The all-important fallacy of the “is-ism” is an interesting subject; it is the mistake of confusing how something is with how it must be. Lawrence Lessig looks at this fallacy in depth in chapter 3 of his book CODE version 2.0. He puts to bed the rumor that the Internet cannot be regulated. He says that all technology is plastic and can be molded and remade to do whatever we’d like. Lessig touches on the differences between University of Chicago and Harvard’s early Internet systems and relays them into the three “bugs” of Net95 – imperfections that limit the data that the Net collects. The imperfections are the information about users, geography, and use. With these imperfections corrected, the Internet can easily be regulated.
Allowing people to change version one on a Wiki created Lessig’s version 2.0. In today’s age the Internet is indeed regulated, but its understandable to see when he wrote the original version how different the rules were and exactly how far we’ve come. As Lessig says the nature of the is about to flip and he was certainly right.
The most interesting part of the chapter was the differences between the two prestigious universities and their actions with connecting to the Internet. Chicago allowed for free, and completely anonymous use. Harvard on the other hand wanted login credentials and needed the machine to be registered and approved. They would then monitor the network being able to see what the person was doing. It’s interesting to see how different places respond to different technologies. Nowadays the standard practice at all colleges is to register for the network and all their actions can be completely monitored. Back in early days of the Internet it was possible to be unwatched. Now, Big Brother is everywhere.
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