Lawrence Lessig has been studying liberty and the process of liberation for a long time. In his article, Code is Law in Harvard Magazine, he argues that we need to expand our scope of regulation to forces beyond government. By comparing the post-communist era in Eastern Europe to the evolution of cyberspace, Lessig shows how human behavior is constrained by four main forces: law, norms, markets and architecture. These four constraints individually act on any individual’s behavior in some dynamic all the time and should each be considered regulators. Such an understanding, according to Lessig, is essential for constructing a free society and he criticizes attempts like the post-communism reformation in Eastern Europe for concentrating only on law as a regulator. In regards to cyberspace, he explains the controlling nature of coded architecture since it is an absolutely defined environment. Meaning code written by us won’t change until we replace the code ourselves, this creates specific actions that we can execute in cyberspace that can be seen through how users navigate a web site.

    The incorporation of cyberspace into average human life is no doubt altering the direction of humanity. Cyberspace is immensely large; the new internet protocol has more IP addresses than there are particles in the universe. 90% of the worlds digital data has been created within the past two years, indicating the exponential acceleration of computer technology. This is in contrast to linear thinking we are used to from centuries past as innovation was harder and slower. Without radical infrastructure change that would cost millions, if not billions, of taxpayers dollars, most critical decisions regarding the architecture of cyberspace have already been made. The code is running faster than we can change the code. Therefore, Lawrence Lessig may have a valid argument about the regulatory power of code, but it seems too late.