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This week Steve Jobs announced Apple’s entry into what he described as a new class of digital devices. In one of the most anticipated product announcements in recent memory, he unveiled the iPad, a hybrid device living somewhere between an app phone and the laptop, designed to tidily wrap the bulk of your digital media consumption needs into a tablet not much bigger than a magazine. While setting the stage for his announcement, Mr. Jobs implied that this new device class was defined fill a gap in both size and functionality between existing devices; larger than a phone and smaller than a laptop, the iPad is designed to do more than the former without the complication (or, notably, the general purpose functionality) of the latter. Perhaps predictably, the days since the announcement have seen the internet awash in debate over the usefulness of such a thing, whether or not it has the potential to be revolutionary, or, frankly  if there’s anything innovative about it at all.

While I’m not particularly interested in throwing my hat in the ring amongst the armchair quarterbacks arguing over significance of the iPad (at least not before I’ve had the opportunity to actually try using one, which remains unlikely for at least two months), I do think that its introduction is important. It signifies, a very corporate realization of the potential of a new type of product, although I don’t think this product type is defined by size or its role as a middle sibling between an app phone and laptop. Rather, it’s an implementation of the realization that not everyone wants to do everything on the Internet. With the iPad, Apple is simply betting that a large class of people is willing to trade a broader world of online possibility for a marked improvement in a few specific types of online interaction. Fifteen years after the onset of Internet hype, people still participate in relatively few online activities on a daily basis. Apple has eschewed broad swaths of functionality and codified the concept of this simplicity into the DNA of the device; this simplicity will, in turn, define how its users interact with the Internet at large.

Which brings me to Code 2.0. Code 2.0 is the second edition of a book written by Lawrence Lessig in 1999 which discusses the regulatory complications and ambiguities induced by the Internet. In the book, Mr. Lessig makes some fairly dark prognostications about the future; he does not see the ‘Net of tomorrow as the bastion of the free ideals imagined by its early advocates. Quite the contrary. In fact, Mr. Lessig describes a future in which the constraints on user activity drift toward increasing and perfect control. Most interestingly, this control is not necessarily exercised by malignant actors, but by something at once more subtle and nefarious: the code on which these activities are built.

Code is a colloquial way to refer to software; specifically, code refers to a set of instructions that a programmer provides a computer. It defines what a computer can and can’t do and makes any particular user action in the context of the computer possible. It is code that explicitly defines the rules within which one interacts digitally; code dictates how my mouse works, how the keyboard interprets what I type, where the bits I type are sent over the network, and what happens to them when they get there. Mr. Lessig uses no small amount of intellectual force to argue that it is the structure of the software that we interact with, and, perhaps more significantly, decisions made by those procuring and implementing this code that defines the universe of the possible in cyberspace. And increasingly, the code we interact with in cyberspace is developed by commercial interests.

Herein lies the rub: in this context, we have little recourse if code restricts behavior that would otherwise be well within our rights. Just as McDonalds has the right to to kick me out their restaurant if I say something that the manager thinks offensive, Facebook a the right to restrict the content of my posts insomuch as they deem them inappropriate. But the power of this control is far greater in cyberspace than in the real world. Facebook can pre-emptively control my behavior by modifying the code that allows me to post on their platform; I’m not only regulated by social norms and by what is punishable, but also by what is possible. We take this restriction of possibility for granted, after all, my ability to interact in a social network is most likely a net gain and Apple’s control of the software on an iPad ensures ease of use. But it’s worth recognizing that as our lives get more deeply intertwined with our interaction with cyberspace, an increasing amount of our possible activity is limited by the designers of the platform’s code. As well-meaning as these designers may be, they are not accountable to the public interest or even the constitution. These are generally closed systems so rules they use to proscribe action are no less opaque than the folks who run these systems want to let on.

The message of Code 2.0 is chilling, particularly in light of the direction the Internet has taken since its writing. Since the release of the second edition in 2006, the world has moved en masse to Facebook, broadly embraced the iPhone, and seen Google creep into every aspect of its online experience. In adopting these platforms users have repeatedly shown their willingness to relinquish privacy and control for convenience. The open Internet has been fragmenting into a collection of major platforms run by increasingly consolidated businesses; while these platforms enable new communications opportunities, one cannot forget that they do so at a cost. The iPad is a continuation of this trend, but no more so than has been dictated by the market forces which facilitate its existence. Like the iPad or not, it’s a signpost on a road that we’ve been on for years. It’s less a revolution than an indicator that we’re still moving steadily into the future described by Mr. Lessig.