Lawrence Lessig has a book titled Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace that I have not yet read, but my friend Jorge Ortiz was telling me about it, and I think his explanation was worth sharing:
He argues that there are several kinds of “code” that can shape human behavior. So, for any given problem (e.g., speeding in a residential neighborhood) there are several codes at work trying to prevent you from committing it. There’s a moral/social/ethical code (e.g., you diswant the disapproval of your neighbors who have small children), there’s legal code (e.g., if you speed you’ll get a ticket, maybe lose your license, go to jail), and there’s physical/reality code (e.g., a speed bump that physically prevents you from going too fast). The premise of the book is that there’s increasingly a new kind of code, computer code, that is stronger than laws and social norms, almost on par with reality (e.g., if your car has software that prevents it from going faster than a certain speed, perhaps tied to GPS to track what street you’re on and what the speed limit is).
