Re: FW: Ordering White House docs via email

[Jonathan Rochkind <jrochkin@cs.oberlin.edu>]

> The goal of Phase Three, which we hope to achieve soon, is to respond
> electronically to the substance of incoming messages.
 
Speaking of which, does anyone doubt that the point of this is to completely
eliminate human beings from the loop? You'll write a letter to 
president@whitehouse.com, and some kind of AI will process it and
determine the proper form letter to be sent back to you. Heck, they'll
probably borrow that groovy semantic-parsing spy thingamobob software
from the NSA.  
 
Actually, even though my knee jerk reaction is to be bothered by this,
I'm not sure there's cause. It's not as if the president actually sees
the letter you write to him snaimail anyhow. What difference does it make
if some minimum-wage secretary picks the proper form letter to send back to
you, or if a computer program does?