Saturday, February 03, 2007

Required reading? Code v2.0

http://codev2.cc/ Free PDF download: http://codev2.cc/download+remix/

Amazon Description:
"There's a common belief that cyberspace cannot be regulated-that it is, in its very essence, immune from the government's (or anyone else's) control. Code, first published in 2000, argues that this belief is wrong. It is not in the nature of cyberspace to be unregulable; cyberspace has no "nature." It only has code-the software and hardware that make cyberspace what it is. That code can create a place of freedom-as the original architecture of the Net did-or a place of oppressive control. Under the influence of commerce, cyberpsace is becoming a highly regulable space, where behavior is much more tightly controlled than in real space. But that's not inevitable either. We can-we must-choose what kind of cyberspace we want and what freedoms we will guarantee. These choices are all about architecture: about what kind of code will govern cyberspace, and who will control it. In this realm, code is the most significant form of law, and it is up to lawyers, policymakers, and especially citizens to decide what values that code embodies."

Aside:

From http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html

"To me the most demoralizing aspect of the traditional office is that
you're supposed to be there at certain times. There are usually a few
people in a company who really have to, but the reason most employees
work fixed hours is that the company can't measure their productivity.

The basic idea behind office hours is that if you can't make people
work, you can at least prevent them from having fun. If employees have
to be in the building a certain number of hours a day, and are
forbidden to do non-work things while there, then they must be
working. In theory. In practice they spend a lot of their time in a
no-man's land, where they're neither working nor having fun."

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