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Value conflicts and social choice in electronic funds transfer system developments

Author:

Rob KlingAuthors Info & Claims

Communications of the ACM, Volume 21, Issue 8

Pages 642 - 657

https://doi.org/10.1145/359576.359580

Published: 01 August 1978 Publication History

Abstract

During the last few years, computer-based systems which automate the transfer and recording of debits and credits have begun to be implemented on a large scale. These systems promise both financial benefits for the institutions that use them and potential conveniences to their customers. However, they also raise significant social, legal, and technical questions that must be resolved if full scale systems for Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) are not to cause more problems for the larger public than they solve. This paper examines the incentives for EFT developments and the social problems they raise in the context of conflicts between five different value positions that are often implicit in analyses of proposed EFT arrangements. These conflicts reflect the relative importance of certain problems for specific groups. The value positions implicit in EFT proposals help to organize analyses of market arrangements, system reliability, and privacy of transactions. These topics are analyzed in this article and related to the value positions held by concerned parties. Last, the ways in which the public can learn about the social qualities of different EFT arrangements and the pace of EFT developments are both discussed in the context of social choice.

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Index Terms

Value conflicts and social choice in electronic funds transfer system developments
1. Applied computing
  1. Electronic commerce
  2. Enterprise computing
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Computing / technology policy

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cover image Communications of the ACM

Communications of the ACM Volume 21, Issue 8

Aug. 1978

84 pages

ISSN:0001-0782

EISSN:1557-7317

DOI:10.1145/359576

Editor:
Robert L. Ashenhurst
The Univ. of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 1978 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 01 August 1978

Published in CACM Volume 21, Issue 8

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https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12544
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https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2021.1907234
Hanafizadeh PKhosravi BBadie K(2018)Global discourse on ICT and the shaping of ICT policy in developing countriesTelecommunications Policy10.1016/j.telpol.2018.09.004Online publication date: Sep-2018
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2018.09.004
Dhillon GOliveira TSyed R(2018)Value-based information privacy objectives for Internet CommerceComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2018.05.04387(292-307)Online publication date: Oct-2018
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