I was talking to someone the other day about my ideas, and while we didn’t go into any depth (the conversation lasted a total of about three minutes) her immediate concern was that “You’d need people checking up on everyone, and that’s Big Brother.” And the idea of a centralized computer system that keeps quite close track of the material details of people’s lives is essential to the idea of technosocialism. But there is a key difference between the technosocialist model and an Orwellian surveillance state: under technosocialism, there is no centralized government. There is no government at all, beyond the organized decision making of the population. Can it be possible, therefore, to have a “Big Brother” society in which there is no Big Brother? Is a “Myriad Small Cousins” society really one to fear?
Let’s start with an examination of surveillance and verification under technosocialism, beginning with Fred, the individual craftsman of several essays ago. You’ll remember that he sent out several sets of juggling balls through the post. He would want to make a record of himself packaging the balls and putting them in the postal system, so that he has evidence of his own contribution. The system then tracks the package as it makes its way through the system to the recipient. The recipient opens the package and either accepts it, in which case his Consumption score and Fred’s Contribution score are both increased appropriately, or he rejects it, in which case he will want a record of himself sending the package back to Fred. Should either of their actions be disputed, it’s within each of their best interests to have a record of their actions. So as far as actual camera-based surveillance goes, it comes not from an ominous centralized system but from individuals recording their own actions.
But there is such a thing as non-camera surveillance, and the system would be tracking all of an individual’s possessions and frequently their location as well. Why shouldn’t this make citizens nervous? Because no one is watching. There is no government to use the information in malevolent ways. Depending on the situation, some of the information may be open to the citizenry as a whole, but generally it is used solely by an automated computer system to track Consumption and Contribution or to efficiently route the mail and public transit.
The other important reassurance for those concerned about a “Big Brother” state is that under technosocialism, free speech is an absolute. The classic movie plot involves a lone protagonist who stands against the ruling government/large corporation/etc and who is tracked down by military satellites and his cell phone by the powers that be who want to stop him from spreading his message. But in a technosocialist system, this would not be a concern. The free interaction of ideas is the very core of technosocialism. Short of blatant calls for violence, there is no speech that could ever be deemed a crime. Not to mention the lack of the sort of centralized police force that would be required for that sort of scenario to take place.
And in most cases where political repression could be even a theoretical danger, annonymity is always an option. There will be those who find the idea of the system tracking their reading habits repugnant, and there are two solutions for those individuals: if the author is of a similar mindset, they have the option of turning off all tracking for their book. It means that they will not recieve any Contribution credit when people read the book, but it allows authors and readers alike to remain annonymous. The second solution is a bit more complicated, but provides a solution for situations in which the author does not wish to forego Contribution credit but the reader does not want it tracked that he is reading the book. It relies on print-on-demand technology. Using only currently available technology, it is possible to create a printing unit that can print, bind, and dispense a book on a while-you-wait basis. Using this technique, such units could be set up for citizens to have books printed from the collection of all books available electronically. They would be subject to a Consumption charge based on the paper, etc required for the printing, and the author would recieve Contribution credit based on the average time that it took someone to read the book. But importantly, those Consumption and Contribution amounts would only be calculated once a month, and the unit would track only who had books printed and whose books were printed, but not times or dates. That way, if Ed, Ted, Ned, and Jed printed books by Rob, Bob, Cob, and Yob (hey, you try coming up with two different sets of rhyming one syllable names. It’s harder than you think) the system would be able to distribute Consumption and Contribution value accordingly, but there would be no way of tracing who purchased which book.
In general, it is important to allow people to opt out of tracking whenever that is possible for society without creatinga haven for corruption. For example, there are real benefits to having all items tagged with RFID tags. It would make it much easier for citizens to find things in a messy apartment, and it would make it extremely difficult for theives to get very far once the item was flagged as stolen. However, there will be those who don’t want their belongings tracked at that level, and therefore the rightful owner of an object should be able to turn off RFID tracking on that object. And even in cases where tracking cannot be turned off without causing the danger of corruption, such as with the inventory of what every citizen has purchased and should still have in their possession, they should have complete control over the privacy of that information. Anything that someone wishes to keep private should remain private unless a jury in an ongoing criminal investigation votes at least 10-2 that they need to see it.
If we accept that free speech is an absolute, that there is no government and no police force as such, and that all laws are created directly by the people of the society through democratic methods, it becomes harder and harder to imagine a totalitarian “big brother” society.