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

call the cops.
valis asks: Will this project work in all neighborhoods? How about the projects?

I would hope that it would work in projects. As always, there are economic
barriers. Middle class people will get over those barriers before project
dwellers. But certainly crime is more of an issue in projects than in
middle-class 'hoods and so they would have more to gain by reducing it.
rossum asks: This is a very high-resouce plan- What about those who can't afford
a half-dozen cameras on their house?
I'm really concerned about the cost issue, and so I'm trying to do it with a
minimum of expense. A QuickCam costs US$100. You can get a used computer for a
few hundred and set it up to run a free OS like Linux. Bandwidth is still
expensive but ought to start getting cheaper soon. Basically, this is not a very
interesting project if it costs a hundred thousand bucks to set it up. If it can
be done for a few thousand (or for a figure that is comparable to the cost of
crime in the 'hood) then it becomes economically feasible.
scrow asks: I've got 2 HUGE problems with things you (Neal) just said- #1. You
assume that criminals are identified from the get go and that #2 Not near
answering these questions?!?!?! Why not? They're integral concerns!
#1: The purpose of having the thing neighborhood-based is to prevent
misidentification. There is a black family next door to us that includes a
teenaged kid who likes to work on cars. The cops are always hassling him because
when they see a teenage black kid with his head under a dashboard, they assume
he's stealing the car. They don't know the neighborhood. But we who live here do
know it and so we recognize this kid and we don't react in an inappropriate way.

#2: I don't disagree that these are crucial issues, just that I'm improvising
this thing one little bit at a time, in my very limited spare time, and I can't
figure out all of the answers ahead of time. I just have to make it up as I go
along.
gwire asks: does the whole system rely heavily on the communications links
between each area being extremly reliable?
They don't have to be that reliable. It's not the end of the world if a link
goes down and someone's car gets ripped off. We are just playing the averages
here.
scamp asks: Is it discouraging to have everyone react so negatively? How often
do you meet with wholehearted enthusiasm, or at least willingness to check it
out?
I think that most of the reactions are cautious rather than negative and that
they reflect a totally appropriate skepticism about the possible downside of
technology. There are plenty of people who are enthusiastic about the idea.
scrow asks: Well, I respect your writing, but I gotta say it seems pretty
irresponsible to propose something with such possibility for abuse without
thinking it through.
I'm just a guy sitting around in his basement dicking around with spare
compuuter parts, and have no power to implement such a system all over the
country, as a government or major corporation might. It is impossible to think
everything through in full detail ahead of time. Basically I'm going to mess
around with it informally until I run into a brick wall, and then quit. Other
people will be trying other approaches to the crime problem no matter what I do.