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Although technology is often viewed as value-free, an anthropological perspective suggests that technological tools embody values and assumptions of their builders. Drawing upon extended field research, this article investigates the construction of work in the expert systems community of artificial intelligence (AI). Describing systematic deletions in practitioners' representations of their own work, the article relates these to both the selectivity of conventional knowledge acquisition procedures and the tendency of expert systems to (in the practitioners' words) "fall off the knowledge cliff." Although system builders see the latter problem as purely technical, this article suggests that it is also the result of nontechnical factors, including the system builders' own tacit assump tions. This article supports the view that technology has a cultural dimension.

Reflections are offered on how the US can, by bolstering its educational system, regain the affluence & economic stability that it enjoyed during the halcyon days of the 1950s. It is argued that the country must focus on national educational development, create a world-class secondary educational system capable of producing a literate citizenry, & devote more resources to ensuring that its higher education system is geared toward producing leaders in both international cultural & economic spheres. The impact of declining SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores on the economic future of the US is discussed, & a demographic shift toward lower levels of intellectual, cultural, educational, & economic achievement is identified. It is suggested that there may come a time in the near future when the overall productive skills of the US population will be at such a low level that foreign investment will cease & the US will decline into the ranks of the Third World. W. Howard

An account of the intellectual atmosphere & the events that lent impetus to Partisan Review's renewed attack on Stalinism after Aug 1945, & in particular the debacle of the Waldorf Peace Conference of 1949, where US fellow-travelers were out-organized by an ad hoc group of NY intellectuals. Also discussed is how the counter conference led by Sidney Hook, Nicholas Nabokov, & others led to grander efforts at intellectual mobilization. In this connection, the founding conference of the Central Intelligence Agency-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin, West Germany, in 1950 is especially important. It is argued that the Berlin conference, which featured the verbal pyrotechnics of James Burnham & Arthur Koestler, got the Congress off to a shaky start. Only after it substituted a less strident cultural approach to anticommunist mobilization did the organization prosper. AA

Any culture, by its attained complication of jobs & roles, presents a demand for a particular distribution of intelligence endowments in its citizens. Behavior genetics research has now shown that fluid intelligence is substantially inherited, so the distribution curve of supply of intelligence is decided by birth rates across different intelligence levels. Education can shift the mean of this curve but not its form. This is an era of dislocation of the curves of supply & demand of human intelligence due to: (1) increasing complications of occupations & roles, & (2) decreasing supply, from a dysgenic birth rate, of intelligence at upper levels & increasing supply at borderline employable levels. The market value of people, like that of goods, is determined by the ratio of supply to demand. The dislocation of the curves produces a willingness to pay very well for top intelligence, but very badly for low intelligence. Humanitarian motives, unionization, etc, preclude direct adjustment of wages by market realities, but the dislocation is not removed -- only translated into secondary symptoms. If the curve of demand for intelligence, by cultural developments, is indeed shifting to higher levels, the only escape from the dislocation, & its manifold evils, is a switch from a dysgenic to a eugenic population growth. 4 Figures, 18 References. Modified HA.

Recent changes in official secrecy laws; continuing structural and cultural problems.

THIS IS THE FIRST OF TWO ARTICLES OUTLINING THE EVOLUTION OF THE "SECURITATE" AS IT TRACES THE HISTORY OF THE "SECURITATE" IN POST-WAR ROMANIA. IT THEN EXAMINES THE NATURE OF ITS SUBSERVIENCE TO ITS SOVIET MASTERS AND CHARTS ITS RELATIONSHIP TO THE LEADERSHIP OF THE ROMANIAN COMMUNIST PARTY. IT ARGUES THAT THE AMNESTY OFFERED IN THE 1960S MARKED THE END OF AN ERA OF POLITICAL TERROR WHICH HAD COST THE LIVES OF TENS, PERHAPS HUNDREDS, OF THROUSANDS OF ROMANIANS, FROM THE PRE-COMMUNIST POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL ELITE DOWNWARDS, BUT THE INSTRUMENT OF THAT TERROR, THE "SECURITATE, REMAINED INTACT, UNREFORMED AND UBIQUITOUS.

Describes key events in the nearly 30-year effort to build a new embassy that could provide the conditions necessary for more effective diplomacy. Covers role of diplomatic missions and sanctity of embassies, differing cultural and organization attitudes toward security and sensitive information, and difficulties in public sector management where power is divided, especially when projects span several presidential administrations.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Flame Wars -- New Age Mutant Ninja Hackers: Reading Mondo 2000 -- Techgnosis, Magic, Memory, and the Angels of Information -- Agrippa, or, The Apocalyptic Book -- Gibson's Typewriter -- Virtual Surreality: Our New Romance with Plot Devices -- Chapter 14, Synners -- Feminism for the Incurably Informed -- Sex, Memories, and Angry Women -- Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose -- Compu-Sex: Erotica for Cybernauts -- A Rape in Cyberspace; or, How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society -- Virtual Environments and the Emergence of Synthetic Reason -- Survival Research Laboratories Performs in Austria -- Taming the Computer -- Glossary -- Index -- Notes on Contributors

Kurzbericht über eine Befragung von Schülern in der DDR (ohne nähere Angaben zu Methodik, Zeitraum und Population) zu ihrem Freizeitverhalten. Ermittelt wurden bevorzugte Freizeitbeschäftigungen (Reihenfolge: Fernsehen, Sport, Lesen, Musikrezeption, Basteln), die Ausstattung mit Geräten der Unterhaltungselektronik, bevorzugte Themen bei Medienangeboten und Lektüre. Der Zusammenhang zwischen Freizeitgestaltung und "Intelligenz" der Schüler wird anhand einiger Zahlen zu ermittelt versucht; danach lesen intelligentere Schüler mehr, gehen "produktiveren" Beschäftigungen nach, diskutieren häufiger mit ihren Eltern über kulturelle und politische Themen. Belletristische Literatur begünstige die Intelligenz-Entwicklung, während Unterhaltungsangebote eine Kompensationsfunktion hätten; als bedeutendste Einflußgröße auf das Verhalten der Schüler wird das Elternhaus angesehen. (psz)