Not only gopher and archie have gone, but USENET as well. Most people do not even know what USENET is, or even if they did they would not have any access to it. And yet, USENET is the example of a cyber place where speech cannot be suppressed in this book. Where is it? Most people believe that Internet is equal to WWW. We know that is wrong, but who convinced them of this?
I have always had a suspicion about people hanging out at a shopping mall. I had not been able to resolve it until I read Code. In the city that I live, Sundays are usually not very lively. To my surprise, there is always some activity in a shopping mall. It is hard to see people gathering in the same fashion elsewhere. Nevertheless, they do not merely do shopping; they fulfill their community needs by looking at other people, walking and talking in groups and basically spending time among others. No doubt, dutiful shopping is an essential activity in these places.
The architecture of the shopping mall is deliberately designed to that end, to make you see all shop windows and develop a desire to purchase items. It is the product of free market. There are also resting places, which are little in number and a lot of beverage or food consumption places. What I distinctly sense and despise in these spaces has been the differing atmosphere; the dense smell of money. Lessig's work made me think that this place had more regulation than I thought it had. First of all, as you enter you are subject to the scrutiny of security guards and it is highly likely that you will be challenged by these people in case you commit an extraordinary act. Such as speaking loudly. It I recognized sort of a private law; a shrink-wrap license you accept as you enter the building. What you can do is subject to price, market regulates you. In fact, once you are inside you submit to absolute authority of market. You are also likely to witness unavoidable promotions or advertisements inside. As another feature of this building, the semantic content of the place will have been carefully adjusted to keep your spirits up. That is, you will be unable to see irritating things such as poverty or oppression as those will be effectively filtered. This is a place with economic zoning; to discriminate those who can pay from those who cannot. Neither will you be able to see the conditions under which market forces the employees to comply with. Their interfaces will always be suggestive of a wealth above average, and an overall satisfaction. The glossy surfaces will be suggestive of an equally perfect interior.
Joining this community has its requisites. You could imagine that other places in the city are not full of people as in the mall. There would be no other place to gather, since the city was not built for that in the first place. Stop walking on a sidewalk and you may be approached by a police officer whose job is detecting irregularities in the data.16 The government has little reason to create places where people can commune; the market has. Of course, the government endorses the way market lets people commune for their behavior is well regulated. If all places were like shopping malls, government would have little difficulty in exerting control.
That picture is, I fear, how the Internet will be if we leave it to the hand of a phantom menace. The acts of commerce must provoke skepticism for we cannot allow this sphere of freedom surrender to price, and then to governments.