Wired Writer Imagines Google Island 150
theodp writes "The last thing Wired's Mat Honan remembered before awaking on the self-driving boat that dropped him on the island was sitting through a four-hour Google I/O keynote in Moscone Center and hearing Google CEO Larry Page promote a vision of a utopia where society could be free to innovate and experiment, unencumbered by government regulations or social norms. 'Welcome to Google Island,' a naked-save-for-a-pair-of-eyeglasses Larry Page tells Honan. 'As soon as you hit Google's territorial waters, you came under our jurisdiction, our terms of service. Our laws — or lack thereof — apply here. By boarding our self-driving boat you granted us the right to all feedback you provide during your journey. This includes the chemical composition of your sweat. Remember when I said at I/O that maybe we should set aside some small part of the world where people could experiment freely and examine the effects? I wasn't speaking theoretically. This place exists. We built it.'"
Utopian playland (Score:5, Interesting)
This appears to be a story depicting a sort-of utopian future (of limited extent - an island) where there are no rules.
I'm not sure from the context whether the author is in favor or against the concept. It somehow feels like he is knitting together several uncomfortable consequences of "no rules" in an attempt to paint that future as dystopian.
The thing people always miss, the important overlooked point, is that no one wants a state where there are no rules. What people invariably want is a state which has rules enforcing human rights, and little else.
The most basic human right is to have sovereignty over ones own body. Mat Honan's article shows us that with no rules, outsiders would be able to do anything they wanted to us - even against our consent. It would be the strong doing whatever they wanted to the weak. Typical, obvious, and predictable - we have many examples of lawless societies where the strong do just that.
Many of our rules are violations of that first most basic right, pretty much anything that someone else thinks that you should do or not-do for your own good: rules about drugs, prostitution, abortion, doctor-assisted suicide, and yes, wearing clothes. We could do away with large swaths of the legal landscape and eliminate large parts of government, both local and federal, if we could just say "do anything you want, so long as you don't infringe on the rights of others".
If you would like to read about a rule-less society which enforces basic human rights and is a little less dystopian, try "Manna" [marshallbrain.com] by Marshall Brain. It's an easy read and an interesting story.
Another good example is "Voyage From Yesteryear" [wikipedia.org] by James Hogan. A little longer and with more drama, but essentially a rule-less society which enforces basic human rights.
Re:Utopian playland (Score:5, Interesting)
I tried it. Well not quite abandoned but an unspoiled island with 3000 people. It was heaven for the first couple of years. By 7 years, groundhog day was making me look to the horizon for a passing ship. The sea, the surf and the blue skies, and the personal creativity are lovely, but after a while one needs some culture, generated by other people, with other ideas.