From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Wed Sep 13 2000 - 00:09:50 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> Adrian Tymes wrote:
> > Dan Fabulich wrote:
> > > Transparency works with IP, not against it. Yes, you can watch David
> > > Brin write his next novel as it's being written. But the police can
> > > see you performing an illegal observation, and arrest you for watching
> > > him.
> >
> > Sorry, but: if there are such things as illegal observations, then you
> > fail to have 100% transparency.
>
> Not at all. There could be 100% transparency in fact, but making use
> of this transparency could nontheless be made illegal. (Brin, to the
> best of my knowledge, has never said otherwise.) Think of it as an
> all-seeing society with its eyes taped shut.
Ok...you've lost me. If an entity has its eyes (and other visual
sensors) disabled, then by definition it can't see anything at that
time, no matter how much it might otherwise see. So it isn't
all-seeing, at least not until it un-blinds itself.
> (Who wants some pervert watching your every move?)
That being part of the point of full transparency, or at least one of
its possible consequences. (Though, unless you put out sex shows or
somesuch day in and day out, no matter which gender you are, most people
probably won't bother to spend their attention on you 24/7.)
> > From the rest of your post, it seems that you agree - except that it is
> > not, techncially, transparency, since transparency goes both ways.
>
> Be careful to keep the distinction between "cheap ubiquitous
> surveilance technology" and the society David Brin describes clear.
> Transparency is merely the former. Transparency is not necessarily
> David Brin's utopia.
Ok, we disagree on definitions of the word, then. (I believe that
transparency does not mean the presence of CUST without the possibility
of its use, and indeed CUST can not be CUST if it is made illegal: if
UST is forbidden with any kind of effective enforcement, then - to the
person on the street - it is, by definition, not cheaply available.
Breaking a well-enforced law usually incurs significant costs.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:30:57 MST