police technology

In the future, the police as we know it today will not exist.

This is not a political statement, it’s simply a technological fact. Now, it’s essential to remember that all technological facts are endlessly contingent. For example, it’s a technological fact that if you , another webpage will open. But that’s contingent, usually on some very complicated and impressive infrastructure operating without fault (or rather, with sufficient fault-tolerance whose few exceptions did not affect the expected outcome, this time).

If you click a link, it will only do what technologists expect if you’re using a browser that doesn’t have the wrong kind of malicious software. And you have to be using a computing device that doesn’t have some other hardware or software flaw that will prevent expected actions. And you have to be connected to a network that has sufficient range and capacity. And then an entirely different set of computing devices needs to be connected and operating as expected. And then all of that has to work correctly, walking backwards, in high heels. During this entire time, every device involved needs to have electric power in the right amount and at the right time. That is a lot of contingencies.

But still: if you , a webpage will open (even if it’s not the one you expected). And with just as much certainty: in the future, the…