Mind's Eye Re: Search Engine As God

It's a old argument from Jeremy Bentham and Michel Foucault - about the panoptican, a prison designed so the guards can see everything that goes on.  When asked who would supervise the guards, Bentham is supposed to have said that the interested public would do that scrutiny.  We are doing a pretty bad job over Manning and Snowden.  

I'd see the biggest difference between such a socio-technical system and god as most of us have the notion (no doubt differently) is access by other people, though it may not quite be like that in much priest-mullah related religion.

I think we could have some good debate on transparency.  I see the idea of transparent finance very good, Big Brother very bad (or trivial on television).  But it isn't even this simple, as financial transparency makes a lot of other stuff transparent.  I would have liked an extradition treaty with Spain when I was a cop - but I'd also want Snowden to find asylum.  I like the idea of world peace, but don't want that to lead to a bunch of rabid fundamentalists taking over because they are the only ones to keep guns.  A lot of Greek argument ended this way - aporia - no way out.

On Saturday, 29 June 2013 21:57:58 UTC+1, archytas wrote:

If God did not exist – people would invent one! The development of 

human civilization requires mechanisms promoting cooperation and 

social order. One of these mechanisms is based on the idea that 

everything we do is seen and judged by God – bad deeds will be 

punished, while good ones will be rewarded (or was this Santa?). The Information Age has 

now fueled the dream that God-like omniscience and omnipotence can 

be created by man.

This is an interesting way of thinking about information systems - full free paper at http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1304/1304.3271.pdf

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