The process of progress
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By far the biggest hurdle that grand innovations have to jump over is the law. The internet is the most recent grand innovation as it has changed the way we work, live and play. It’s more than a new frontier though since it not only freely gives individuals some of the productive powers previously held by commercial enterprises, but it also provides everyone with communicative powers that were previously impossible. So of course it’s going to break new ground on a scale that bares no precedent and change the rules of civilization entirely. Yet the problem is not public acceptance of the change — it’s the government that must be forced to accept it.
It is believed that the government makes laws and the people follow them. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Governments were actually established to formalize existing rules that spontaneously emerged from the day-to-day interactions of people holding common ground. Communities didn’t suddenly decide they wanted a few of their members to boss them around — they simply wanted to enforce their existing unwritten rules in order to prevent disputes that arise from a misinterpretation or misunderstanding of those rules. They needed a formalized set of laws that were clear to everyone. (This worked so well that they expanded the laws to encompass everyone of their culture. Voila, the nation-state.)
So when something as disruptive as the internet comes around, it is the government’s job to mediate the progress and, when the new patterns of behavior emerge and settle, to finally formalize those patterns as laws.
Unfortunately no one in office quite understands this historical process and so people continually have to fight the very government they established themselves in order to get it to do its job properly.
A nice article by Timothy B. Lee over at Ars Technica details this process by comparing the development of the internet with the development of property rights. Abundant land was a disruptive condition that current laws could not handle. But instead of adapting to the new conditions, the government fought to preserve old laws that clearly no longer applied (they’re just doing what they were told). Eventually the gov had no choice but to adapt to the people’s informal arrangements. It only took a few decades.
If we are to keep pace with the river of creativity and inventiveness that flows through our society, we will need to establish a political system that is just as swift and flexible. It’s a matter of trusting the ‘wisdom of the crowds’ and seeing patterns as quickly as they emerge — not acting brashly but at least be understanding of the process. If there’s a new medium that undermines almost every industrial-era business model, it should be pretty easy to spot. If you can’t see it, you should at least see the massive paradigm shift it’s leaving in its wake. In the case of the internet, it’s all of the court hearings being brought onto people who are simply acting the way that made the most sense to them — eg “I bought this CD, but I’d like to listen to it on my mp3 player or computer, so I’ll rip it.” Now it’s turning into “fuck CDs, I want download everything because it’s easier and even better.”
The onslaught of court cases should be the tell-tale sign of the shift, telling business and its laws that it needs to change because, quite simply, it’s the ‘common person’ who writes the rules and we’ve already done so. They can either catch up or we’ll force them to adapt. It’s kind of weird though, talking about ‘us’ and ‘them’ — they’re members of this society too, right? So what’s their problem?
Update: Probably this.
Tags: government, politics, technology