[109099] in Cypherpunks
Re: Transparent Society. [Was: RE: Someone taking photos of my
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Wed Mar 10 11:45:46 1999
In-Reply-To:
<D104150098E6D111B7830000F8D90AE84DE090@exna02.securitydynamics.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 10:52:49 -0500
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
At 9:46 AM -0500 on 3/10/99, Trei, Peter wrote:
> Years ago (I think in the late 70's) I read a story in one
> of the pulps (probably F&SF) of a society with ubiquitous
> surveillance - cameras were everywhere, and anyone could
> access any camera at any time at public terminals -. It
> made quite an impression on me at the time, as a dystopia.
Yeah, and, now that I think about it, Gerard K. O'Neill's _2081: A Hopeful
Vision of the Human Future_ had the same kind of stuff in it, and that was
published in, well, 1981 :-).
Of course, O'Niell, like Brin and most other statist liberals (not to pick
on them, but that's what they are, and I'm sure they both would agree,
though Gerry's not with us anymore), assumed some kind of benevolent
nation-, or super-state. Anyway, in _2081_, for instance, you pay for
things by picking them up and walking out of a store with them, because the
thing you're buying, and you, and the store's door, all have
microtransponders.
Paradoxically, I *do* see the same kind of thing happening, but with
meatspace becoming ever more "supervised" by increasingly smaller and
smaller private entities, while most activity in "cypherspace" to be quite
private. Coase's theorem about transaction costs, and all that, brought
about, of course, by digital bearer transactions, micro- or other-wise,
which are cheap because they can non-repudiably clear in an anonymous
fashion.
So, my vision for this so-called "transparency" is not at all dystopian.
Violence and fraud is always bad for business, and private supervision of
one's own property prevents violence and fraud remarkably well.
Look, ma, no nation-state, in other words. The state becomes as unnecesary
in the prevention of fraud and violence as the Diety was shown to be in the
motion of the planets.
I'm not sure what Platt had in mind, though. Platt himself is my source
about his conversation with Brin, however.
Cheers,
RAH
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
