CSpan, Servers, and the Social Contract

The United States a (mostly) open government.  Americans (and the world) have instant free access to every word spoken in congress thanks to CSPAN.  On the channel CSpan you can watch complete coverage of the House of Representatives.  On Cspan2 you can watch the Senate.  Still despite this openness, there is still a lot of stuff that goes on in the US government (especially in the Executive and Judicial branches) that goes on behind  closed doors with public scrutiny only allow after the fact.  Regardless of openness, our government gets things done which is why most Americans consider it a legitimate government.

Thomas Hobbes was one of the first to talk about the social contract.  The idea that a group of people give up some of their natural rights to an entity (known as government) and that entity in return is supposed to protect them and establish laws.  This deal between people and the government (or social contract), allows people to no longer be in a constant state of war as Hobbes calls it, but to be able to have industry and development.

In a similar way, computer users make the same deal with computer servers.  Servers offer services to computer clients on a network.  However, those computers must give up some of their total independence and self protection to be a part of that network.  In long run though, both networks/servers and governments help the people and computers that give up some of their freedoms.