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The first thing I thought of was The Giving Plague by David Brin

In real life there are multiple factors that can disqualify you from donating blood. Having received a blood transfusion is one of them.

Depends. In the U.S., it's a year deferral, I believe. (Same deferral I got due to spending a week in Bangalore.)

However, in the U.S., having received a transfusion in Britain is a lifetime ban on donating blood, due to a certain prion disease that hit Britain pretty hard a few decades ago. Variant CJD may take decades to show up, but can be transmitted by blood in all that time.

Brin's story (his usual political hobby-horses beaten to splinters aside) is very good, but he made a mistake on the religion that bans blood transfusions. It's Jehovah's Witnesses, not Christian Science. Christian Science (it's neither) ... I don't think bans, exactly, but discourages ... almost all kinds of medicine. Get yourself to a Reading Room and enlighten yourself that your malady is just an illusion. JWs don't have a problem with medicine in general, but they read Leviticus to require a complete prohibition on blood transfusions. There have been court cases over this issue.

Brin's story does have one of the best depictions of a certain insight that I've ever seen -- seeing the POV character from the inside, he is clearly a perfectly vile, self-centered SOB. But what does the rest of the world see? They can't see inside him, see his motivations. They only see what he does, which is entirely admirable, the actions of someone who, apparently, richly deserved that Nobel Peace Prize.

The first thing I thought of was The Giving Plague by David Brin

In real life there are multiple factors that can disqualify you from donating blood. Having received a blood transfusion is one of them.

The first thing I thought of was The Giving Plague by David Brin

Story by David Brin, using Shuttle external tanks. Whaddya know, the whole story is on the web: http://www.davidbrin.com/tankf...

http://www.davidbrin.com/neote...

Brin explains the differences....

I mean, really, you might as well be trying to convince the world that ideas themselves are deadly weapons.

Memetic Warfare (military orientation)

Survival of the Fittest Ideas: The New Style of War -- a Struggle Among Memes (academic orientation)

http://everything2.com/title/Meme+Warfare (the "I fell asleep after five minutes, can you summarise the lecture for me" orientation)

So, sometimes? Yes.

I think we are moving toward a transparent society where privacy for all is minimal. Right now it is pretty one sided but I think openness and transparency for the government and large corporations will also happen. Technology will force them to open up. David Brin wrote a book called The Transparent Society that talks about this.

Tank Farm Dynamo by David Brin (1983)

I suggest reading Brin's critique of the Star Wars universe. Robo-racism is just a symptom of a much deeper problem:

http://www.davidbrin.com/starwarsontrial.html

Good points on priorities. See also on privacy: http://fyngyrz.com/?p=25

I saw that link on slashdot recently in someone's comment, and it is an insightful essay on privacy. There is a sense that a certain degree of privacy is both a human right and a human requirement in our society, and government should have a duty to protect it (even for reasons beyond ensuring the government remains accountable to the people policitcally).

But failing that, we should at least have David Brin's "Transparent Society" where everyone can watch the watchers:
http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html

See also my suggestion:
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc./76207-8319

There are also chilling effects. My house has electric heat, so if I grew hydroponic vegetables instead of running the heaters in winter, I would still get the heat via the lights (thermodynamics) and I'd also get fresh veggies all winter. But I know if I buy a lot of hydroponic equipment, I'll most-likely end up on some government list somewhere to have my door kicked in (see another comment here by someone else about an example of that and our misguided drug laws). Or see:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/pinellas-hydroponic-garden-shop-has-attention-of-deputies-searching-for/1204506

So, buy hydropoincs and have your dogs shot as a result of data mining?
"Why do SWAT teams kill all dogs when serving a warrant at a household?"
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110721154445AAWtx8u

Or, see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse

Although another reasons I don't do it is concerns about humidity and mold, and also finding the space, so that is not the only concern, beyond the cost of the equipment.

