Manfred Kochen

Communities at risk

B Bu ud dg ge et t C Cu ut ts s a an nd d t th he ei ir r I Im mp pa ac ct t o on n H Ho om me el la an nd d a an nd d H Ho om me et to ow wn n S Se ec cu ur ri it ty y

The future of AI and human flexibility

Manfred Kochen was educated at MIT with a B.S. in Science (1950) and at Columbia University in New York, where he received an MA in 1951 and a Ph.D. in 1955 in Applied Mathematics. Since 1972 he has been Professor of Information Science, with a joint appointment as Adjunct Professor of Computers and Information Systems at the Graduate School of Business Administration and as Research Scientist at the Mental Health Research Institute. His major research interests are in problems of representation of knowledge that could help people cope with a greater variety of tasks in more effective ways as well as in organization of knowledge. He is the author or editor of six books, including Information for Action , he has over 150 scientific papers in technical journals or books, including three on the process of referee-selection and peer review. In 1974 he was awarded the Award of Merit by the American Society for Information Science. He was also named National Lecturer by the Association for Computing Machinery. He has been an editor of the Journal of the ACM, of Behavioral Science and is on the editorial boards of several international journals. He has been very active in the American Society for Information Science. He is increasingly interested in all aspects of Coping with Social Complexity, which is the title of the section of Human Systems Management that he is responsible for as managing editor. He also has a long-term interest in the process of doing science, of which journal publication comprises the later stages. He is therefore receptive to and interested in good new ideas for innovations in the publication process leading toward improved papers and particularly toward helping authors to improve the quality of manuscripts they produce in the first place.

Crime prevention efforts: Victims or perpetrators?

Danger to the well-being and health of a person can result from the actions of others in two kinds of situations. First, danger can stem from premeditated, hostile actions by others. Criminals are sources of such danger. Second, it can result from the inadvertent but also injurious actions of others. Drunk drivers illustrate that kind of danger. In both situations efforts to prevent danger can be directed at the potential victims. Preventive efforts can also be aimed at the perpetrators. If preventive efforts fail, efforts to minimize the effects of hostile or inadvertent hazards can also be directed to these two populations. Most community prevention efforts are directed at potential victims of deliberate crimes. For example, police departments in high-crime regions often offer lectures, films, discussions, demonstrations, even training sessions, to increase the awareness of potential rape victims to help them prevent such events and to cope with them should an attempt occur. For nondeliberate interpersonal hazards, such as automobile driving in heavy traffic, there are few continuing preventive efforts. Training for preventive methods and attitudes is, of course, included in driver education courses. These are taken .once, when a driver first learns. They may also be included in the simple written tests a driver takes when he renews his drivers license. Table 1 suggests that investment in efforts to prevent non-deliberate hazards may yield a higher return than investment in efforts to prevent deliberately caused dangers. The former are more frequent. The potential victims and perpetrators are more reachable. Their behavior may be more

Toward medical management decision support systems

A computer conferencing system for source recording of all transactions in medical management of a patient is suggested. Its use for overcoming some weaknesses of current practice is illustrated on an actual case. We submit that for such a medical management decision support system to work, its thought units should correspond to those of its users, possibly degrees of mllmbership rather than probabilities.