> Second, our devices are becoming effectively cybernetic extensions of our minds, and this cognitive intimacy definitely warrants a new discussion of boundaries that is not burdened by awkward analogies to historic traditions of the courts.
I guess I just don't believe this.[1] Courts have always been able to compel say your friend or girlfriend to reveal your darkest secrets--stuff that you'd never even write down--but your text messages should be treated differently? It's not like cognitive intimacy didn't exist before electronic devices.
[1] As far as sci-fi philosophy goes, my go-to is WWHIS (What Would Happen in Star Trek). You think the Federation can't compel someone to assist in decrypting a computer?
Don't mix the separate points I was making. Text messages are like mail, other device use is like thought, imagination, or memory. I also notice you didn't mention spouses, which are treated differently from friends, and did not address the third point about encryption.
I'm also not making an argument from sci-fi, I'm talking about reality today. Star Trek (especially TNG) has a lot of great morality plays and valuable lessons can be learned from it, but the vast majority of the action we see takes place on a military-like vessel and can't inform us about how to structure a total population. But this is all beside the point that we are experiencing the melding of our minds and our devices right now.
> other device use is like thought, imagination, or memory
And I'm saying I don't buy that. My phone isn't an "extension of my brain" (that's what I'm calling sci-fi philosophy). It's a replacement for my phone, calendar/notebook, and camera, which are all things that have been subject to search with a warrant.
> I also notice you didn't mention spouses, which are treated differently from friends
But not for reasons relevant to your argument. Spousal privilege exists not to protect privacy but to protect marriage. The rationale is that you shouldn't turn spouses on each other. It dates to a time when spouses were considered the same legal person.
I didn't address your point about encryption because I don't disagree with it. But banning encryption isn't directly at issue here.
Star Trek is always relevant. It imagines a future society where people achieve prosperity through a very powerful, sometimes fallible, but basically benevolent government. It's an ode to the righteous power of Institutions. It's a compelling alternative to the anarchic leanings of much of modern sci-fi.
And I'm saying I don't buy that. My phone isn't an "extension of my brain" (that's what I'm calling sci-fi philosophy).
It may not be true for you, but you don't have to buy it for it to be compelling to others. I'm saying that when I and presumably many others use technology, it's not perceived as an external device, but rather a direct extension of our minds and senses. There's no skeuomorphic substitution taking place in our minds.
It's very vaguely analogous to (though much stronger than) a car enthusiast saying that they feel one with the car. A similar concept applies to many other tools humans use as well; people may say "ow!" and grimace in pain when they damage their tools, even though their own flesh wasn't physically harmed.
I use those analogies to suggest that a tool used not by the body but by the mind can have an even stronger integration with the core identity of a person, a connection that must be taken into account by any laws seeking to regulate such tools.
Regarding spouses, I'd make the argument that in a society that doesn't treat a marriage as a single person, privacy is one of the necessary substitutes that society needs to maintain its sanity and achieve the same end of building stable, productive households. So the historic rationale for spousal secrecy should not prevent us from extending the concept to other interactions, perhaps even with non-human parties (like our devices).
I'm glad we can agree about the banning of encryption. Maybe it's not the direct issue in the Apple case we are discussing, but it is a part of the rhetoric being used by (parts of) the government, and does relate to forcing a company to make it easy to break a device's encryption.
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Star Trek is always relevant. It imagines a future society where people achieve prosperity through a very powerful, sometimes fallible, but basically benevolent government. It's an ode to the righteous power of Institutions. It's a compelling alternative to the anarchic leanings of much of modern sci-fi.
It also only works in a post-scarcity, free energy environment. There's often a recurring theme of what happens when a government is corrupt or is infiltrated by outside powers (represented for the sake of fiction as brain-eating parasites). And I'd say Kirk at least has a pretty strong anarchic leaning :-). But it's mostly entertainment, and doesn't provide a blueprint for achieving such a society. I really like Star Trek, but I think in this conversation it's more distracting than it is enlightening.
> But it's mostly entertainment, and doesn't provide a blueprint for achieving such a society.
I think it does. How did the society become post-scarcity and free energy? Teams of scientists working in Federation research labs, Federation programs that make the fruits of that technology available to everyone.
Bear in mind the technological basis for its post-scarcity society (cheap and efficient conversion of matter into energy and back) is impossible in our universe. It may not even be post-scarcity. We're shown the lives of the elite, but there are Federation colonies that practice traditional agriculture, mining colonies, trade in goods, starvation and chaos due to technological breakdown and sometimes a massacre or two. Certainly the Original Series didn't seem post scarcity, merely advanced (from the point of view of the 1960s.)
And as far as privacy goes, it probably depends on the series, but in the most Utopian ideal of the Federation, would anyone even use encryption? Surely the desire for secrecy would be considered a form of atavism, something humans would have evolved beyond?
But peering into your cybernetic mind extension would be more akin to compelling you to testify against yourself, which is constitutionally prohibited.
I guess I just don't believe this.[1] Courts have always been able to compel say your friend or girlfriend to reveal your darkest secrets--stuff that you'd never even write down--but your text messages should be treated differently? It's not like cognitive intimacy didn't exist before electronic devices.
[1] As far as sci-fi philosophy goes, my go-to is WWHIS (What Would Happen in Star Trek). You think the Federation can't compel someone to assist in decrypting a computer?