What is it, precisely, that allows for the entire project of human culture? What is it, precisely, that distinguishes our great cities from ant colonies?
What is it, precisely, that makes homo sapiens unique among the living objects on this particular planet? It is not our organizational ability, as a shoal of fish will tell you. It is not our efficient use of resources to expand our population base nor our complex building techniques, as an ant colony will tell you. And it is certainly not our emotional capacity, as any pet owner will surely testify.
Perhaps one of the few developed traits that truly distinguishes us from the rest of the known natural world is the conveyance of information unlimited by geography or time. With the invention of writing, homo sapiens struck out on a course of development completely unprecedented on this planet. Along the way, we have encountered a few inflection points that have radically altered the courses of civilizations.
Perhaps the most relatable of these inflections to the modern gaze is the invention of the printing press. Particularly notable is the manner in which this invention impacted the religious apparatus of the time. Before movable type was widespread, interpretation of religious doctrine was quite literally exclusive. A peasant seeking to know more about their world had precisely one option: to go to the cathedral. While it is often glossed over in architectural histories, the fact is that the old gothic church designs that some romanticize are incredibly complex pieces of architectural propaganda designed specifically to induce awe and faithfulness among the illiterate masses. So the people go to the church and the priest (who is can read) reads the bible to them. Inevitably, the content of the bible is parsed through the church's own ideology and priorities (and if memory serves, this process is actually formalized within the church doctrine). With the invention of the printing press, the exhausting process of prying exclusive knowledge from the few who possessed it began. Bibles could be printed for relatively little cost, and entire new sectors of the populace had access to the texts. The lutheran movement and the resulting schism followed in roughly a generation; the catholic church had lost its millennial grasp on its unified masses.
The printing press (along with wider literacy programs) allowed for the mass distribution of previously-exclusive information. People were suddenly able to digest their own sources of information and come up with opinions of their own. The fortress of the unquestionable heard for the first time the sounds of strange new weapons in the distance. [make no mistake, the fortress is still around: presently it's filled with fluorescent lighting and would like you to worry about your lawn. the logos abound and sales are final.] And it is for that reason that the internet is already as important an invention as the printing press.
It is simple to see how the internet is enabling more people more access to more information than they have ever had in their lives. So much so that it has become fashionable to somehow lament this fact. It is simple to recall the iranian elections and see how the internet can impact world events. Wikileaks.org is arguably one of the most important websites of our time, and its story has only just begun. It simple to see that wider distribution of information can only benefit humankind, and it is simple to see that the internet is fostering a whole new era of thought and culture.
20100901
panoptics and governance
Imagine for a second that every single time someone rolled a joint, they incurred a municipal fine. No matter what, no matter where they hid, every time someone did something that broke the law, they would be punished in some tangible way. Now consider why this idea is (presumably) offensive to you.
Ostensibly, privacy is an issue here. It certainly seems that the government being able to monitor its citizens' every action would infringe on personal liberty, does it not? But this presents the problem of what precisely the teleology of a system of laws entails. In this country, legally, your 'personal liberty' does not extend to breaking laws. If you can be proved to have broken a law (provided you end up in court), you are legally responsible and become a criminal. The end goal of our law is to enforce conduct that we deem appropriate. There are clearly certain ideas of what is appropriate that neigh universal in this day and age: don't kill humans, don't cheat, don't abuse. Of course, the list might not be as long as might be expected. Regardless, laws exist because humans generally agree that there are things that are wrong to do. The end result being that if you're caught speeding on a highway, a police officer gives you a ticket.
