> I think technology is going to force us to adopt a totalist system (and our humanity will force us to make it humane.) "Star Trek or North Korea" in the limit.
Star Trek (or at least the UFP, other regimes in the fiction vary considerably) isn't remotely “totalist”, North Korea isn't humanitarian; neither is an example of a system that is both.
I meant "totalist" in the sense that we're going to record and store all our activity. This, in turn, will force us to confront ourselves, or we'll turn into a mechanized version of (inhumane) N. Korea.
> The true horror of technological omniscience is that it shall force us for once to live according to our own rules. For the first time in history we shall have to do without hypocrisy and privilege. The new equilibrium will not involve tilting at the windmills of ubiquitous sensors and processing power but rather learning what explicit rules we can actually live by, finding, in effect, the real shape of human society.
My thesis is that technology forces us to a total information awareness regime, and the choice is between a relatively open and egalitarian system like UFP or a system of gross privilege and starving serfs unbreakably enforced by machine.
To me, drone legislation is a part of this larger process of humanity coming to terms with our power as thinking tool-users.
Star Trek (or at least the UFP, other regimes in the fiction vary considerably) isn't remotely “totalist”, North Korea isn't humanitarian; neither is an example of a system that is both.