Thankfully, in the USA we are nowhere near the total squashing of dissent like was accomplished using the 1930s German gestapo secret police, although they apparently mostly used neighbors turning in neighbors since it was before the internet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo
"According to Canadian historian Robert Gellately's analysis of the local offices established, the Gestapo wasâ"for the most partâ"made up of bureaucrats and clerical workers who depended upon denunciations by citizens for their information.[36] Gellately argued that it was because of the widespread willingness of Germans to inform on each other to the Gestapo that Germany between 1933 and 1945 was a prime example of panopticism.[37] Indeed, the Gestapo -- at times -- was overwhelmed with denunciations and most of its time was spent sorting out the credible from the less credible denunciations.[38] Many of the local offices were understaffed and overworked, struggling with the paper load caused by so many denunciations.[39] Gellately has also suggested that the Gestapo was "a reactive organization" "...which was constructed within German society and whose functioning was structurally dependent on the continuing co-operation of German citizens".[40]
After 1939, when many Gestapo personnel were called up for war-related work such as service with the Einsatzgruppen, the level of overwork and understaffing at the local offices increased.[39] For information about what was happening in German society, the Gestapo continued to be mostly dependent upon denunciations.[41] 80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to information prov

http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html

David Brin is not included in these predictions, but he started writing a book called "Earth" in 1987 that had some interesting predictions of its own for the near future (2038, in his case).

-Networked computing connects all the people on the globe, and becomes the dominant way people access news and information.
-Computers shrink to the point where they become wearable, and people carry them around with them at all time.
-It becomes common for people to carry around small personal video cameras so they can record every moment of their lives. They then go home and upload portions of the video onto this computer network, sharing the videos for people around the world to see.

He later said of those predictions in particular. "... but I think the ideas were already latent -- almost obvious -- when I started writing the book...".

The Heartland Institute, and those they target, are deniers, not skeptics. There are certainly some climate skeptics out there, but most people I have ever seen, heard, read on the subject made the same tired arguments that have been refuted time and again. Those people are deniers. Read here for an engaging and thoughtful article on the distinction and tell me where you come out:
"What traits distinguish a rational, pro-science "skeptic" -- who has honest questions about the AGW consensus -- from members of a Denier Movement that portrays all members of a scientific community as either fools or conspirators?"

Partial skim:
"Skeptics first admit that they are non-experts in the topic at hand. And that experts tend to know more than they do."
"Skeptics go on to admit that it is both rare and significant when nearly 100% of the scientists in any field share a consensus-model, before splitting up to fight over sub-models."
"Deniers glom onto an anecdotal "gotcha!" from a dogma-driven radio show or politically biased blog site."
"We cannot say too often that, just because nearly all of experts are in consensus, their paradigm might still turn out to be wrong. Still, the Skeptic admits this is rare in science history."
"[The skeptic] openly admits who the chief beneficiaries of the current status quo are: those who spent two decades delaying energy efficiency research and urging us to guzzle carbon fuels like mad."
etc

The second to last section is entitled "So what's a sincere and enlightened skeptic to do?".

For context: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." [Heb 11:1] NASB. Conviction may also be translated as evidence (among other words, you'd need a concordance to do a best case word study). NASB tends to be relatively literal.

The chapter then proceeds to outline several "heroes of the faith" who did their thing with the expectation that God would make good on His promises as the heroes saw them, and concludes by pointing out that God did one better and met the promises as He saw them - with an implementation in excess of what man would have been able to understand.

It may be worth noting, for this discussion, that faith is forward looking the while dwelling on creation mechanisms are not. I've found that the underlying fear among literal 6-day Creationists tend to be related to the fundamental validity of scripture (Bible); there are many of the literal 6-day crowd among ID types. I personally find their fears and their interpretation of "long view" consequences to be lacking robustness; and among the better educated, faith. (Fully exploring this topic and my thoughts on it are well outside the scope of this post).

