Great stuff. I am really interested in reading some of the books mentioned.

Self involved political gossip that leads to a culture of policing deviant behavior is my worry. It is just hard for me to not see how this all doesn't create a huge bull market in law enforcement. More "crimes" from people having more leisure time, more "crimes" from more surveillance. Most of all though more "crimes" because a culture of policing deviant behavior will start to find more and more behavior as "deviant".

At least the salon had the pretense of high art and philosophy. Our salons would have the pretense of political gossip and the philosophy would be about classifications of deviant behavior.