INTRODUCTION

Perhaps no technological innovation has so dominated the second half of the twentieth century as has the introduction of the programmable computer. It is quite difficult if not impossible to imagine how contemporary affairs—in business and science, communications and transportation, governmental and military activities, for example—could be conducted without the use of computing machines, whose principal contribution has been to relieve us of the necessity for certain kinds of mental exertion. The computer revolution has reduced our mental labors by means of these machines, just as the Industrial Revolution reduced our physical labor by means of other machines.

The public policy problems that accompany this technology are diverse—ranging from matters of liability when safety-critical systems malfunction to issues of patent and copyright protection for software and on to questions of propriety relative to the transmission of pornography via electronic bulletin-boards. Some of these, such as matters of patent and copyright protection, may represent old problems in a new guise, while others, such as those of liability when safety-critical systems malfunction, may go beyond the scope of previous technology and create difficulties that require innovative solutions. The available remedies may simply not be adequate.

Discovering adequate solutions to novel problems presupposes that those problems themselves are well-understood. The purpose of this essay is to contribute toward better understanding the dimensions of these problems by an exploration of the limits of our knowledge about computer systems as knowledge-based systems.