No, I’m not worried about on the spot points and fines. That we be as effective as initiatives in reducing police paperwork without radical process changes across the CJS.
The speed of light has always bemused me. One can imagine travelling on a beam of light like Einstein, and we can stop the stuff near absolute zero in a Bose-Einstein condensate, a matter wave issuing ‘on the other side’. Chemists are now looking into the world of ‘speed’ with massively fast ‘photography’. We are all getting somewhat familiar with what slow-motion replays can reveal.
Much in modern life cannot be done without massive investment in technology. Can you remember ever voting in relation to this?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/11/police-software-maps-digital-movements
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n10/donald-mackenzie/how-to-make-money-in-microseconds
A couple of articles, one in the Grauniad, the other in the London Review of Books (above), give some indicators why we should be concerned with ‘modern speed’. We have already seen a dire instance of someone put on trial for using a reference to Robin Hood Airport as metaphor for his passion for a young woman. One would only want to applaud the authorities in using technology to track and track down criminals. The problem is they are ‘listening’ to all of us in order to do this, and idiot interpretations as in the Robin Hood case. The LRB article describes the massive speed of financial transactions.
An old question arises in considering this ‘modern speed’ – that of who owns and uses the technology and the extent to which we should live in such a surveillance society, or one potentially (and really) making power and money-making so lob-sided. Thirty-odd years ago, as a cop working for God’s Prophet, I was part of a raid on the top shelf at WH Smith. Now, pretty much any pornography is available on the Internet. We didn’t vote for this. I doubt we’d have voted for the kind of wealth ‘generated by bwanks either. In terms of democratic control, much may as well be happening at the speed of light. We can’t touch it.
Notionally, competition should save us – but competitions like FIFA, run from a country where bribery is not an offence may pale against the Bilderburger group and international financing. Legerdemain can appear faster than the speed of light …
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