TECHNOLOGICAL FORECASTING AND SOCIAL CHANGE 3, 159-204 (1972) Delphi Conferencing: Computer-Based Conferencing with Anonymity 159 MURRAY TUROFF Abstract This paper is a report on an on-line (computer-automated) conference that was conducted for thirteen weeks in the spring of 1970. The conference involved twenty individuals throughout the country who were able to engage in the conference discussion at their convenience by going to a computer terminal at their time of choice. The computer maintained a real-time accounting of the discussion items entered by the various respondents and of how the group had voted on these items with respect to scales of desirability and feasibility (for proposals), or importance and confidence (for comments). The purpose of the conference was to evaluate potential applications of this type of conference system and to critique the author's design of the particular system in use. During the first part of the conference, no conferee was aware of the identity of the other conference members. In addition, the computer did not provide to the conferees the identification of originators of the items or of individual votes. Because of this anonymity, such systems may be referred to as "Delphi Conferencing Systems." The conference group was deliberately chosen by the author to be a mixture of Delphi designers, computer specialists, and operations research analysts. The group was also evenly divided as to affiliation with government, industry, nonprofit organizations, and universities. About one-third of the group had no previous experience with computers or terminals. Another third had only minimal contact as users of computer services provided by others. "It takes two of us to create a truth, one to utter it and one to understand it."--Gibran. III.B. 1. The Policy Delphi MURRAY TUROFF A Seer upon perceiving a flood should be the first to climb a tree. —Kahlil Gibran Introduction Murray Turoff, "The Design of a Policy Delphi," Technological Forecasting and Social Change 2, No. 2 (1970). Introduction The Policy Delphi was first introduced in 1969 and reported on in 1970.' It represented a significant departure from the understanding and application of the Delphi technique as practiced to that point in time. Delphi as it originally was introduced and practiced tended to deal with technical topics and seek a consensus among homogeneous groups of experts. The Policy Delphi, on the other hand, seeks to generate the strongest possible opposing views on the potential resolutions of a major policy issue. In the author's view, a policy issue is one for which there are no experts, only informed advocates and referees. (paper published also in the Delphi Method Book, linstone and turoff) On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 6:48 PM Colin Garvey <garvec@rpi.edu> wrote:

Hi all --

Apologies if this is common knowledge and I've just not done my homework but--

Could anyone point me toward a source of/on the first uses of the word "policy" in the computing/robotics world? Especially interested in the use of "policy" as something an "agent" has that basically tells them "what to do."

Even just some estimates of when this language became widely used would be helpful.

Thanks!

Colin Garvey PhD Candidate, RPI _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org

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