"Global Neighborhood Watch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stephenson Neal)

16 November, 1995
"Windows are the best crime-prevention devices of all, if you only bother to
look out of them. The virtual windows on a computer screen could serve the same
function, linking distant places into a distributed neighborhood."
- Neal Stephenson, "Global Neighborhood Watch"
Neal Stephenson, cyberpunk visionary and author of Snow Crash and The Diamond
Age, contributed the essay "Global Neighborhood Watch" to Scenarios: The Future
of the Future. The article is a call to arms for concerned, techno-savvy
citizens; Stephenson outlays a plan to prototype a home-computer-networked
surveillance system to track crime at strategic points across the globe.
kadrey says: Welcome to another interview in our series with writers and
thinkers who contributed to Wired's *Scenario: The Future of the Future* special
issue. Tonight's guest is Neal Stephenson, best known as the author of such
heavy-weight science fiction novels Snowcrash and The Diamond Age.
kadrey asks: In the Scenarios issue, Neal contributed an essay/proposal entitled
"Global Neighborhood Watch." For anyone who might have missed it, can you
explain the basic concept of the Global Neighborhood Watch project?
Okay
It is an electronic extension of existing, traditional neighborhoods.
The idea is that just as we currently keep an eye on our nieghbors' houses by
looking out of our windows, we can keep an eye on a virtual neighbor's house on
the other side of the world by looking through a window on a computer screen.
rossum asks: How do you define a "virtual neighbor"?
The key to this idea would be creating sibling-neighborhood relationships with
neighborhoods in other parts of the world - preferably in different time zones
so that someone in the extended neighborhood is always awake. Just as I don't
want to have total strangers (e.g., cops or rent-a-cops) in my neighborhood
doing surveillance on me, I don't want strangers on the Net doing it either.
Instead I'd lilke a close relationship with a specific group of people in some
other country who are familiar with my face and with my comings and goings.
scrow asks: What possible benefit could outweigh the outrageous abuse potential?
Our privacy would be a null concept....
I would not do this if I thought there was no way to protect my privacy in the
process. To begin with, the cameras would be aimed mostly at parked cars,
basement windows, and garages. Secondly, they would be rigged in such a way that
they would only come on and transmit video when something was moving. Third, it
would be possible to shut them off at any time if you wanted some privacy.
Finally, I am exploring ways to encrypt the video signal so that it can only be
read by people who are in the sibling neighborhood.
kadrey says: That last bit was one of my questions: how do you prevent your
signal from being used as a sort of wiretap surrogate? Of course, the point
becomes moot if there are only governmment-authorized encryption systems in use.

tom5 asks: What is needed in the Global Neighborhood Watch is the equivalent of
PORCHES: a way of interacting with the observed space.
That's a good idea. The nice thing about porch-based neighborhood surveillance
is that you can see the people who are seeing you (as opposed to peeking out
through the curtains).
kadrey says: Your idea seems as much about community as it does about security.