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20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
- Zikes 11y agoI agree with the message in principle and in spirit, but in order to have an open and free internet we've seen that government involvement is fairly necessary. Net neutrality laws and their enforcement are paramount in order to prevent monopolization of content and information, and government cooperation is necessary in order to build the infrastructure necessary to deliver the internet to people's homes. "You are not welcome among us" sends the wrong message, I think. I would rather they embraced a free and open internet, and were convinced of the value of keeping it so.
- Blackthorn 11y agoWell, I think we all recognize now that the original message was a bit, ah, naive. But that's okay! Missions change with the time and as we learn.
- jcoffland 11y agoWhen you declare what "we all recognize" you are bound to be wrong. I still fully agree with the original naive statement as it was written.
- jcoffland 11y agoThe issue of net neutrality sits on the boarder of cyber and meatspace. Governments are involved because we are talking about the quality of Internet service a particular physical locations. It could become a moot point if global wireless became a reality.
- Kinnard 11y agoWonder who's gonna write this for the Blockchain.
- natrius 11y agoBlockchains don't need independence from governments. Blockchains are independence from governments. Blockchains allow individuals to enforce rules on their governments without needing to navigate bureaucracies and legislatures that are already captured by the wealthy and powerful. Inalienable rights are a powerful concept. It suggests that there can be rights that people aren't using—not because they don't have them, but because they don't know they have them. This was the story of the Enlightenment, and I believe it's the story of blockchains as well. Blockchains give the people information about their economy that they can use to see the flow of economic power, and they can use this information to decide whose power to submit to. No one can take this right away. Rejecting power used to require a violent revolution. Soon it'll only require an app. http://meritcapitalism.com/ http://meritcapitalism.com/
- prutschman 11y agoMy understanding is that blockchains are designed to ensure that it would be economically irrational to attempt to expend resources competing with the blockchain, creating create a stable equilibrium in which rational participants cooperate. It might not be worth a scammer's money to buy enough computing power to double-spend, but that doesn't mean a government mightn't find it worthwhile to spend money to tamper with or destroy something it perceives as a threat.
- natrius 11y agoBlockchains can be tampered with, but they're tamper-evident. Sure, a government can 51% attack Bitcoin and lower its value. The value of Bitcoin doesn't matter. What matters is the ability to reach consensus on a sequence of events. Such attacks only make that harder temporarily.
- oniMaker 11y agoThe message is probably one we can all get behind in principle. However, the internet has a real, physical infrastructure that is definitely owned and operated by behemoth organizations like governments and private corporations. In fact, the Internet was created by a government. What makes you think they'd give it up willingly? If you want to create your own internet, you certainly can. But even if you find the monetary resources to do so, you'll need to house and operate the telecommunications equipment somewhere on Earth (or in LEO). And if you want to protect that equipment from hostile takeover, then you'll need some form of recognized sovereignty including a real military capable of defending your castle. Cyberspace cannot (yet) escape the real bounds of physical reality. It seems as though some people think of it as a superset of the world, while it very much is still a subset dependent on its corporeal parent.
- jcoffland 11y agoThink very long distance wireless. It has yet to be invented but I believe one day it will be possible to communicate point-to-point across the globe with low power devices at high bandwidths. Such a technology would make these arguments moot. Certainly we have to be practical about our present situation but the broader idea of cyberspace is not limited to current technology. In 1996 moderates would have laugh if you suggested today's technology would become common place.
- oniMaker 11y agoWhere would you house the wireless endpoints? How would you obscure their source? These aren't magical devices. They're still real-world physical objects.
- GuiA 11y ago> low power > high bandwidth > high distance The laws of physics compel you to choose 2.
- jcoffland 11y agoThe words "low" and "high" are relative terms. I would argue that by 1990 standards we've achieved all of these.
- Animats 11y agoWell, that didn't work out. Back in the 1930s, there was a similar enthusiasm about air travel. Watch H. G. Wells "Things to Come".[1] "Wings over the World", indeed. There was a repeat of this in the Space Age, ("We came in peace for all mankind") but that didn't last long. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn76zoYjr4k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn76zoYjr4k
- rayiner 11y agoThere is always a lot of enthusiasm about technology that is ultimately tempered by cold hard reality. When I grew up in the 1990's, computers in the classroom were going to change education. But that idea is a farce today. Same thing with space travel, supersonic flight, nuclear power, etc. The landscape is littered with the bones of techno-optimist dreams from the 1980's and 1990's.
- edward 11y agoJohn Perry Barlow is recovering from a stroke. Here is at San Francisco's Ocean Beach: https://twitter.com/JPBarlow/status/692198084265254914 https://twitter.com/JPBarlow/status/692198084265254914
- shmerl 11y agoIt's always interesting to see how various companies attempt to go against these ideas and fail. Geoblocking for instance goes against the borderless idea mentioned there. The core of their failure is always the attempt to use physical logic in the digital space. Some just never learn.
- vinceguidry 11y agoEvery frontier eventually gets integrated into civilization. It's only a matter of time. Civilization brings its laws and its infrastructure and its masses of people. As civilization is bigger than the frontier, the frontiersmen either have to civilize themselves, or move on to another frontier. The nice thing about the Internet is that it is particularly hard to civilize. It's incredibly hard to wrap laws, which have to be enforced, around information technology. There is always more information than there is people to look at it. So the Internet offers an "endless frontier" of sorts. The Chinese government is famously grappling with this. Such a thing is not unprecedented, there are plenty of arenas where there is always going to be room for intrepid settlers to voyage to and scrape out an individualistic experience in. Academia is such a place. Doesn't matter how civilized the university gets, there is always room for more people pushing the boundaries of institutionalized knowledge. We should welcome society into the Internet. Powerful ideas are bigger than even society, so the Internet will forever remain a place where good ideas thrive. It is society that will be changed by the Internet, not the Internet by society. Society will make its settlements, and people fearful of the rough frontier lifestyle will cling to these settlements, but it won't keep them safe from the powerful ideas generated further out.
- rayiner 11y agoAt the same time, the larger civilization is changed even as it integrates the frontier. American culture changed enormously as it integrated the frontier territories, Texas, and California.
- marssaxman 11y agoI was always happy to welcome individual people into Internet society, but after offline society swamped us, there really isn't an Internet society anymore, and I miss it. I'd have struck out for the next frontier years ago if I had any idea where it was.
- Raphmedia 11y agoTor and the "deep web" was a nice frontier to play with until it got reduced to its current state (pedophilia and drugs).