Nevertheless, we do find ourselves with an existence which is rather improbable. There are plenty of cosmological papers which bring this topic up, including some which point out our current universe (as it is understood) needed some outside energy expenditures to wind up the way it seems to be. Ultimately the current state of scientific understanding regarding our origins leaves us in the realm of speculation. David Brin does some interesting thought experiments in his short stories (particularly those in "Otherness") about how universes may evolve to be self propagating with respect to initial conditions and physical laws. I fall on the other side and believe that we exist due to a creator who helped spin up this universe in its current state. Who knows, maybe Einstein would have felt OK about God using loaded dice?

Furthermore, (both for full disclosure as well as establishing a credibility baseline for this particular argument), I do fall into the category of someone who keeps to a fairly literal translation of the Bible where appropriate (poetry is poetry, parables are parables, literal-truth is literal-truth, and complicated-realities-explained-in-a-way-which-convey-their-truthful-essence-without-leading-people-into-confusing-irrelevant-technical-details-beyond-even-modern-science are complicated-realities-explained-in-a-way-which-convey-their-truthful-essence-without-leading-people-into-confusing-irrelevant-technical-details-beyond-even-modern-science).

Science is a tool with which we explore physical realities, Christianity (religion) is a tool in which we explore metaphysical reality - reason and faith are the tools with which we make unified and consistent laws. There is some overlap (such as archeology) but for the most part, the tools reside in separate jurisdictions.

A discussion of the refrigeration laser in Brin's novel "Sundiver" is at the Physics Forum here.

Brin's science fiction writing, by the way, is very good. He's won all the big awards in the field (Hugo, Nebula, Locus), at least in part because he knows his material (B.S. Astrophysics, MSEE, Ph.D in Space Sciences, various post-doctoral honors, NASA exobiologist) . He also has some interesting ideas on sociology and politics, though not all of what he proposes is practical. His website is at davidbrin.com.

This short story, and the series that followed it, might interest you.

Maybe not though.

I'm a Dilbert fan without being an Adams fan, but I like some of what he's written in this opinion piece, which is essentially about creating a more informed and more engaged voting public. What I read into this is that we already have a fourth branch of government, it's the American people, and government should make it easier for them to play a part into it. I think that's admirable.

At one point in the essay, Adams talks about an online forum where people can debate ideas and learn about issues. It reminded me of Dr. David Brin's Disputation Arenas, where people can publicly debate an issue in a moderated forum, maybe have referees to flag logical fallacies or off-topic statements, figure out what everyone can agree on, set those aspects aside and figure out where the ideal mean lies for us as a people.

http://www.davidbrin.com/transparent.htm

Which suggests much the same as you did.

And also see "The light of other days" by others as a sci-fi story with a related theme of cultural transformation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days

In general, it's ironic we will put all these computer resources into surveilling people who we fear are up to no good (like stealing property or escaping from society via drugs) instead of just building robots (and other infrastructure) to make what people want along with providing a basic income so they can purchase such things. Related by me:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY

David Brin's book - The Transparent Society talks about this kind of city/state/nation over 12 years ago.

In general since the commonfolk will likely lose privacy the goal was to make sure the elites do to.

http://www.davidbrin.com/transparent.htm

I was wondering when uplift was going to be mentioned!

Altruism is a disease

Yes, "The Light of Other Days" was a great book in terms of thinking about, by analogy, privacy in the compuyter age. See also David Brin's non-fiction book, "The Transparent Society" on the theme you raise of symmetry and asymmetry in recording.
    http://www.davidbrin.com/transparent.htm

Do those leading the deny/delay/"the science isn't settled" charge not also standing to make Sagans of dollars? If you're going to assume that a monetary interest devastates the credibility of the AGW side, you're going to have to explain why your skepticism is so selective.

>> There may be, in fact, an AGW crisis looming that threatens mankind. Unfortunately, the sloppy and ideologically- and politically-driven "science" and election-campaign-like tactics using personal attacks, etc have completely wrecked the debate and delayed or killed any chance of doing anything about it for years or decades.

Ask any police officer. They get this exact same reasoning from every guy they arrest for assaulting his wife. The occasional arrogance and poor judgment by a few scientists -- in the face of a steady deluge of viciousness and stupidity from their opponents -- does nothing to undermine the legitimacy of the science.

