war with nation X?” An overwhelm- ing majority say yes, (assuming that most have built adequate shelters) and a war is duly started. However, life immediately becomes very unpleasant for both warring nations, so most people have a change of heart, and a truce is accepted by both sides. But then people emerge from shelters to inspect damages and get news of relatives, and become enraged by the losses suffered, and so decide to start a war again. And so on.

- .

It is extremely unlikely that the above scenario will actually occur, because people would foresee the unpleasant conse- quences before making their decisions. In other words, some of the instabilities can be prevented by looking ahead. And it is reasonable to expect that in a wired-up society people will be better educated and informed so that each person is capable of fairly far-sighted analysis. We can thus assume the configura- tion of Fig. 2 as a closer model. However, it should not be taken for granted that look-ahead will eliminate instabilities completely. There are several ’reasons. First, in some circum- stances, such as stock trading or diplomacy, accurate look- ahead may be extremely difficult. Second, even when accurate analysis is possible, and there is a clearly wise course of action from the collective point of view, it may be in the individual interest for each person to act differently.

@ Fig. 2.

We have only discussed in a simple-minded way one of the many problems posed by the anticipated wired-up society. The discussion is not, however, purely academic. For, with cable television already servicing many North American cities and large computer networks connecting scientific centers from coast to coast, the wired-up society may be much closer than most of us realize.

REFERENCES [l] M. Turoff, “Session on views of the future-Chairman’s

introduction-Opposing views,” in AFIPS Conf. Proc., V O ~ . 42, 1973, pp. 717-722.

Chung-Kwong Yuen was born in Shanghai, China, on January 11, 1947. He received the B.Sc. degree from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, the M.Sc. degree from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, both in physics, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, in 1968, 1969, and 1972, respec- tively.

Since December 1972 he has been a Re- search Fellow at the Computer Centre, Austra-

lian National University, Canberra, Australia. His main research interest is in the use of orthogonal transforms in signal processing and trans- mission.

Edith C. C. Wan was born in Canton, China, on October 18, 1946. She received the B.A. degree in sociology from the International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan, in 1970, and is now completing a Ph.D. in social anthropology at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. Her thesis is on the conditions of Australian factory workers and is based on fiel‘d work performed in various factories at Penrith, N.S.’W., Goulburn, N.S.W., and Canberra, A.C.T.

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