The social implications of the use of computers across national boundaries

Large time sharing systems and distributed networks of computers are already major factors in tying together decentralized national operations in both the public and the private sectors. In the public sector, the marriage of computers and communications is apparent in such systems as the ARPA Network, the Air Defense System, law enforcement systems, weather forecasting and the like. In the private sector, there are many such systems used for tying together sales offices and warehouses or ticket offices and data banks of reservations systems, as well as serving various other scheduling, financial control or logistics operations in large corporations. In fact, discussions on the design and development of massive national or regional information utilities have been appearing with increasing frequency of late.