>> The world just isn't going to give up many trillions in wealth, sacrifice many lives, reduce individual freedoms, lose national sovereignty, and destroy the standard of living of many millions without solid, verifiable, and dire reasons. This has only reinforced skepticism.

According to the Stern Report, the investments needed to mitigate warming will only be a couple percent of world GDP, whereas the effects of climate change itself could amount to 20% of GDP. If we were measuring accurately, and calculating the value of burning fossil fuels by including the additional risk every ton brings -- and it's poor economics not to -- then suddenly fighting climate change is like printing money, and burning oil is like burning money.

Before I invest any more effort in you, I need to know: Are you a denier or a skeptic?

Quantum black holes are unstable. Now if they manage to create a tuned string we need to start worrying.

Or the Facebook mentality, re: Zuckerberg's opinion that none of us care about privacy anymore. The fact that at least some people are complaining about this gives me a little hope.

(Of course if one wants to get really depressed there's Brin's opinion that it doesn't matter if we want privacy or not, we ain't getting it anyways.)

Some books on the subject:

• "The Transparent Society", by David Brin
• "I See You", by Damon Knight
• "Total Surveillance, by Hugh Perkins

Is this a vaccine that prevent you from getting infected with that anti-captialist altruistism?

Hey, altruism is serious business.

100's of sets of tourist photos randomly scattered across the internet, being added and removed and reorganized by their takers at their whim is not remetely the same thing as a single permanent indexed geo-tagged database filled with photos that were carefully and systematically taken and stitched together.

1. Tourists take geo-tagged photos with GPS enabled camera.
2. Tourists upload said photos to Flickr.
3. Trendy web 2.0 developer writes Google Maps / Flickr mashup. *
4. ???
5. Profit (for burglars?)

(* many of which, I assume, already exist)

The point is, this is one genie that can't be put back in the bottle, Google or no Google. I'm sure David Brin had something to say about all this.

Which city do you live in?

I want to see David Brin's response to this, in the light of The Transparent Society.

I don't know, I'm finding myself more and more drawn to the ideas of David Brin in regards to privacy. I think the ultimate answer in a world with the kind of computer technology we have (and will soon have) is to not try and fight the inevitable forms of electronic surveilance, but to make it so that the eye is omni directional. I think perhaps our focus should be on finding a way to make sure that politicians can not exempt themselves from tansparency, and in fact that they are subject to increasing levels of scrutiny compared to the scrutiny they level at us.

I think a good first step would be to hire an "archivist" who is tasked with following every congressperson and top level government official around and recording in video and audio (and making copies of all electronic and analog communications they make) everything that they do, every meeting they have, etc.

If they haven't done anything wrong, they have no reason to object, right?

"Notice that both of these acts are perfectly legal, and while the second arguably should be regulated and restricted by law (the aggregation, correlation and publication parts, not the picture-taking part), the first one ought not to."

But you cannot put the privacy genie back in the bottle. All information has this problem. It's like trying to undo piracy and prohibition. Whenever I see a privacy article on slashdot about privacy on the net, I'm usually reminded of David brin's "The transparent society"

http://www.davidbrin.com/transparent.htm

We consumers are as much to blame as marketers for all this loose data. At every turn we have willingly given up a layer of privacy in exchange for convenience; it is why we use a credit card to shop, enduring a barrage of junk mail. And although I agree in the ideal world there should be ways to limit information because anyone can put info about us online, etc, it still for the most part would be impossible to stop.

I remember someone unintentionally leaking their real name because they did not realize their wishlist was public and when someone googled their name, they showed up via amazon wishlist. People do a lot of things not realizing they have given others means to track them down. But this should be understood using the internet. Sun's CEO I think it was mentioned that there was no privacy and that other tech and non tech companies alike would have to deal with the fact that you don't really have any.

We feel good when we help others?

"You just stay the hell away from me, ALAS. I won't be your patsy. I won't be your vector."

"they used to contain basically the address and perhaps logs from calls they made to the call center. Now whole phone conversations are logged as well as faxes and letters that are scanned, together with images and video that is available."

