<論説>「社会的責任を考えるコンピュータ専門家の会(Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility)」の成立と発展 (特集 : 学びのネットワーク)

Abstract

「コンピュータ分野」は、一九四〇年代から五〇年代はじめにかけて、数学、物理学、工学の研究者・技術者を中心に形成され始めた。やがて一九六〇年代半ばの国家データセンター構想に関わるプライバシー問題、六〇年代末の弾道弾迎撃ミサイル反対に関わる問題など、コンピュータ関連技術の社会的影響についての、「コンピュータ分野」の人々による発言が注目されるようになった。「社会的責任を考えるコンピュータ専門家の会(Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, CPSR)」は、一九八一年にゼロックス社パロアルト研究所の研究者セヴェロ・オーンステイン(Severo Ornstein)の呼びかけに応じて形成された専門家集団である。その初期の成果の論集が、Computers in Battle: Will They Work?で、レーガン政権による戦略的防衛構想反対の世論形成に寄与したとされる。本稿では、オーンステインらの興味関心の形成過程をひとつの軸として、一九八〇年代を中心にこのグループで学びのネットワークがどのように形作られたかを検討する。

During the 1940s and 1950s, the "computer field, " as it was commonly called, was emerging as an interdisciplinary area of study especially among academic researchers and industrial practitioners in Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering. The constructed imaginary of a world transformed by these early devices brought many in the field to focus on social issues quite early on. By the late 1950s, there was an active national dialogue about unemployment caused by automation, and privacy emerged as a major topic of conversation during the mid-1960s, amidst unfolding plans for a National Data Center. Further impetus for computer professionals to become politically active occurred during the Vietnam War with the political debate surrounding Anti-Ballistic Missiles in the late 60s. Daniel McCracken initiated a movement, "Computer Professionals Against the ABM, " in 1969, although professional organizations such as the Association for Computing Machinery remained politically neutral. Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) was established by Severo Ornstein and other computer professionals at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in 1981. The first issue addressed by this organization also pertained to nuclear warfare, and specifically, the probability of a nuclear exchange and how to prevent it. As discussed by Rebecca Slayton in Arguments that Count, it was the physicists who led the scientific critique of missile defense during the 1960s to the 1970s. But during 1980s, amidst the Reagan administration's decision to launch the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the field of software engineering and systems engineering had advanced in a direction that gave this community technical purchase on the issue of strategic missile defense and its feasibility. In 1985, David Parnas, one of the pioneers in software engineering who had consulted extensively on United States defense projects, resigned from a key Strategic Defense Initiative Organization panel (Panel on Computing in Support of Battle Management), and began collaborating directly with members of the CPSR. This lent significant legitimacy to this fledgling, scientific activist organization. This collaboration led to the 1987 CPSR publication, Computers in Battle : Will They Work?, a key document in the eventual decision to terminate SDI.

This paper focuses on the early members of CPSR, and how their backgrounds and interests shaped the activities of the organization. (The study is based on primary sources including newsletters, reports, and published first-person accounts.) It is clear that a majority of the computer scientists received military funding, and the military remained the major patron of the computer industry. Yet, the primary sources from this period reveal how many computer scientists were deeply ambivalent about military support. CPSR intentionally took a politically inclusive stance, one that displaced a politically charged dialogue with a scientific one that was publicly recognizable as a scientific investigation into the feasibility of SDI. The organization also chose to publish a highly readable report, accessible to a lay audience, so that technically informed conversations about the consequences of military policy could take place within the public sphere. To maintain focus, CPSR also employed a bureaucratic tactic, filing as a nonprofit organization in California in March 1983 and spelling out its mission. This allowed the initial members of CPSR to form model chapters in Palo Alto and Seattle, and to specifically divide its activities into two categories : one to investigate SDI, and the other to explore potential future activities, including those related to automation and privacy. The quarterly newsletter of the CPSR, published from the summer of 1983 onwards, also served to disseminate successful forms of activities initiated by the model chapters, and to promote the formation of new local chapters. Of these, the Boston chapter was most influential, having successfully co-sponsored with the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science a public panel discussion in October 1985 entitled "Star Wars : Can the Computing Requirements be Met?" The panel was comprised of well-known computer scientists, including David Parnas. This panel, and the subsequent activities of CPSR shaped public opinion regarding the infeasibility of the SDI software, which wound up being a key factor in the dissolution of SDI.