This introductory chapter briefly situates the rise of modern positive law as an affordance of a specific information and communication technology (ICT)—namely the printing press, which is better described as an information and communication infrastructure (ICI). One of the challenges that modern positive law faces is the transformation of the ICI from books and mass media to a digital and computational ICI. Cyberspace here refers to cyber (steering) and connects with cybernetics (remote

more »

... of one's environment by means of feedback loops). This highlights that the new ICI is fundamentally different from speech, writing, printing, and mass media. Cyberspace is not merely a digitized version of physical space, but refers to an architecture with two novel characteristics: its hyperconnectivity and its computational pre-emptions.