From: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 15:50:52 +0800
To: gnu@toad.com
Subject: AT&T Public Policy Research -- hiring for cypherpunks issues
Message-ID: <9602131121.AA09899@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 17:02:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul Resnick <presnick@research.att.com>
To: gnu@eff.org

Last July, we started a new Public Policy Research department at
AT&T. We're writing to ask if you have friends, students, or colleagues
who could contribute to this new enterprise. We are looking both for
software hackers and for Ph.D. level researchers who are comfortable
with software but bring expertise in economics, politics, law, or
sociology. There is also an opening for a senior researcher with strong
management skills to head the department.

We're very excited about the prospects for this department. The
fundamental premise is that communication systems can provide the glue
that holds society together, in many cases more effectively and less
intrusively than governments can. We will explore the interplay of
software tools, rules, and rewards, as means of governance in electronic
markets and other virtual public spaces. In other words, how can we make
it safe, fun, and profitable to interact with people you do not know
very well?

Throughout the company, there is untapped energy that lingers from the
days when AT&T had a clear public mission of universal telephone service
for everyone in the United States. This department can offer a new
public-oriented mission. The enclosures briefly describe some sample
projects.

In spite of, or perhaps because of the recent breakup, the company is
continuing to invest in research. About 300 technical staff from the old
Bell Labs, mostly computer scientists, are part of the new AT&T Research
organization. Research areas include databases, programming languages,
software engineering, speech, cryptography and security, human factors,
collaborative applications, and more. Many departments will be hiring.

Like the former Bell Labs, the work environment is informal but intense
and intellectually rigorous.  External publication is encouraged. We
measure success by leadership and impact, in the academic research
community, in AT&T's business, and in the world.  

Please feel free to send us suggestions or pass this letter on to anyone
you think may be interested. In addition to permanent positions, there
are also opportunities for sabbaticals, post-docs, and summer
employment.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.

Sincerely,


Paul Resnick	
Member of Technical Staff
Public Policy Research Department	
presnick@research.att.com

Eric Sumner
Director, 
Network Services Research Laboratory
ees@research.att.com

P.S. You may also receive this message by paper mail: we're trying to make
it as easy as possible for you to pass it along to people who might be
interested.

-----------------------------------

Public Policy Research Department

The department creates rules and tools that enhance the common wealth in
electronic markets and other virtual public spaces where people may
interact with others they do not know very well. Traditionally,
enhancing the common wealth has been the government's purview, but
advanced communication services offer new opportunities for governance
without government. Areas of interest include:

  privacy, security, anonymity, freedom and responsibility in cyberspace
  rating and reputation services
  intellectual property
  universal service
  electronic markets
  pricing and provision of public goods
  trust and other forms of social capital

Sample Projects

PICS: The Platform for Internet Content Selection

With its recent explosive growth, the Internet now faces a problem that
confronts all media that serve diverse audiences: not all materials are
appropriate for every audience. For each new medium, society has had to
balance the value of free speech against the social costs of
distributing materials to inappropriate audiences. While most media are
regulated by blanket rules, on the Internet it is possible to reconcile
those goals through individual choices in a marketplace of ideas. In
other words, the Internet can regulate itself.

PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection, is designed to enable
supervisors-- whether parents, teachers, or administrators-- to block
access from their sites to certain Internet resources, without censoring
what is distributed to other sites. It draws on two unique features of
the Internet. First, publishing is instantaneous, world-wide, and very
inexpensive, so it is easy to publish rating and advisory labels. Labels
and ratings already help consumers choose many products, from movies to
cars to computers. Such labels are provided by the producers or by
independent third parties, such as consumer magazines. Similarly, labels
for Internet resources could help users to select interesting,
high-quality materials and could help supervisors to block access to
inappropriate ones.  Second, access to Internet resources is mediated by
computers that can process far more labels than any person could. Thus,
parents, teachers, and other supervisors need only configure software to
selectively block access to resources based on the rating labels; they
need not personally read them.

This project is a consortium of 23 companies, under the auspices of
MIT's World Wide Web Consortium. It has received significant attention
in the press as an alternative to government-mandated blanket rules that
would restrict the distribution of indecent materials. Details can be
found at http://www.w3.org/PICS.

Markets for IP Addresses

The 32-bit numbers used for Internet addressing and routing are a
limited resource. As this resource becomes scarcer, political
considerations are likely to creep into allocation decisions made
through existing administrative processes, leading to suboptimal
allocations. By granting transferable property rights to addresses,
allocation decisions can be removed from the political realm into the
economic realm, so that addresses are allocated to those who value them
most. This project seeks to develop consensus in the Internet community
for a move to market-based allocation, and investigates alternative
designs for an electronic market to coordinate the exchange of IP
addresses.

Electronic Support for Entry-Level Labor Markets

Entry-level labor markets in several professional fields, including law,
medicine, and psychology, share the characteristic that a large cohort
of new employees are available at approximately the same starting date
each year. The hiring processes in these fields,however, differ
significantly. Medical residents "match" with hospitals through a
centralized process embedded in a computer algorithm. Law students are
hired in a far more decentralized process. This project explores whether
computer mediation of the process can combine the advantages of both the
centralized and decentralized approaches.

Reputation Services

In the physical world, trust and reputations play critical roles in
commercial and social interactions. If word travels fast in a community,
the consequences of unethical or antisocial behavior may be sufficient
to deter such behavior. Moreover, there is an incentive to engage in
good behavior, because it will be recognized and rewarded. In on-line
environments with a dispersed base of casual users, word may not get
around so fast. Reputation services will help spread the word: they can
automatically keep track of good and bad behavior and make that history
available in useful ways. Since it is easy to assume new identities and
start new businesses on-line, leaving old reputations behind, positive
reputations are likely to be far more important than negative ones.


------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Resnick			AT&T Research
Public Policy Research		Room 2C-430B
908-582-5370 (voice)		600 Mountain Avenue
908-582-4113 (fax)		P.O. Box 636
				Murray Hill, NJ 07974-0636