Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it, so far
Science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke published several books of essays.  In one, published in the 1970s well before the capability was widespread, he asserted that the capacity to capture audiovideo and live stream or transmit it from any spot on earth would make authoritarianism and terror impossible, because the eyes of the world would be watching at all times.  This coloured much of my own thinking of the early Internet and Web, and the democratisation of information and transmission technologies.<p>That&#x27;s proved to be a pathetically overoptimistic vision.<p>The reasons are several, and other HN readers touch on most of these:<p>1. It is <i>impunity</i> and <i>immunity</i> rather than credible accusations which enable most oppressive behaviour.  Those who know that they can act without consequence ... will.  Whether this is cover of numbers (e.g., mob mentality), specific legal protection, or simply acting extrajurisdictionally, the upshot is the same:  you don&#x27;t need to be an evil supergenius if you cannot or will not be caught or held to account.  Or, even, if you simply believe you won&#x27;t or just don&#x27;t care.<p>2. As Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of Google+ has observed, information is not power, <i>information is a power multiplier.</i>  This was a specific response by him to David Brin&#x27;s <i>Transparent Society</i> argument that persistent sousveillance would hold power to account.  Without the power to <i>act</i> on information, very little is done.<p>(This isn&#x27;t to say that, to use Neal Stephenson&#x27;s terms, either the <i>mobility</i> and <i>nobility</i> are entirely immune.  Each has both strengths and vulnerabilities.  The <i>nobility</i> (establishment) has the power of institution, centralisation, and capacity to motivate resources, but relies strongly on its own acknowledged power.  The <i>nobility</i> (populace), has strength in numbers and some resistance to decapitation, but is also tremendously disorganised and often weakly effective, at least until it isn&#x27;t.)<p>3. Attention is limited.  At any social scope --- locally, regionally, nationally, internationally --- there is only so much attention to go &#x27;round, and the effective focus tends to be on a <i>vanishingly</i> small number of items, I&#x27;d argue for roughly 1 to 100, with 10 items being a very frequent limit.  That is, no matter how much is going on, and how rapidly issues on the list itself rotate, focus is effectively on about 10 <i>or fewer</i> top stories in a day.  Evidence for this is somewhat anecdotal, but pretty persistant:  a top-of-the-hour five-minute news bulletin typically lists 4-6 items, giving less than a minute to each (introductions, sponsorship spots, etc., chew into time).  A full-hour news programme similarly covers about the same number of items, though giving 3-4<p>For some examples:<p>The two-hour afternoon NPR flagship today lists 14 stories, 7 per hour, running largely 3-4 minutes, with an in-depth item &quot;New Police Force From Scratch: N.J. City Proves It&#x27;s Possible To Reform The Police&quot; today, running 8 minutes:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;programs&#x2F;all-things-considered&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;programs&#x2F;all-things-considered&#x2F;</a><p>The President&#x27;s Daily Briefing, an intelligence summary of gobal developments of significance, runs 10 pages, typically lists ten items, and runs about an hour.  There are archives of selected versions of this dating to the 1960s.<p>The Vanderbilt Television Archive comprises US national news broadcasts dating to August 5, 1968.  Though the actual video isn&#x27;t freely available, rundowns of news stories <i>are</i> listed at the site.  Before switching to a 25 minute format, an hour-long news programme typically ran 6-10 items, plus another 4-6 in the top-of-the-hour summary.  Shorter formats include fewer and shorter stories.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tvnews.vanderbilt.edu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tvnews.vanderbilt.edu</a><p>Major newspapers typically run about 100--500 stories daily (more on weekends), with ~250 being a rough median.  Only a fraction of this is actual hard news (news, politics, some of business coverage), with a substantial amount of copy being largely advertorial:  sport, much of business, entertainment, style, real estate, automobiles, travel, etc.<p>The high-popularity lists (&quot;most popular&quot;, &quot;most read&quot;, &quot;most emailed&quot;) of online sites typically list 5-10 items.<p>The news wires -- UPI, AP, Reuters, AFP -- typically see 1,000 - 5,000 items filed per day (various annual reports and other sources).<p>Hacker News tends toward a higher bound at 30 items on the front page.  As those of us who submit regularly are aware, that is a precious resource and hard to land on.  The Hivemind is fickle and operates curiously.  (Mods do, <i>lightly</i>, put a finger on the scales, and yes, I&#x27;ve benefited from that on occasion.)<p>________________________________________________________________________<p>That&#x27;s not to say that recording has no merits.  I&#x27;ve justified a fair amount of my own reading, writing, and sharing as simply bearing witness.  Acknowledging (and attempting to understand) what it is that&#x27;s going on, hoping to preserve some record for a future in which the limitations listed above have shifted their favour.<p>But don&#x27;t for a second believe that information and record are panaceas of themselves, and work yourself to shift the balances noted above.