FC: what-declan-doesnt-get.com -- excerpt from Larry Lessig's book

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Recently I reviewed a new book "Code" by Larry Lessig of Harvard Law School,
and the former special master in the Microsoft antitrust case:
  http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/22101.html

Part of it is now online at:
  http://www.what-declan-doesnt-get.com/

Attached is an excerpt from chapter 17, the conclusion.

-Declan


Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace
CHAPTER 17: WHAT DECLAN DOESN^ÒT GET
Declan McCullagh is a writer who works for Wired News.
He also runs a ^Ólistserve^Ô that feeds to subscribers the bulletins that
he has decided to forward and facilitates a discussion among these
members. 

...

He feeds to the list other news that he imagines his
subscribers will enjoy. So in addition to news about efforts to
eliminate porn from the Net, Declan includes reports on FBI
wiretaps, or efforts to protect privacy, or the government^Òs efforts
to enforce the nation^Òs antitrust laws. I^Òm a subscriber; I enjoy the
posts.
Declan^Òs politics are clear. He^Òs a smart, if young,
libertarian whose first reaction to any suggestion that involves
government is scorn. In one recent message, he cited a story about
a British provider violating fax spam laws; this, he argued, showed
that laws regulating e-mail spam are useless. There is one unifying
theme to Declan^Òs posts: let the Net alone. And with a sometimes
self-righteous sneer, he ridicules those who question this simple, if
powerful, idea.
I^Òve watched Declan^Òs list for some time. For a brief time I
watched the discussion part of the list as well. But the most
striking feature about this list to me is the slow emergence of a new
topic of concern^×one that now gets more posts than ^Ócensorship.^Ô
This topic is Y2K^×the ^Óyear 2000 problem^Ô that threatens
to disrupt much in our social and economic life as computers
discover that the new millennium does not compute. As clearly as
Declan^Òs libertarianism comes through, so too does his obsession
with Y2K. He is either terrified or perversely amused by what the
new millennium will bring.

...

Yet so pervasive is our sense of the failure of government
that a writer as intelligent as Declan cannot see the implications of
these two great evils that he does so much to report. If we believe
that government cannot do anything good, then Declan^Òs
plea^×that it do nothing^×makes sense. And if government can do
nothing, then it follows that we should treat these man-made
disasters as natural. Just as we speak of the disaster of the West
Coast sliding into the Pacific, so too should we speak of a disaster
of code sliding us into another dark age. Neither can we do
anything about, yet both are great topics for growing audiences.
I^Òve advocated a different response. We need to think
collectively and sensibly about how this emerging reality will affect
our lives. Do-nothingism is not an answer; something can and
should be done.

I^Òve argued this, but not with much hope. So central are the
Declans in our political culture today that I confess I cannot see a
way around them. I have sketched small steps; they seem very
small. I^Òve described a different ideal; it seems quite alien. I^Òve
promised that something different could be done, but not by any
institution of government that I know. I^Òve spoken as if there could
be hope. But Hope, it turns out, was just a television commercial.
The truth, I suspect, is that the Declans will win^×at least
for now. We will treat code-based environmental disasters^×like
Y2K, like the loss of privacy, like the censorship of filters, like the
disappearance of an intellectual commons^×as if they were
produced by gods, not by Man. We will watch as important aspects
of privacy and free speech are erased by the emerging architecture
of the panopticon, and we will speak, like modern Jeffersons, about
nature making it so^×forgetting that here, we are nature. We will
in many domains of our social life come to see the Net as the
product of something alien^×something we cannot direct because
we cannot direct anything. Something instead that we must simply
accept, as it invades and transforms our lives.
...



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