Reminds me of David brin's Transparent society

http://www.davidbrin.com/tschp1.html

http://www.amazon.com/Transparent-Society-Technology-Between-Privacy/dp/0738201448/

"The only way to safeguard privacy in a world where ever more intrusive collection mechanisms, mass storage and automated processing of data is possible is to have a default policy that personal data cannot be held and then work on the exceptions."

It is IMPOSSIBLE to have privacy in a world of high technology, you leave breadcrumbs everywhere, everything you interact with can be recorded, you leave heat signatures in the air or skin cells on surfaces and trash that if someone really wanted they could collect, if they were persistent enough. (i.e. just look at what the the paparazzi will do for money)

They got UAV's now that can fly over your house and see through walls if they really wanted to, they have sattelites that can see into the ground to find hidden hardened installations.

What is one going to do about the sattelites in space or people with camera phones, or webcams, glass cams, the massification of spy equipment, pointed out of their windows or on their persons? I've personally thought myself about wishing I had glasses with hidden camera on them undetectable built into the lenses so people couldn't lie to me, or lie in court if bad shit happened.

You can't even hope to stop them all. David brin, I believe was right on the money: We're going to have to get used to things being public all the time.

http://www.davidbrin.com/tschp1.html

Damn, that's two Transparent Society stories so far today.

I can't wait for cheap Internet goggles, so I never have to go offline...

Welcome to the Transparent Society.

David Brin's take might be summarized, "Privacy is Dead, What Happens Next?" or "How I Learned to Love the Panopticon."

The motion along the orbit also causes it to act like a generator, powered by the orbital momentum. (This was known - and also has possible uses.)

Don't forget the ObReference: Tank Farm Dynamo.

Welcome to The Transparent Society.

And, yes, I have mixed feelings about it too.

In his SF novel, "Earth", David Brin had one of his principal characters interacting with a computer using a nearly identical mechanism. Brin referred to it in the book as "sub-vocalization." See this: http://www.davidbrin.com/earth1.html

I've been waiting for this for almost twenty years.

Sorry to slashdotters for my klutziness with the interface. I hope you were able to see my response to this threa, and Bruce Schneier's article about my book. It is an important topic. I hope you are all part of the solution. Stay knowing and smart. With cordial regards, David Brin http://www.davidbrin.com/

Hello all. David Brin checking in. Author of The Transparent Society and the target of Bruce Schneier's article. I have (naturally) a few quibbles and downright snorts at things that my friend Bruce said -- and blitheringly misunderstood -- in his piece. I am submitting a response to WIRED. It will eventually run at: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ .. . . . A few quick responses. . . . . First to "Inevitability" who said: "If you haven't read (Brin's) book, basically the argument that Brin makes is that the complete loss of privacy is inevitable given technology, and thus we shouldn't delude ourselves in thinking we can preserve it, but rather embrace it and fight for transparency on both sides. I don't buy the inevitability argument..." .. . . . Well, um, neither do I. In fact, "Inevitability", you are wrong and clearly never read The Transparent Society. The book contains a long chapter about how important privacy is to human beings and necessary! Though freedom must come first. .. . . . My point is that freedom, and thus privacy, cannot be defended by people who are disempowered... or who have handed all protection duties over to some secretive elite. The enlightenment is an experiment in empowering citizens to make their own minds about market and political matters and to thus argue them openly. But in order for this to happen, most of the people need to know most of what's going on, most of the time. . . . . That still leaves room for some privacy... yes, it will be more narrowly defined in a transparent society. But in an open society, we will better be able to defend what's left. . . . . Supersnail makes a key point. The parts of the Patriot Act we should be fighting are not those parts letting the government see better. What, you plan to blind the mighty? When did THAT ever happen? HOW do you think you'll blind the mighty? . . . . No, the parts of Patriot we should be battling against are where our "protectors" get to do it all in secret, unsupervised. I am not harmed by what the NSA knows, but I could be harmed bigtime by anything they might DO to me... and preventing that means supervision. It means "sousveillance" (look it up!) . . . . See http://www.davidbrin.com/suggestions.html where I discuss the "Inspector General of the United States" and other means of stripping the veils. . . . . Geoff Landis (hi Geoff!) gets it. Watch for my response to Schneier (either on WIred or my blog). Poor Bruce veers and reverses and ultimately shows us an example of transparency evening the odds! Already police are much more careful, since the Rodney King episode. We can keep this trend going, WHILE not impeding the good cops from doing their jobs. . . . . Nine-times, the People CAN be organized! That's what NGOs are for. Join the EFF or ACLU and your dues help watch the cops. Have clear evidence you were abused? Any tort attorney will gladly help you "get organized." We need more equalizers, but the precedent is there. and some exist. . . . . redelm, privacy is dear and needed, but it is a secondary right, after freedom to know and speak. Without those, all other freedoms are useless. That is why freedom to know and speak are fiercely spelled out in the US Constitution. . . . . Shieldwolf get that a transparent society will demand that at least a critical mass of citizens... maybe a third be truly mature and active and connected with events and technological change. In contrast, node3 is blind. We can all participate without becoming a lynch mob. on 9/11, citizens did a myriad great things, on the day when the Professionals all Failed. . . . . BTW Marx was a great science fiction author and changed the world by scaring the West into reforming. (He'd hate that characterization.) But Hegel was simply a monster. All the time I can afford. If you folks want to see

