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Several years ago I thought about writing a short story which included an attack/assassination of an important political figure. The point was to do some brains

Several years ago I thought about writing a short story which included an attack/assassination of an important political figure. The point was to do some brainstorming about ways such an attack could be conducted. After an hour or two, I decided never to write about this subject. The exercise was very eye-opening. The difference between a normal, naked person and a person armed with tech is increasingly dramatically. I do not think this is a similar situation as we had with machine guns -- you could just outlaw all of them. Nobody is going to want to outlaw RC planes, or wearable cameras, or some sort of AI-augmented robotics. And even if you could, vast numbers of people would simply break the law. Disarming the population is not an option here. But the trend that you describe is definitely unmistakable.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
> Nobody is going to want to outlaw RC planes, or wearable cameras, or some sort of AI-augmented robotics. Never underestimate the power of a well-funded PR campaign spreading FUD. "Could HACKERS be targeting YOUR CHILDREN with ROBOT BIRDS? More at 11."
- DanielBMarkham 15y ago
  No, thinking about it some more, you're correct. And they'll do it just the same way they're doing the internet: a little nibble at a time. It will be efforts to "Save children" "protect orphans" "help the little guy" "control the evil corporations" and every other overused FUD campaign that's worked so well in the past. They'll just re-purpose it -- and take tiny bites. If they told us up front how much control they wanted, nobody would ever agree to it. (This is a systemic problem and not related to some hypothetical "they". I anthropomorphise and use hyperbole simply to express how frustrating it all is. The really sad part is that "they" -- who will be different people in different situations -- mean well and only want to help out. I think it would be much easier on everybody if Darth Vader showed up. At least it would be obvious what was going on. Reasoning about systemic problems is not for those with cartoon ideas of good guys and bad guys.)
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    > "help the little guy" "control the evil corporations" I think the current frame of thinking in America is exactly the opposite. > I think it would be much easier on everybody if Darth Vader showed up. I guess Cheney's more of an Emperor figure, though I don't know how many times you can shoot someone in the face before people catch on.
    - DanielBMarkham 15y ago
      I would ask you to consider that the nature of this problem is folks picking sides. Once you have picked your side, the restrictions in freedom your side proposes seem okay -- or at least tolerable -- while the other side is always draconian and worthy of disdain, protest, and rebellion. That's what I mean by systemic. Everybody is ready to jump up and go fight for truth and justice -- as long as what they are really doing is sticking it to the other side. When it's their guys doing the same thing? Suddenly it's bad, but not that bad. Hey, maybe it's bad, but they mean well. I'll never forget after our current president got elected. A reporter went to talk to some demonstrators outside the White House. These guys were very upset about the killing of civilians, the police state, scanning records, and all of that. But -- guess what? They were all packing up and going home. The reporter asked "But aren't all these things continuing to happen?" I'll never forget the guy. He said, "Yes, but we have a new president now, and I think we should give him a chance." Here's a guy screaming about killing babies one day. The next day, we're still killing babies, but hey, gotta let the new guy get a feel for the job. No fewer people got killed -- he was no closer to the goals he himself identified -- but his protest wasn't worth it any more. I can't say this enough: it's not one side or the other. Thinking in terms of good guys and bad guys is a critical part of this problem: it's the engine that allows the system itself to continue to ratchet down on freedoms. We have met the enemy, and he is us. A systemic problem is a problem where everybody is acting for a good cause, working as intelligently as they can, and yet the outcome is still poor. Many times a facet or an exacerbator of these problems is the creation of groups of people who blame other groups for being the "real" cause of the problem. [Insert long discussion about evolutionary nature of us-versus-them reasoning and clan formation]
  - sixtofour 15y ago
wnight 15y ago
> Disarming the population is not an option here. Sure it is. Replace general purpose computers with centrally and permanently connected (It's a feature!) computing devices that only run signed apps. Then whenever someone does something too clever you just revoke their developer ID and everything they've written stops working. Justify this control with "piracy" and it'll be accepted. It won't really work, but it seems like it would to an authoritarian, so it's pretty likely where we're going in such a hurry. Like all false security it just opens us up to a bigger attack, but reality never won an election so government will never handle this properly. We talk about how nasty Iran, Egypt, Libya, etc, shut down communications preventing the people from changing things, but what measures do we have against our own governments doing the same things? I imagine we're totally screwed. Our government has the resources to do things thoroughly, and as the BART incident recently showed, the willingness to deny service to the innocent to inconvenience protestors.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  >Sure it is. Replace general purpose computers with centrally and permanently connected (It's a feature!) computing devices that only run signed apps. Then whenever someone does something too clever you just revoke their developer ID and everything they've written stops working. There was this one short story I've read months ago which essentially described this, just with compilers instead of apps. Oh the horror...
rdtsc 15y ago
> After an hour or two, I decided never to write about this subject. I have to say, you made the right choice. You would have probably ended up with a visit from Secret Service, FBI or other such organization. Someone I know wrote about a similar hypothetical scenario and ended up getting a visit from FBI at their workplace, in front of everyone, then also at home. You know, just a friendly "chat"... They ended up lecturing him about 1st Ammendment rights, oh the irony.
bane 15y ago
"The difference between a normal, naked person and a person armed with tech is increasingly dramatically. " The Golden Age books deal with this rather dramatically. It takes various ideas (augmented reality, global network connectivity, the singularity, etc.) to an extreme, to the point that a severe social punishment is to be disconnected from all globally integrated technology. A person in this state virtually becomes a non-person, unable to even achieve basic communication with other people physically in the same room, most other people even filtering disconnected persons out of their entire sensory experience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Age_(science_fiction_trilogy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Age_(science_fiction... They're pretty dense stuff and can be dry reads at times, but the ideas explored are really fascinating.

pavel_lishin 15y ago

> Nobody is going to want to outlaw RC planes, or wearable cameras, or some sort of AI-augmented robotics. Never underestimate the power of a well-funded PR campaign spreading FUD. "Could HACKERS be targeting YOUR CHILDREN with ROBOT BIRDS? More at 11."