Of course, in our society, illegality and punishment have at best a tangential relationship. Our government has in effect failed in its endeavor to have a system of law. In fact you do not get a speeding ticket every time you push the needle. In fact many people do smoke cannabis as regular as going to the grocery store and live scot-free. What does this indicate? Does it imply poor vigilance on the part of the government? Or does it suggest that many of our laws are, for whatever reason, very ill-equipped to the lives that people lead? Our government, like most others, assumes that it can never catch all criminals all the time. And it probably can't. But the untold consequence of this fact is that our laws are increasingly unenforced. And unenforced laws not only undermine a citizenry's faith in their government, they completely negate the entire notion of having laws in the first place. It is for this reason that so much of our culture involves the image of government as an unwarranted intruder in our private lives. People's entire belief systems are bases around the assumption that government is unjust. And it is difficult to argue with these people, because much of the government we have in place right now does in fact rely on huge volumes of hypocrisy in order to exist. Unfortunately, in the past, this was necessarily the case on account of the physical impossibility of governance. But the time is rapidly approaching that actual just governance might be possible!
So! What if everything were monitored all the time in order to prevent any laws from being broken? What would happen? Well, this being a democracy, we would probably soon have many fewer laws! People do enjoy their freedom, and so a completely vigilant criminal justice system would quickly reveal those regulations that are ungainly or start to smell like totalitarianism. Of course, it would not be an easy process and so the system of litigation would necessarily have to be much more streamlined and easy to fend with. But digitization should help with that, no? We still live in a time prior to the government coming to terms with computers as a replacement for paper. Once that happens, the court system will become much less intimidating and inaccessible and perhaps the judicial wing of the american system will act in its appropriate role of regulating and mediating between the law and the citizenry in a reasonable fashion.
Now, this big brother utopia might still have a few problems to work out. But those are topics for the future!
Ostensibly, privacy is an issue here. It certainly seems that the government being able to monitor its citizens' every action would infringe on personal liberty, does it not? But this presents the problem of what precisely the teleology of a system of laws entails. In this country, legally, your 'personal liberty' does not extend to breaking laws. If you can be proved to have broken a law (provided you end up in court), you are legally responsible and become a criminal. The end goal of our law is to enforce conduct that we deem appropriate. There are clearly certain ideas of what is appropriate that neigh universal in this day and age: don't kill humans, don't cheat, don't abuse. Of course, the list might not be as long as might be expected. Regardless, laws exist because humans generally agree that there are things that are wrong to do. The end result being that if you're caught speeding on a highway, a police officer gives you a ticket.
Of course, in our society, illegality and punishment have at best a tangential relationship. Our government has in effect failed in its endeavor to have a system of law. In fact you do not get a speeding ticket every time you push the needle. In fact many people do smoke cannabis as regular as going to the grocery store and live scot-free. What does this indicate? Does it imply poor vigilance on the part of the government? Or does it suggest that many of our laws are, for whatever reason, very ill-equipped to the lives that people lead? Our government, like most others, assumes that it can never catch all criminals all the time. And it probably can't. But the untold consequence of this fact is that our laws are increasingly unenforced. And unenforced laws not only undermine a citizenry's faith in their government, they completely negate the entire notion of having laws in the first place. It is for this reason that so much of our culture involves the image of government as an unwarranted intruder in our private lives. People's entire belief systems are bases around the assumption that government is unjust. And it is difficult to argue with these people, because much of the government we have in place right now does in fact rely on huge volumes of hypocrisy in order to exist. Unfortunately, in the past, this was necessarily the case on account of the physical impossibility of governance. But the time is rapidly approaching that actual just governance might be possible!
So! What if everything were monitored all the time in order to prevent any laws from being broken? What would happen? Well, this being a democracy, we would probably soon have many fewer laws! People do enjoy their freedom, and so a completely vigilant criminal justice system would quickly reveal those regulations that are ungainly or start to smell like totalitarianism. Of course, it would not be an easy process and so the system of litigation would necessarily have to be much more streamlined and easy to fend with. But digitization should help with that, no? We still live in a time prior to the government coming to terms with computers as a replacement for paper. Once that happens, the court system will become much less intimidating and inaccessible and perhaps the judicial wing of the american system will act in its appropriate role of regulating and mediating between the law and the citizenry in a reasonable fashion.
Now, this big brother utopia might still have a few problems to work out. But those are topics for the future!
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