Harry Veeder wrote: > > In your future world people will design crime-bots > for the purpose of stealing.
We already have them: Internet viruses. However, common criminals who break into houses and rob banks are not smart and they do not invent advanced technology. I am sure that cyber thieves and Wall Street manipulators will continue, and perhaps terrorists will too, but ordinary old-fashioned criminals who use nothing more sophisticated than a crowbar will largely be detected and stopped. Also, with millions of small semi-intelligent robots it would be possible to prevent most drug running and illegal border crossing. It is physically impossible to detect and prevent these things today. Watch the movie "French Connection" sometime and will see that the chase scene at the end simply would not happen in today's world. The cop would have a cell phone and the bad guy would find himself surrounded by cops with a helicopter overhead, broadcast live on national cable TV. Sort of like the scene portrayed in the book "Fahrenheit 451" It happened in the movie (and often in real life) because cops and people on trains and elsewhere outside the home or office were isolated and unable to communicate. > I don't think technology will ever > eliminate stealing. I did not say it would eliminate it. I said it will reduce it far below today's levels, just as seat belts and safety devices reduce auto fatalities. Only societal changes would do that. As long as > material possessions confer power and previelege an strong incentive to > steal will remain. The incentive may remain but it may be practically impossible to steal most things. They have already have been stopped in many crimes. Bank robbers are less common and their take is smaller; credit card theft is much harder than it used to be; complicated schemes kiting paper checks no longer work. I have books on computer crime from the 1960s that describe all kinds of schemes are now out of the question. It almost makes me nostalgic. - Jed
