“They didn’t see their way through to us, not by a long shot,” he said. “They didn’t see, for instance, that when one section of the government becomes nearly all-knowing no matter how small it was to begin withit necessarily becomes all of the government that there is. Thus the bureau turned into the Service and pushed everyone else out.
“On the other hand, those people did come to be afraid that a government with an all-knowing arm might become a rigid dictatorship. That couldn’t happen and didn’t happen, because the more you know, the wider your field of possible operation becomes and the more fluid and dynamic a society you need. How could a rigid society expand to other star systems, let alone other galaxies? It couldn’t be done.”
“I should think it could,” Jo said slowly. “After all, if you know in advance what everybody is going to do …”
“But we don’t, Jo. That’s just a popular fictionor, if you like, a red herring. Not all of the business of the cosmos is carried on over the Dirac, after all. The only events we can ever overhear are those which are transmitted as a message. Do you order your lunch over the Dirac? Of course you don’t. Up to now, you’ve never said a word over the Dirac in your life.
“And there’s much more to it than that. All dictatorships are based on the proposition that government can somehow control a man’s thoughts. We know now that the consciousness of the observer is the only free thing in the Universe.
Wouldn’t we look foolish trying to control that, when our entire physics shows that it’s impossible to do so? That’s why the Service is in no sense a thought police. We’re interested only in acts. We’re an Event Police.”