Your (Typing) Hands are Tied: Lessig’s Constraints

For anyone who truly believes that cyberspace is well and truly free, I have four words for you: your hands are tied.

We all like to think that we can at any moment type in anything we want in a web browser and get some information on it. We can play games, watch movies, do research, and communicate with friends. From esoteric to illicit, most anything we could possibly want to know or do exists somewhere one the Web, just waiting for us to get off our butts and look it up.

But is it really so simple? Can we really do whatever we want online?

Noted American academic Lawrence Lessig says no. In fact, he proposes four constraints on behaviour in cyberspace.

1. Law—Despite problems in how to go about enforcing laws in cyberspace, they do exist. They treat topics as diverse as copyright and child pornography, software piracy and user privacy. While we don’t often think about them, cyber-laws often dictate what we can and cannot do online.
   
2. Social norms—We all know that there are certain things you just don’t do online. Or if you do them, you don’t talk about them. For example, while pornography is technically not illegal, it is frowned upon by a large portion of society. Downloading music is not yet illegal in Canada, but it’s not exactly de rigeur nowadays, either. The force of society’s disapproval is often enough for people to avoid doing certain things online, even if they couldn’t technically get in trouble for them.
   
3. Market—It’s a fact of life that money talks, and it has a large effect on what we can do online. If you can’t afford Internet access, it’s obvious that the market has prevented you from doing as you wish in cyberspace. But what if you have access, but not the means to pay for, say, your own domain name, or some upgraded service, or even for Internet access that has more bandwidth than dial-up? You obviously can’t do everything you want if you don’t have the money to pay for it.
   
4. Architecture—Another thing people rarely think about is the architecture of the Internet. Lessig looks at computer code as a type of architecture that constrains behaviour. This is mostly to say that the way in which the Internet is designed limits what we can do. For example, you can’t read my email because you don’t know the password to my account.

Looks like cyberspace isn’t as free as we thought.

It’s my contention that these four constraints also apply to online identity. Laws regarding copyright and intellectual property ensure that we can’t pass of the work of others as our own. We must therefore build authority online through our own thoughts and ideas, and through careful citation of other people’s work. Social norms dictate that it is bad form to get caught passing online. Online friends may feel betrayed or uncomfortable to learn that you are not who you say you are. It’s also considered distasteful to look at illicit materials on the Internet, and to do so creates a negative association with one’s online identity. The market may determine the formation of your online identity, such as with Second Life, where it costs real money to customize one’s avatar. The architecture of the Internet ensures that only certain identities are possible. Consider creating an online profile where you have to select your gender. You’re given the choice of “male” or “female” but what if you don’t identify with either one of those?

This is all to say that the Internet itself affects who we are and who we can become online.

Maybe all those science fiction films are right. Maybe computers really are taking over.

After all, they’re creating us just as much as we’re creating them.

Get a (Second) Life!: Too Free or Not Too Free? That is the Question...

Well, folks, there’s a new kid on the block when it comes to online interactivity. It’s called Second Life—because we all know that when it comes to chocolate and identities, why have one when you can have two?

Actually, Second Life seems to offer users things that their first lives don’t—freedom to represent themselves in any way they want through their avatars or digital representations of themselves. And we’re not just talking gender or age or weight or race; we’re talking completely fantastical fabrications that cross boundaries regarding everything from cultures to species.

But does Second Life really offer so much freedom?

Second Life is the brainchild of Linden Lab, a San Francisco-based Internet company founded in 1999. Developed in 2003, Second Life is a virtual world that allows users to relate to each other in ways that mimic—and enhance—real life interactions. It boasts everything from classroom environments in which professors from such hallowed universities as Harvard and Colombia conduct lectures, to trendy clubs, fashion outlets, and even a Reuters news bureau. Second Life even has its own currency, the Linden dollar, which users can exchange for actual U.S. dollars.

The effects on online identity are mind boggling. While proponents of the virtual environment would have you believe that you have virtually unlimited freedom in constructing the online identity represented by your avatar, there are several constraints that make this impossible.

1. Name—The most obvious limitation, and quite often the first you come across, is the ability to chose your own name. Oddly enough, Second Life only allows users to choose a name based on a set list of last names which can be combined with a first name to form your avatar’s full name. This constraint means that while you are technically “free” to choose your name, which you cannot typically do in real life, your choice is limited by the possible name combinations Second Life provides. In a way, this relates to Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno’s thoughts on ideology, namely that freedom to choose from that which is always the same is no freedom at all.

2. Appearance—While the possible appearances avatars can have seem virtually limitless, there are two very real constraints when it comes to matching your vision with (virtual) reality: online artistic ability and money. The simple fact is that, unless you’re an excellent graphic designer, you’ll probably have some difficulty trying to make your avatar look the way you want it to, especially if you’re going for a heavily customized avatar complete with wings and/or bunny ears. The other alternative is to buy “skins” which modify the appearance of your avatar from other Second Life users by way of Linden dollars. If you don’t have the cash, you’ll just have to be happy with what you’ve got.

3. Real-life constraints—As much as Second Life users like to keep their real lives separate from their second lives, to do so would really be impossible. Users are limited by the amount of time they are able to spend on their avatars based on real-life commitments such as jobs, education and families. Their personalities are also a factor, since it might be difficult for generally shy people to open up, even in a virtual environment. Finally, money is also a factor, since real U.S. dollars are used to buy the Second Life currency which allows users to shop, enter parties, buy real estate and so on.

We can see, then, that Second Life doesn’t offer the type of freedom that it suggests when it comes to identity formation. Rather, it offers only the illusion of freedom to people desperate to feel like they have some semblance of choice in their lives.

How a propos that there exists only an illusion of freedom in a place built as an illusion of reality.