NGSCB
I was quoted at some length in a Wired News article about the technology formerly known as Palladium. I worry that I was too long-winded because I was interviewed by e-mail instead of on the telephone. I was also a bit formal.
Here are two superstitions you have to deal with in order to make an informed criticism of this technology:
- People can't be harmed by being given a new choice or ability, or benefitted by having a choice or ability taken away from them.
- Harms are done to people on purpose, or as a result of some individual's nefarious intent.
As to the latter, I think of the phrase "damnum absque iniuria". (I heard about it in a very old court case last fall, when I went to hear the Pavlovich argument; then I went to hear the Eldred argument, and soon I'm going to hear the Bunner argument.)
Maybe these aren't even the right superstitions to be worried about. I'm pretty confident that the first one is important; I have a list of about a dozen metaphors to try to make this point (from time-lock safes to St. Basil's Cathedral to collective bargaining to the game of Chicken on out), but I doubt any of them are immediately intuitive, and I think I'm going to need something much more intuitive.
