April 30, 2003
Five Years
For my government sophomore tutorial, I was asked to read Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye’s article “Power and Interdependence in the Information Age.” It was written in 1998, and its main focus is how the state and politics are still important in the information age.
When reading it, my first thought was: duh. Reading Code and The Control Revolution eliminated most of the technoutopian/cyberlibertarian dreams from my head. Professor Lessig makes abundantly clear in his books that both the politics of West Coast and East Coast code, particularly as they relate to each other.
Then I realized that Nye and Keohane were writing in a different time. They were writing in a time when perhaps The Declaration was far more … realistic? relevant? In any case, I get the sense reading this article that Nye and Keohane are trying to fend off extremists. Their examples of state authority are not particularly well-chosen or clear. They speed through a lot of topics pretty simplistically. It reads like they’re just trying to eschew extremism rather than trying to prove precisely how important the state will be (or consider the merit of less extreme counterarguments).
And that got me thinking: it’s been five years since Keohane and Nye wrote this article. Just five years. And the landscape of cyberlaw sounds completely different. The issue is no longer whether the state and politics matter but how much space the government is leaving out of its control. There’s been a huge shift in regulation.
I know that this isn’t a revolutionary revelation – I just happen to be feeling the strength of this change in the landscape very strongly right now. Maybe it’s because I began to read this article when the Verizon decision came down and finished it just before I read about Grokster/Morpheus. We seem to be at a real tipping point. Who knows what five more years might mean.
And that brought me to the realization of one reason I’m involved in the copyfight. I can really feel everyday I work on this stuff that this issue is immediately relevant. That’s contrary to what most people say. Most people look at people spreading the Gospel of the Commons and say, “This isn’t universal healthcare – why do you guys care so much?” Well, when I interact with many political issues, I don’t have the same sense of immediate relevancy or urgency. That’s not to say that other issues aren’t as relevant or urgent – this is not really a matter of my reasoning or logic. I’m talking about the feeling I have – I feel a certain connection to this that I don’t feel elsewhere. It’s a feeling that things really are in the balance right now and that the next five years, five months, five weeks, really matter. It’s a scary feeling sometimes. But it’s also the feeling that generates passion to keep working, keep trying to make sure the next five years go right.
Filed by Derek Slater at 4:42 pm under General news
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