DanielBMarkham 15y ago
No, thinking about it some more, you're correct. And they'll do it just the same way they're doing the internet: a little nibble at a time. It will be efforts to "Save children" "protect orphans" "help the little guy" "control the evil corporations" and every other overused FUD campaign that's worked so well in the past. They'll just re-purpose it -- and take tiny bites. If they told us up front how much control they wanted, nobody would ever agree to it. (This is a systemic problem and not related to some hypothetical "they". I anthropomorphise and use hyperbole simply to express how frustrating it all is. The really sad part is that "they" -- who will be different people in different situations -- mean well and only want to help out. I think it would be much easier on everybody if Darth Vader showed up. At least it would be obvious what was going on. Reasoning about systemic problems is not for those with cartoon ideas of good guys and bad guys.)
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > "help the little guy" "control the evil corporations" I think the current frame of thinking in America is exactly the opposite. > I think it would be much easier on everybody if Darth Vader showed up. I guess Cheney's more of an Emperor figure, though I don't know how many times you can shoot someone in the face before people catch on.
  - DanielBMarkham 15y ago
    I would ask you to consider that the nature of this problem is folks picking sides. Once you have picked your side, the restrictions in freedom your side proposes seem okay -- or at least tolerable -- while the other side is always draconian and worthy of disdain, protest, and rebellion. That's what I mean by systemic. Everybody is ready to jump up and go fight for truth and justice -- as long as what they are really doing is sticking it to the other side. When it's their guys doing the same thing? Suddenly it's bad, but not that bad. Hey, maybe it's bad, but they mean well. I'll never forget after our current president got elected. A reporter went to talk to some demonstrators outside the White House. These guys were very upset about the killing of civilians, the police state, scanning records, and all of that. But -- guess what? They were all packing up and going home. The reporter asked "But aren't all these things continuing to happen?" I'll never forget the guy. He said, "Yes, but we have a new president now, and I think we should give him a chance." Here's a guy screaming about killing babies one day. The next day, we're still killing babies, but hey, gotta let the new guy get a feel for the job. No fewer people got killed -- he was no closer to the goals he himself identified -- but his protest wasn't worth it any more. I can't say this enough: it's not one side or the other. Thinking in terms of good guys and bad guys is a critical part of this problem: it's the engine that allows the system itself to continue to ratchet down on freedoms. We have met the enemy, and he is us. A systemic problem is a problem where everybody is acting for a good cause, working as intelligently as they can, and yet the outcome is still poor. Many times a facet or an exacerbator of these problems is the creation of groups of people who blame other groups for being the "real" cause of the problem. [Insert long discussion about evolutionary nature of us-versus-them reasoning and clan formation]
- sixtofour 15y ago

wnight 15y ago

> Disarming the population is not an option here. Sure it is. Replace general purpose computers with centrally and permanently connected (It's a feature!) computing devices that only run signed apps. Then whenever someone does something too clever you just revoke their developer ID and everything they've written stops working. Justify this control with "piracy" and it'll be accepted. It won't really work, but it seems like it would to an authoritarian, so it's pretty likely where we're going in such a hurry. Like all false security it just opens us up to a bigger attack, but reality never won an election so government will never handle this properly. We talk about how nasty Iran, Egypt, Libya, etc, shut down communications preventing the people from changing things, but what measures do we have against our own governments doing the same things? I imagine we're totally screwed. Our government has the resources to do things thoroughly, and as the BART incident recently showed, the willingness to deny service to the innocent to inconvenience protestors.

slowpoke 15y ago
>Sure it is. Replace general purpose computers with centrally and permanently connected (It's a feature!) computing devices that only run signed apps. Then whenever someone does something too clever you just revoke their developer ID and everything they've written stops working. There was this one short story I've read months ago which essentially described this, just with compilers instead of apps. Oh the horror...

rdtsc 15y ago

> After an hour or two, I decided never to write about this subject. I have to say, you made the right choice. You would have probably ended up with a visit from Secret Service, FBI or other such organization. Someone I know wrote about a similar hypothetical scenario and ended up getting a visit from FBI at their workplace, in front of everyone, then also at home. You know, just a friendly "chat"... They ended up lecturing him about 1st Ammendment rights, oh the irony.

bane 15y ago

"The difference between a normal, naked person and a person armed with tech is increasingly dramatically. " The Golden Age books deal with this rather dramatically. It takes various ideas (augmented reality, global network connectivity, the singularity, etc.) to an extreme, to the point that a severe social punishment is to be disconnected from all globally integrated technology. A person in this state virtually becomes a non-person, unable to even achieve basic communication with other people physically in the same room, most other people even filtering disconnected persons out of their entire sensory experience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Age_(science_fiction_trilogy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Age_(science_fiction... They're pretty dense stuff and can be dry reads at times, but the ideas explored are really fascinating.