social effects of common tech

[kengr]

A side note of a discussion over on the Traveller RPG mailing list got me thinking about stuff that's been going on for a few years.

As certain technology gets cheaper and more common, there are going to be *major* social changes.

Consider: Rodney King was far from the first person (black or white) to get an undeserved beat down by the police. But unlike previous occurrences, people with cheap video cameras were there to tape the beating.

Nowadays, most cell phones have cameras, and many have video capability. Likewise, some have audio recording. So a *lot* of TSA incidents are getting filmed/recorded by folks using their cell phones.

This sort of thing is already having effects.

Now add in the video surveillance gear that a lot of stores have (and *need). As wel as things like dash cams in police vehicles.

Pervasive video surveillance is heading towards "Big Brother". But pervasive presence of *personal* video recording is going to make it harder and harder for police and others to get away with misconduct.

And with storage getting cheaper and bandwidth doing so as well, I can see the point where you can "get an app" that has a legal service on call. Punch the button and the service gets the last X minutes of sound/video from your phone and can then activate the speaker on the phone so you can inform the cop/official that they are incorrect about the law. Or that there are a number of differing legal opinions, and that they could wind up in deep kimchee if they try to carry on with what they are doing.

Heck, picture the results of some of the more infamous no-knock searches in the US if the houses had webcams sending to a security service for offsite storage.

Comments

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

There's a story - supposedly true - that when the Soviet government tried to crack down on dissidents in the Eighties, right before the government collapsed, they sent police out to confiscate privately-owned satellite dishes. Only, when they got there, the dishes were already gone; with modern communications word was spreading that quickly. That's when the person in charge of the operation realized that the communist regime was doomed.

[kengr]

Fidonet was part of that. They couldn't confiscate all the computers and with the Soviet phone system, they couldn't just monitor for modems.

Fidonet nodes could revise the nodelist (or move computers) faster than they could be tracked down. So the net just reconfigured around systems that got caught and the mail and news kept flowing.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

There's a story by Cory Doctorow, I forget the title, that deals with what will happen when 3D printing technology gets good enough to print anything, and cheap enough to be everywhere. In that story, the government - in as last-ditch effort to save capitalism - tries to outlaw these cheap 3D printers, and does, but fails to enforce it well enough.

If I knew an appropriate to do it, I'd be sorely tempted to protest or counter-protest with a sign that says "CAPITALISM IS ALREADY DEAD, LIKE COMMUNISM. 3D PRINTING WILL SOON BE OLD ENOUGH TO DIG THE GRAVE."

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

One thought, though: where will the 'raw' materials for the printer come from? Not saying you're wrong, just the first thing that popped into my caffeine-deprived thoughts.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Looking for raw materials is part of the Mindeodean economy. But I bet if you wait for kengr to respond, s/he'll be able to give you a great response to this. Or you could go here: http://fayanora.livejournal.com/806421.html?thread=3869973#t3869973