How Architectures Matter and Spaces Differ

I said this at the start, but now it should have some real meaning: cyberspace is not a place; it is many places. Its places don’t have one nature; the places of cyberspace have many different “natures.” These natures are not given, they are made. They are set (in part at least) by the architectures that constitute these different spaces. These architectures are themselves not given; these architectures of code are set by the architects of cyberspace—code writers.

The spaces I have described here are different. These differences have been the purpose of my description. My aim has been to remind you of the different character that these places have, and to remind you again of the reasons that these places have these differences.

In some places there is community—that is, a set of norms that are self-enforcing within the group. Features such as visibility (as opposed to anonymity) and nontransience help create those norms; anonymity, transience, and diversity make it harder to create community.

In places where community is not fully self-enforcing, norms are supplemented either by rules imposed through code or by rules recognized through democratic procedures. These supplements may further some normative end, but at times they are in tension with the goal of community building.

If we had to simplify this diversity of spaces by finding one dimension along which we could rank them, that dimension might be their amenability to outside control. “Community” in the sense that I’ve used the word means a group able to enforce its own norms among its members. In this, the groups I’ve discussed are universally vulnerable—.law.cyber being the most vulnerable. But as we move from .law.cyber to CC to LambdaMOO to AOL, the ability to enforce a norm on the group from the outside increases. In .law.cyber, people within the space can argue all they want about introducing a new norm or changing an existing one, but a norm becomes a group norm only if the whole group comes to see it as valuable, and so adopts it. No external control is possible.

The possibility of external control is greater in CC, though CC and AOL share a market constraint. In both, management can change the code to bring about a particular end, but if that end is too far removed from what most members think the space is about, they may simply leave. As a result, AOL has more control than CC; because the range of behavior on AOL is wider, the range of possible rules in this space is greater as well.

[QUERY: I'm not sure that I get the distinction being drawn here about a community's "amenability" to outside control.  Aren't all of these communities equally vulnerable to a change in code?  To a change in laws?  To a change in markets (e.g., price of Internet access)?  Or is the point that some communities are more norm-ruled than code-, law-, or market-ruled?]

In LambdaMOO the story is more complicated. Nothing really binds people to a particular MOO. (There are thousands, and most are free.) But because characters in a MOO are earned rather than bought, and because this takes time and characters are not fungible, it becomes increasingly hard for members of a successful MOO to move elsewhere. They have the right to exit, but in the sense that Soviet citizens had the right to exit—namely, with none of the assets they had built in their particular world.

[QUERY: what is the relationship between the costs of exit and the amenability to outside influence?  Are communities with high costs of exit more "amenable" because they are held hostage and cannot leave?  Or are they less "amenable" because they are more likely to resist change than to simply leave?]

The members of a MOO are in a sense the most vulnerable to changes imposed from the outside. Because the world of the MOO is (like AOL) completely constricted by code (whether collectively or individually), it is here that the control has the potential to be the greatest.

[QUERY: was the change from "amenability" to "vulnerability" intentional?  They definitely have different connotations.  Also, aren't all virtual communities "completely constricted" by code, since the code defines their environment?]

Footnotes