The pathetic dot theory or the New Chicago School theory was introduced by Lawrence Lessig in a 1998 article and popularized in his 1999 book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace . It is a socioeconomic theory of regulation. It discusses how lives of individuals (the pathetic dots in question) are regulated by four forces: the law, social norms, the market, and architecture (technical infrastructure).
Lessig identifies four forces that constrain our actions: the law, social norms, the market, and architecture. [1] The law threatens sanction if it is not obeyed. Social norms are enforced by the community. [1] Markets through supply and demand set a price on various items or behaviors. [1] The final force is the (social) architecture. [1] By that Lessig means "features of the world, whether made, or found"; noting that facts like biology, geography, technology and others constrain our actions. [2] Together, those four forces are the totality of what constrains our action, in fashion both direct and indirect, ex post and ex ante . [1]
The theory has been formally called by Lessig in 1998 "The New Chicago School", and can be seen as a theory of regulation. [1] [2]
The theory can be applied to many aspects of life (such as how smoking is regulated), but it has been popularized by Lessig's subsequent usage of it in the context of the regulation of the Internet. [1] Lessig noted that the key difference in regulation of the Internet (cyberspace), compared to regulation of the "real world" ("realspace"), is the fact that the architecture of the internet – the computer code that underlies all software – is created by humans, whereas in the real world much of the architecture, based on laws of physics, biology, and major social and cultural forces, is beyond our control. [1] Lessig sees code as an important force that should be of interest to the wider public, and not only to the programmers. [3] He notes the importance of how technology-mediated architecture, such as coded software, can affect and regulate our behavior. [4] Lessig wrote:
[The code] will present the greatest threat to both liberal and libertarian ideals, as well as their greatest promise. We can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to protect values that we believe are fundamental. Or we can build, or architect, or code cyberspace to allow those values to disappear. There is no middle ground. There is no choice that does not include some kind of building. Code is never found; it is only ever made, and only ever made by us. [5]
Social norms are shared standards of acceptable behavior by groups. Social norms can both be informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a society, as well as be codified into rules and laws. Social normative influences or social norms, are deemed to be powerful drivers of human behavioural changes and well organized and incorporated by major theories which explain human behaviour. Institutions are composed of multiple norms. Norms are shared social beliefs about behavior; thus, they are distinct from "ideas", "attitudes", and "values", which can be held privately, and which do not necessarily concern behavior. Norms are contingent on context, social group, and historical circumstances.
Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 US presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.
Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. For example:
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (2001) is a book by Lawrence Lessig, at the time of writing a professor of law at Stanford Law School, who is well known as a critic of the extension of the copyright term in US. It is a continuation of his previous book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, which is about how computer programs can restrict freedom of ideas in cyberspace.
Technological convergence is the tendency for technologies that were originally unrelated to become more closely integrated and even unified as they develop and advance. For example, watches, telephones, television, computers, and social media platforms began as separate and mostly unrelated technologies, but have converged in many ways into an interrelated telecommunication, media, and technology industry.
Internet culture is a quasi-underground culture developed and maintained among frequent and active users of the Internet who primarily communicate with one another online as members of online communities; that is, a culture whose influence is "mediated by computer screens" and Information Communication Technology, specifically the Internet.
Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity is a 2004 book by law professor Lawrence Lessig that was released on the Internet under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-commercial license on March 25, 2004.
"A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society" is an article written by freelance journalist Julian Dibbell and first published in The Village Voice in 1993. The article was later included in Dibbell's book My Tiny Life on his LambdaMOO experiences.
Regulatory economics is the application of law by government or regulatory agencies for various economics-related purposes, including remedying market failure, protecting the environment and economic management.
Geoffrey Martin Hodgson is Emeritus Professor in Management at the London campus of Loughborough University, and also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics.
Code: Version 2.0 is a 2006 book by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig which proposes that governments have broad regulatory powers over the Internet. The book is released under a Creative Commons license, CC BY-SA 2.5.
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom is a book by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler published by Yale University Press on April 3, 2006. The book has been recognized as one of the most influential works of its time concerning the rise and impact of the Internet on the society, particularly in the sphere of economics. It also helped popularize the term Benkler coined few years earlier, the commons-based peer production (CBPP).
Cyber ethics is the philosophic study of ethics pertaining to computers, encompassing user behavior and what computers are programmed to do, and how this affects individuals and society. For years, various governments have enacted regulations while organizations have defined policies about cyberethics.
Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace is a 1999 book by Lawrence Lessig on the structure and nature of regulation of the Internet.
Information technology law concerns the law of information technology, including computing and the internet. It is related to legal informatics, and governs the digital dissemination of both (digitized) information and software, information security and electronic commerce aspects and it has been described as "paper laws" for a "paperless environment". It raises specific issues of intellectual property in computing and online, contract law, privacy, freedom of expression, and jurisdiction.
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy is Lawrence Lessig's fifth book. The book was made available for free download and remixing under the CC BY-NC Creative Commons license via Bloomsbury Academic. It is still available via the Internet Archive. It details a hypothesis about the societal effect of the Internet, and how this will affect production and consumption of popular culture to a "remix culture".
Law of the Horse was a term used in the mid-1990s to define the state of cyberlaw during the nascent years of the Internet.
Religious economy refers to religious persons and organizations interacting within a market framework of competing groups and ideologies. An economy makes it possible for religious suppliers to meet the demands of different religious consumers. By offering an array of religions and religious products, a competitive religious economy stimulates such activity in a market-type setting.
Social media as a public utility is a theory postulating that social networking sites are essential public services that should be regulated by the government, in a manner similar to how electric and phone utilities are typically government regulated. It is based on the notion that social media platforms have monopoly power and broad social influence.
Distributed ledger technology law is not yet defined and recognized but an emerging field of law due to the recent dissemination of distributed ledger technology application in business and governance environment. Smart contracts, which are also enforceable legal contracts and were created through interaction of lawyers and developers, are called smart legal contracts.