Recently I [means Declan - CV] 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^RT GET Declan McCullagh is a writer who works for Wired News. He also runs a ^Slistserve^T that feeds to subscribers the bulletins that he has decided to forward and facilitates a discussion among these members.

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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^Rs efforts to enforce the nation^Rs antitrust laws. I^Rm a subscriber; I enjoy the posts. Declan^Rs politics are clear. He^Rs 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^Rs posts: let the Net alone. And with a sometimes self-righteous sneer, he ridicules those who question this simple, if powerful, idea. I^Rve watched Declan^Rs 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^Wone that now gets more posts than ^Scensorship.^T This topic is Y2K^Wthe ^Syear 2000 problem^T 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^Rs libertarianism comes through, so too does his obsession with Y2K. He is either terrified or perversely amused by what the new millennium will bring.

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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^Rs plea^Wthat it do nothing^Wmakes 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^Rve 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^Rve 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^Rve described a different ideal; it seems quite alien. I^Rve promised that something different could be done, but not by any institution of government that I know. I^Rve 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^Wat least for now. We will treat code-based environmental disasters^Wlike Y2K, like the loss of privacy, like the censorship of filters, like the disappearance of an intellectual commons^Was 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^Wforgetting 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^Wsomething 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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-- Count Vronsky (vronsky@anna.com), November 11, 1999

Answers

Declan remains an Insult to Those Who Prepare.

-- no more declan (he's@not.trustworthy), November 11, 1999.