As some of my readers and all of my friends know I’m a big fan of firearms. Sadly I only own a couple, they are expensive. I generally think of hand weapons as religious artifacts almost, signifying the triumph of human ingenuity over generations of predators. Icons of ability and responsibility. The step away from brawn towards brains. A physical reminder of the first technology. A talisman of our inclination and ability to change the world. From the samurai’s sword, to the gentleman’s rapier, to the minuteman’s musket, to the cowboy’s revolver, to the black panther’s rifle; personal weapons mean a good deal more than simply the ability to kill.
Most of the time all I carry is a knife. (Spyderco Endura 4 Wave, before that it was a Spyderco Spyderfly) I think of it as a human talon. It’s design means I can deploy it nearly as fast as I could deploy a fist. This makes it feel like a part of me, like not so much a device, as a modification to myself.
I feel like most people hate me but in my heart I am flattered that society trusts me literally with the lives of everyone around me. Trust is important to me. People I consider true friends are given keys to my home. I suppose this is a sort of personal ritual as well.
With that de facto authority over the lives of those around me comes the obligation to make good that trust. As such I feel it is my duty to be aware of my surroundings with an eye toward accomplishing goals for the group that an unarmed person may not.
The most obvious hypothetical would be stopping a dangerous person, someone like a terrorist. But any rational measure shows that the likely hood of that happening is effectively nil. The real help I provide is inserting doubt into the minds of muggers and the like. My presence in a crowd increases the chances that any given victim will be armed. This makes the crowd safer from opportunistic parasites.
All this is well understood and the effect on crime is documented, only the irrational dispute the numbers. But, it got me thinking. Perhaps a similar consequence of the transhuman movement is likely to occur. Weapons aren’t always artifacts. I suspect crime is equally affected by the known potential presence of any weapon, any threat to the would be mugger. Martial arts for example.
What’s going to happen to the crime rate when people can download Kung Fu as easily as Neo did or better yet when people can alter their build?
In short order its going to be like living on a planet full of aliens. Starting a fight could be suicidal, for all you know the person you’re about to punch has poisonous spines just under the skin. I think this is going to be a good thing. But of course The Company is going to want to regulate this, make sure everyone stays helpless. Fortunately its not going to be that simple.
For one we’ll have to rethink prison. Suddenly the idea of caging people will be infeasible for the same reason keeping all the animals in the zoo in the same room is infeasible. For two I don’t think people will be willing to allow the government to alter their genome on a whim in the same way we allow them to deprive us of our items. Taking my knife is different than taking my fists. For three trying to police the upgrades will be like trying to police mp3s. All the raw materials are readily available the only exotic component is the information.
I look forward to the day when antler bashing rituals fade into our past. Personal lethality is one way to speed it along.
