An updated, paperback version of my latest book, They Don’t Represent Us, is to be released today. Here’s a couple sentences about why it may be of interest.
I write books that look over the horizon. That’s means that when they’re published, they’re puzzling; a few years later, they’re obvious. Code (and Code v2)is the clearest example. What it was published in 1999, the gods of the internet were insulted that I even suggested the internet would become a tool of surveillance and control. What could be more obvious—today? The same with The Future of Ideas (2001), arguing for “neutral platforms.” The same with Free Culture (2004) and Remix (2007), arguing for new ways to protect new creators against control by the old.
And likewise with the work I’ve done on democracy. It’s hard to believe that it was 14 years ago that Aaron Swartz twisted my arm to take up this work. Even harder to imagine that Republic Lost was published a decade ago (& Republic Lost v2, six years ago). But even I would have been surprised back then to imagine that Congress would be so close to passing the most important democracy reform package—maybe ever. This moment would have seemed impossible then, and yet, here, over that horizon, that change is now possible.
They Don’t Represent Us was first published just before the pandemic. One part of the book reframes the democracy debate: the corruption of money, this part argues, is just one kind of corruption within our republic; the more fundamental corruption—that our “representative democracy” is not “representative”—is foundational. That foundational part explains almost every aspect of our failed democracy today, including vote suppression, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the Senate, and of course, the corrupting influence of money.
But the part of TDRU that looked over the horizon turns out not to have needed to look too far. They, as in the government, don’t represent us for sure. But this second part argued that we, as in the “We, the People” don’t represent us either. That because of the way we get rendered by modern media, both cable TV and the internet, who we appear to be, to the rest of us, and to the politicians, is not who we should be taken to be.
When I wrote that part, I would never have believed that that dynamic would render a global pandemic in a tribal way; neither would I have believed it could lead 70% of Republicans to believe that an election that was as-clearly-not-stolen-as-the-sky-is-blue was in fact, “stolen.” The “big lie” is in fact so much bigger than anything I would have believed possible. Yet the source of that lie, and this endless tribal rendering of us, is the dynamic I describe in the second part of this book.
As I describe in the Afterword, I am increasingly convinced that solving this second part is the most important—and most difficult—challenge we face. I offer first steps. They seem even more compelling today. We don’t yet know whether these steps—or any steps—will get us back to a democracy that can grapple sensibly with questions that challenge us. I only know we must.
The hopeful part remains the first part—and the real chance that much of the corruption I describe here would be removed if Congress were to pass HR1. I’ve added an appendix in the paperback summarizing the different parts of HR1, with some small suggestions and critique. As I write these words, I remain strangely optimistic that we’ll get this part done.
Let’s hope for it. And fight for it.
If you’d like a signed copy of the paperback, send a receipt for a donation of $100 or above to EqualCitizens.US to RECEIPTS at LESSIG dot ORG. (We’ll follow up to collect the details.)
Either way, I hope you get a chance to read it.
