AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: Dependency in Congress DATE: 12/29/2006 01:03:00 AM ----- BODY:
Lawrence Lessig had a short post in Wired’s Nov 2006 issue. In it, he discusses an e-mail he got from a colleague in which the colleague made repeated assurances that, in his comments about net neutrality, he was representing no one other than himself and his scholarly frame. It is a one-page snippet in which Lessig proclaims that this idea of neutrality is interesting in a political world of dependency. He says that the US Congress is no longer acting in a manner laid out by the countries’ founders in that they are not in-dependent. According to Lessig, the founders believed “a citizen was considered dependent when he was not free to act in the public good because his own well-being depended on a particular result. “Nondependency” meant being able to choose what was right, without worrying about personal consequences—no agenda other than a democratic one.” The rest of the article discusses how almost all of Congress is now indebted to lobbyists who are supporting a cause for financial gain. He claims that anyone in Congress to see otherwise is seen as strange and naïve. And so far, the losers in industries (tech) have been the ones who have been more focused on innovation than on sucking up to Congress. According to Lessig, however, the losers are the future. (He doesn’t expand on this here, even though I wish he did, but he does say that a poor view of progress is that “protecting the past is the best path to the future.”) My first reaction to the article was disappointment. I found his distinction about dependency interesting, because I didn’t know the founders had thought about this phenomenon. However, he did not offer any answers. He called for Congress to be more like the courts, an institution that has still retained their ethic of independence, but my initial reaction was, “What is the point of this article? Asking individuals (corrupt or otherwise) to do something which is perceived as not in their best interests will not work.” However, as I let the article sit more, I realized Lessig’s purpose might be something different than a direct call to Congress. His piece, which opens up a lot of questions and gives no answers, could be to open up a conversation. And to do so in Wired is interesting as well. My impression is that subscribers to Wired are active individuals, either in business or technology or both. They are the coders involved in the Open Source phenomenon, innovators following and leading in the development of new practices and products to improve and enhance society. Perhaps Lessig’s article is an entreat/reminder/suggestion to bring these knowledgeable and concerned individuals into the political sphere as well.

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