It hasn't even really produced very many people who consider themselves to be working in a broadly Nozickian tradition. It has, for instance, produced almost no Nozickians. And yet, for all that, Nozick's masterpiece has played a rather curiously limited role in academic political philosophy since its publication almost 40 years ago. It is certainly the most influential book of libertarian political philosophy, at least within the academy. Whatever limits make social software humane, fair, and free will have to come from somewhere else - they will have to come from We the Users.Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia is widely regarded as one of the most influential books of political philosophy of the 20th century. Software can help by making this coercion more obvious, or by requiring more people to join together in it, but it alone cannot fully protect users. Any technical design can always be changed through an exercise of social power. Rule-of-law values are worth defending in the age of software empires, but they cannot be fully embedded in the software itself. Social software cannot be completely free of coercion - not without ceasing to be social, or ceasing to be software. That agreement vests technical power in whoever controls the software. Whenever people come together through software, they must agree on which software they will use. Behind technical power there is also social power. Is it possible to create online spaces without technical power? It is not, because of social software’s second power problem. These sovereigns of software have absolute and dictatorial control over their domains. Facebook can drop you down the memory hole Paypal can garnish your pay. And if power corrupts, then automatic power corrupts automatically.
Unlike the rule of law, the rule of software is simple and brutal: whoever controls the software makes the rules.
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