For those of you unfamiliar with Brin's notion of the "Transparent Society," the first chapter of his book is available for free online, and there's of course the Wikipedia page.

Personally, I think Bruce Schneier is sort of missing the point; if anything he seems to be advocating the same sort of system as Brin. Brin's general thesis is that with ever-increasing technological capabilities, with cameras becoming ever-smaller and cheaper and networks increasingly ubiquitous, this loss of privacy is sadly inevitable. Given the choice of surveillance being solely the domain of government, or the domain of both the people and the government, the latter is preferable, and also has some interesting side-benefits. Balancing power between people and the government is one of the major benefits.

The Transparent Society

David Brin's essay on the end of privacy is probably appropriate reading here...

Great comments! I completely agree that, no matter what lame story or acting or stupid accents that GL might have foisted on us in the episodes I - III, the worst was the midichlorians. Take a mythology and turn it in to some accident of nature, something that you can measure under a microscope.

However, to say that they "didn't make sense" isn't completely true. There are several people who have compared GL's work with that of Campbell. It was the creation of a "campbellian" super race that necessitated the little things growing in our cells. That's the whole point -- you CAN'T become a hero, or even a great leader by dedication and hard work. You have to be BORN a super-hero, or be "destined" to save the world. The rest of us are just the drones that follow those born to lead.

Oh and the whole "virgin birth" thing really sucked too. That one about made me puke.

I think my favorite article is an old one by David Brin at: "Star Wars" despots vs."Star Trek" populists and his follow up article

Interestingly (as I have just discovered), quote: "Trinary is an artistic language in David Brin's Uplift series of science fiction novels, spoken largely by dolphins or "neo-fins." The language is largely regarded to have high poetic potential, and is in fact ideal for such things as the construction of any poetry, from haikus to dirty limericks."

Brin seems to have interesting views, quote: "In a time of increasing political polarization, I have urged (in my most recent essay, "The Ostrich Papers") that we look past the simplistic and outdated "left-right political axis." Yes, there is madness going on. But I suggest that the cure is not bitter "culture war." Rather, moderate and decent citizens of the Enlightenment need to reach out to other decent people -- even those who have swallowed nonsense. At stake is preserving a nation of modern confidence from a looming dark age."

CC.

This is the thesis of Brin's The Transparent Society. I agree that if we're going to have universal surveillance, it really ought to be turned on the government as well as ourselves, but how? Also, Brin seems to hope that if John Smith is a peeping Tom, others will be able to find that out, thus curbing abuses of a system where everyone can watch everyone else. How could that be implemented?