Book reviews

Many of us who are technically literate in the fields of computers and electronic devices feel competent to express our opinions of such topics as personal computing, cable television, electronic funds transfer, and word-processing. But in reality the future of these fields (lumped generally in this book under the heading of “telecommunications”), depends on many influences other than the technical. The purpose of this book, a report of a conference held last year at New York University´s Center for Science and Technology Policy, is to address these “other inflences,” the social, political, and economic factors. The participants and contributers, some 30 of them, included many people who would be classified as nontechnical, but who are experienced in such aspects of telecommunications as planning, system operation and programming, and legislative studies. They include a well-known political scientist (de Sola Pool), a vice-president of Western Union Telegraph, the Mayor of Westland, Michigan, and a former president of the Operations Research Society, among others.