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I think we're seeing a decline in the idea that Code is Law. It was an interesting idea while it lasted, and there are still a *lot* of unaccountable infrastructures that are effectively making & enforcing private legislation. But technology is ultimately managed by people, and those people are subject to laws.
If you want a just society, there's no getting around politics; you need good laws and trustworthy governments to carry them out.
It's also not clear to me in 2024 that anyone can meaningfully defend human rights by defending the maximal discretion of technology makers, if we ever could, given the pretty dismal record they have accumulated on that front.
A common cyberlibertarian ideal is one where technology achieves freedom beyond the reach of governments. There's no better symbol of that notion of independence than launching things into space — a classic scifi trope.
But just as European colonists learned centuries ago, putting things into orbit makes you *more* interdependent, no less. And that means law.
@natematias Yes when I talk about Code 2.0 with my UG students I talk about code as architecture rather than code as law, as that is the conclusion I took from the book and I think also how @tnhh presented it to our summer school students as well, even if that is not what the original book title Code is Law said.