Management

FREE CULTURE

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At the end of his review of my first book, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, David Pogue, a brilliant writer and author of countless technical and computer-related texts, wrote this: Unlike actual law, Internet software has no capacity to punish. It doesn’t affect people who aren’t online (and only a tiny minority of the world population is). And if you don’t like the Internet’s system, you can always flip off the modem.1 Pogue was skeptical of the core argument of the book—that software, or “code,” functioned as a kind of law—and his review suggested the happy thought that if life in cyberspace got bad, we could always “drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome”-like simply flip a switch and be back home. Turn off the modem, unplug the computer, and any troubles that exist in that space wouldn’t “affect” us anymore.
Pogue might have been right in 1999—I’m skeptical, but maybe. But even if he was right then, the point is not right now

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Detail Information

Series Title

THE PENGUIN PRESS

Call Number

-

Publisher

USA : THE PENGUIN PRESS., 2004

Collation

1-352

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

1-59420-006-8

Classification

NONE

Content Type

-

Media Type

-

Carrier Type

-

Edition

1st Edition

Subject(s)

Communication

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

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