[afutd]

"'We think the governance has opted for ubiquitous law enforcement.' Pham whistled softly. Now every embedded computing system, down to a child's rattle, was a governance utility. It was the most extreme form of social control ever invented. 'So now they have to run everything.' The notion was terribly seductive to the authoritarian mind ... The only trouble was, no despot had the resources to plan every detail in his society's behavior. Not even planet-wrecker bombs had as dire a reputation for eliminating civilizations."

--Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky

[exratione]

And Trygve Ytre and Gunnar Larson? Larson was millennia dead, of course. The civilization at Ytre had barely outlived the man. There had been an era of ubiquitous law enforcement, and some kind of distributed terror. Most likely, Larson's own localizers had precipitated the end. All the wisdom, all the inscrutability, hadn't helped his world much.

--Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky