Word: coded
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...Square feet per person per apartment required by New York City's housing code...
...this world, code--as in computer code--is more important than law, which is fixed in texts. Code displayed on a screen is endlessly tweakable by users, while law is not. Yet code can shape behavior as much as, if not more than...
...People of the Book fear that the page (and reading and writing) will die. Who will adhere to the linear rationality found in books, new and old? Who will obey rules if books of laws are diminished or replaced by lines of code? Who will turn nicely bound pages when everything is available (almost free) on flickering screens? Perhaps only the rich will read books on paper. Perhaps only a few will pay attention to the wisdom on their pages...
Picture this scene from the near future: organized crime gets hold of encryption technology so powerful even IRS supercomputers can't crack it. An underground electronic economy emerges, invisible to U.S. tax code. The Federal Government, unable to replenish its coffers, let alone fund a standing army, shrinks until it wields about as much power as a local zoning board. Militias and gangs take over, setting up checkpoints at state borders and demanding tribute of all who pass...
Being nerds, however, they are rather unworldly. They are similar in dress, zip code, outlook and philosophy to the Berkeley free-speech activists of the early 1960s, except that the cypherpunks have a bigger megaphone: the Internet. They can encrypt free speech and software as well, so various uptight authority figures cannot stop their heroic data...