[MUD-Dev] Re: (no subject)

[JC Lawrence]

On Mon, 22 Dec 1997 08:57:16 PST8PDT stad <Ola> wrote:
> Mike Sellers <mike at online-alchemy.com> wrote:

...deletia...

>> communications, so that they can be viewed if needed.  Or at least,
>> I would say that I favor logging all *in character* communications.
>> If you have an

> To me, this is quite horrible... HORRIBLE! :-(

I understand your distaste -- its one of the reasons I find this such
a fascinating area.  Control of information is central to the human
society and an individual's definition and sense of self within that
society.

There is a wonderful old quote, which I wish I could remember, but I'm
away from my dictionaries and libraries here at work (yes, I'm working
on Christmas Eve, and will be working the day after as well, and on
New Years...) which asserts that those without evil deeds have no
secrets.  There's more than a little truth in there, tho I'll acccept
questions on its absoluteness.

There are really two sides underneath that as well: the obvious one of
nothing-to-hide vs something-to-hide, but also the much more important
and interesting one of don't-wish-to-be-forced-not-to-hide vs
you-must-reveal.  Its that latter one on which the civil rights
questions are based, the questions of the state's power and obligation
to impose itself on its citizenry for their own or its own good etc
come into question.  Utterly fascinating stuff.

That said, I consider attempts at secrecy to be an utterly futile and
failed excercise.  The only valid, even logically possible and
supportable attempt is to control the dissemination of information for
a limited (usually very limited) time, and even that can quickly and
unnoticably become futile as well.

Consider the absolute case of our real physical universe.
Theoretically, given enough analysis of actually a very small
(relatively) number of particles (Heisenberg to the side here because
we are dealing with macro events) I can determine and follow your
every living motion.  It would be ridiculously expensive, and there
are far easier (if invasive) ways to get the same data, but it is,
theoretically possible.

Now let us assume that all those theoretical possibilities are actually
realistically possible, and so realistically possible that they are
available to the common man in the street for minimal cost and
effort, much like, say, a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses at a beach
resort. 

That is what I am attempting to implement in my MUD, tho I'll accept
for performance and technical reasons that my "logs" will only go back
so far (say a week), with the excuse that quantumn randomity hides the
rest of the past from us through random "noise".

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
                                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
----------(*)                        Internet: jc.lawrence at sun.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...