At 10:39 PM -0800 on 3/8/00, Tim May wrote on Lessig:
> His scheme
> involves see _three_ competing forces: the law per se, technology, and the
> customs of people. Sort of a tripod, or triangle. I'm not sure how he
> fleshes this out in his book, but this was the gist of what he was talking
> about several years ago.
Seems to me, more or less, that they're all attempts to reduce something
like logic to physics.
Thus, it *is* a linear continuum, with social custom on one end, law in the
middle, and software at the other end.
Social custom has lots of randomness in it, common law has less,
legislation maybe less even still (but maybe not, but consider 3-strikes,
and other blanket-clueless legislation), and software is, modulo Geodel
(and PNRGs, or not, :-)), the least random. Ostensibly, anyway, and
frankly, the idea itself might all washed up.
Nonetheless, it *is* why I think the slogan "write software, not law" has
such power to people who, paradoxically, want more freedom in their lives.
I'm also beginning to think that complexity, freedom, really, thrives in
the interstices between very simple, but rigid, rules, and that that might
be a major reason why the net is such a fabulous place, for the time being,
anyway. If you don't do something exactly right, the protocol TCP/IP, blind
signatures, whatever, breaks.
This feels like a good rant topic, and, I think it's implicit in a lot of
what Lessig's saying, though he thinks law is more important than software
and I don't, but I just don't have time for those things any more, which,
some people around here will probably think is a *good* thing, I guess...
:-).
Cheers,
RAH
--
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
