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Lessig’s “Code: Version 2.0″
February 11th, 2007 by
I found this book to be full of ideas and concepts that are relevant to our fields. I wonder if we could not start some discussion around it.
In particular I like the approach which is constantly aware of how troubled and corrupt our system is but nonetheless is fighting to make something work within it that he cares deeply about- cyberspace and the internet.
His idea that is perhaps even a concept of "regulability" is intriguing. The kinds of objects in both nano and synbio would seem to fall into this category. Hence all of the questions of how to design them -- Lessig calls this the architecture or perhaps the code -- that he raises are in some way relevant to our concerns.
Any takers?
1 response so far ↓
As you might imagine, this is close to my heart. I often use Code v. 1 to teach about the status of objects and individuals in the internet, and his version of regulation does go part way towards being a novel concept. In part this is because he is willing to think beyond just government adminstration or economic incentivization to include “morality” (in a strictly Durkheimian sense, though I’m not sure he knows that) and “architecture” which includes both the built environment and the newly built environment of the net. Each of these areas–state, market, architecture, morals–”regulate” behavior. This is not the novel part thought. The novel part comes because he is an inveterate student of Law and Economics (he clerked for Posner), and he sees this scheme of regulability as a way to start thinking about new forms of control beyond state power or economic incentives. To put it differently, if Law and Economics discovered a way turn law and markets into a tools for engineering behavior, Lessig has added morals and architecture to the toolbox. His concept (and eponymous paper) of “The Regulation of Social Meaning” is directed precisely at this kind of action. I quote I’ve used in a couple of places sums up his recognition of the dangers, but it comes only at the end, and as an afterthought:
Lessig, Lawrence. 1995. “The Regulation of Social Meaning.†University of Chicago Law Review 62(3):944-1045.