Collective by Individual Choice: Converging Post and Lessig
In the readings for last week’s class, a contrast was demonstrated between the views of Lawrence Lessig and those of David Post. Specifically, Lessig argues that the code of cyberspace is like the architecture of realspace - “the code of cyberspace is its constitution”. Since the government, through direct and indirect means, seeks to regulate the Internet, he argues that, as in realspace, we should strive to enshrine our values in that constitution: “constituional values should guide us in our design of this space.”
Post situates himself in “What Larry Doesn’t Get: Code, Law and Cyberspace”, as the title suggests, contrary to Lessig. Like the English language, he argues that “the contours of the language we speak are best made by individuals and not by collectives.” He believes that the direction of cyberspace is best left to the devices of individual choice, where “those values can best be protected by allowing the widest scope for uncoordinated and uncoerced individual choice among different values and different embodiments of those values.”
Perhaps, though, both are correct. Lessig does not propose (in this essay, at least) how a collective or vox populi is to be constituted. Should it be through a sort of constitutional convention, where some cyber-delegates are elected or appointed to represent the people, in some sort of republican process, or rather, through a direct democratic opportunity, such as a referendum or plebiscite? Similarly, Post does not suggest how the individual cyber-user choices directly affect the regulation (or lack thereof) or organization of the Internet.
Consider that the collective is the assemblege of the masses of cyber-users, and that their individual choices, taken together as a “sovereign”, are in essence their votes; their adherance to one service, code or provider as a form of association, that supports or discards a particular policy or regulation. Certainly, this is in a sense a democracy and not an anarchy, since there remains structure, architecture, social norms and other forms of regulation - the constraint of the code remains. Yet, while not in the traditional sense of realspace, through the amassing of individual choice, a collective is developed, and a constitution shaped. And maybe for the better, it is able to adapt and respond as the mass of individuals choose in a manner far more quickly than in realspace, and does not discriminate as to race, are or location.
It may be that the definition of democracy I propose here has blurred into that of the “market”. But as cyberspace is as much a collection of private space as it is public space, and the code the constitution or architecture, the collective individual choices of cyberusers affects that code in a manner consistent with their choices. Thus, as democracy is defined as a government by the people; especially, by the rule of the majority, it would be hard to argue that Lessig or Post are wrong, as to this extent, I would argue they are both right.