However much of a genetic component there is in xenophobia, there is clearly a cultural/psychological component, which can be learned, and unlearned. E.g. http://www.friendsacrossamerica.com/klansman.html

Given that the name of his advanced-but-not-perfect culture is, well, The Culture, it is surprising to me to hear Banks offer genetic engineering as a fix without at least mentioning all of the cultural innovations and developments which we already see around us moving in directions away from xenophobia.

The point that achieving material abundance won't be enough by itself is well taken. And the trend toward reestablishing more equitable distribution of said abundance is imho a great example of both cause and effect of our (painfully slow) shift away from xenophobia.

Of course transparency should not be equated with security, no matter how many examples there are (#6 emittime's, and of course Brin's) extreme transparency leading to security.

I've liked plenty of stuff Schneier writes, but don't get what Cory sees in this - Schneier is arguing against a strawman transparency that isn't really transparent. The definition of a transparent society is that there is no secret terrorist watch list, we all have access to the police databases (and all share information about police, as emittime points out). It's as if Schneier's saying the Internet wouldn't be transformative because only some computers will be able to connect to it.

If you want to say that sufficient transparency cannot be achieved - Cory's "there's no way to be sure that the powerful are really disclosing everything" - that's one thing. Or you could reasonably object to the transparency approach by arguing that other, non-informational power differences make it a bad idea. But Schneier is doing neither of those here.

(The transparent response to the above two concerns are that there's no way to be sure the powerful won't learn what they really want to learn, and that transparency can go a long way toward reducing non-informational power differences - while acknowledging that other shifts in that direction are certainly welcome and probably necessary.)