(perhaps I'll manage a more considered response later in the weekend)

Thanks for the read!

Ah, didactic fiction.

An okay story, though the thought of leaving so much control up to the "refs" seems to speak to a large lack of faith on the author's part.

Here's another entertaining view of an alternately constructed society:

www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.htm

I've abandoned the response I started last week. Got so convoluted, I didn't think I'd ever be able to finish it...

I suppose the point of fictional technologies that augment and extend the range of human behaviour is to highlight those behaviours in their current state, and separating the goats from the sheep allows us to recognise each more readily when we see them intermingled as they usually are.

There are approaches to social or technological "development" or "progress" or "growth" that predicatably harm the people involved. I disapprove of them as much as the author does. There are approaches that are much more humane, and of course we should favour those. I see some problems with the author's "Australia" concept, though.

The crux is that I want to retain the right to self-protection. For me, that's fairly simple - I mostly just want protective privacy. Despite the story's construct that removes the threat of interpersonal violence, giving up my protective screen is too much to ask. I'm perfectly willing to voluntarily and temporarily suspend it whenever I feel safe and secure, and that temporary state may end up lasting for ever. But the idea of giving it up permanently, of having it unavailable in a crisis, that's too much to bear. Most people I know consider this level of defensiveness tolerable; some think it too little; transplanted into the context of the story it would appear paranoid. The thing is... I can see how another person may feel the same way about retaining their ability to inflict bodily harm or similar on an aggressor. And argue as you will that, in this construct, there are no more aggressors, I'd still not support the removal of anyone's defense system. I guess I can't suspend disbelief *that* much, and like the rest of the human race, I still have a fair bit of evolution to undergo.