Code is Law –Deterritorialisation and Reterritorialisation of Law, Law is Code – Cyberspace, Personalisation Algorithms and Human Cognition

Abstract

This narrative is a theoretical exploration of the encounter between law and cyberspace. It is a conversation about what lines of de/reterritorialisation can do with that encounter. It is becoming in contact with Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concepts: rhizome, assemblage, becoming, territorialisation, deterritorialisation, and reterritorialisation and with Lawrence Lessig’s theory code is law. Code may be law, but perhaps law can also become code. This paper thinks about democratic states in which there is a desire to let law proceed from the people, and about how the law and code seem to affect human behaviour in similar ways. As an example, I explore how code in personalising algorithms affects human cognition; how code that enables certain cognitive processes can disable certain others; and how code regulates human cognition. The paper thinks about how law is territorialised in the encounter with cyberspace, deterritorialised when code challenges legal sovereignty, and how it can reterritorialise through ‘code is law’ or through ‘law is code’. I am suggesting that, in this process, a need is emerging: a need to let code proceed from the people.