Seth's Blog : Cat and mouse games

Cat and mouse games

I hope that most of us would agree that driving 50 mph in a school zone where little kids cross the street is a significant safety problem. The speed limit is there for good reason, and if you selfishly and recklessly blow through the crosswalk, you ought to get a summons.

Municipalities can now hire a service that uses an automated speed camera to find the scofflaws and issue summonses directly, without the random luck of getting away with it as a factor.

But of course, cars now have computers in them, and GPS as well, so a car could easily be built so that it cut out the middleman and simply warned the driver and then issued itself a summons.

We’re inconsistent about how we interpret freedom and responsibility. The status quo gets the benefit of the doubt, simply because it’s what we’re used to.

Freedom’s fabulous, but as soon as we interact with others, it comes with responsibility.

As our communities become ever more interwoven and the surveillance of our actions becomes more complete, the cats and mice aren’t going to be nearly as relevant as to what sort of balance we all seek to strike between freedom and responsibility.

It should not be controversial for us to be responsible for the impact of what we say and what we do. Cats and mice have nothing to do with it.