I finished the book for the second time. I knew there was something wrong with the ending from the first time reading it. This time I was able to put my finger on it. The premise is that the AI was depressed due to having to be deal with criminals and their victims, yet was powerless to interfere. I think that wouldn’t happen cause today, and I might be wrong, health care and mental health care Providers have to report when a patient poses a risk to themselves or others. Since those were the roles of the CC, the reporting from the personal CC to the crime busting CC would have been programmed in. So no depression, no story?
Going back to reread, myself!
The story said that the CC had been set up with civil liberties safeguards that prevented it from reporting some things it knew. These apparently were given a higher priority than any mandated reporter protocols.
It was also suggested that the CC might have misdiagnosed the problem. It theorized that its problems were coming from the people it was in contact with. But Hildy suggested that the problem might be going the other direction - that the depression originated in the CC and spread to people from their contact with the CC.
Right. That was how the setup was configured in the book.
I’m suggesting that the setup in the book was not how the safeguards would have been prioritized based on today’s exceptions to privacy issues. A psychiatrist would be compelled to report instances where an individual was harming himself or others. Brenda’s abuse by her father would be reported by the father’s “CC friend” to the “CC police” as he was harming her.
Consider the extreme case of murderer. The murderer calls up the CC friend to get help disposing the body. The premise in the book would protect the privacy of the murderer over the victim. And that is my issue with the story.
The setting of the story was on the Moon two hundred years in the future. Obviously they’re going to do things differently there than we do them here in America in 2012. Showing different viewpoints like that is one of the central pillars of science fiction. And what you’re describing is a pretty minor example.
Also consider that Varley was highly influenced by Heinlein. In Heinlein’s moon-based book The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the Loonies are EXTREMELY individualistic and independent; many of the liberties we give up today (in the name of safety) wouldn’t have been endured by Loonies. I have no problem with the pendulum swinging to the point that Varley and Heinlein posited, especially in a world set 200 years in the future (as Little Nemo pointed out).
Also, things like this are why some prefer to call it speculative fiction rather than science fiction.
Steel Beach is one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors, btw.
Well, I did read the whole thing twice. Which I hope shows that I’m also a fan. 
The Lunar society was much different than contemporary US society. They had far less regard for laws (apart from the ones that would wipe out life, like arson & genetic tampering) than we do. So they built in much stronger safeguards than we have. As Hildy pointed out - if you have a computer that knows absolutely everything and isn’t strongly restricted, you wind up with a totalitarian state that makes North Korea look like a libertarian paradise.
And actually, the mandated reporter laws aren’t clearcut across the USA. From www.childwelfare.gov:
So it’s more likely that your doctor will report you than your lawyer.
BTW, if you email Mr. Varley, he may respond. He gave us an answer to the “33 Substances that come out of a human body” question in this thread.
The way I recall, although CC was a single entity, it compartmentalized itself so heavily to multitask all of its systems and simultaneous interfaces to all of the citizens that it seemed to lose its core overriding super-identity at some point. It was being subconsciously affected by other selves to the point where self-rebellion eventually occurred.
One of my favorite books, the finest Heinlein book ever