Notes on "Is Cyberspace Still Anti-Sovereign?"

There are a number of things I’d change about the language of that screed, but, still, a decade later, it feels both impetuous and important. Serious questions remain. Was it accurate? Is Cyberspace naturally anti-sovereign? If so, is that a good thing?

So John Perry Barlow asks in "Is Cyberspace Still Anti-Sovereign?"

There have been notable efforts to regulate or restrict access to the Internet. Indeed, "one could write a book about all the ways in which existing governments and multinationals have imposed themselves on the global commons" in the last decade; in fact fact, "several people have done so." Netwar has emerged as a new kind of asymmetrical projection of power, enabled by the Internet. Spam and online crime proliferate, and arguments over copyright law continue.

But Barlow is still fundamentally optimistic:

I have not given up on the idea that, as a species, we can be more humane and fair, nor have I forsaken the notion that the greater understanding bred by universal access to knowledge is the key to increasing these qualities in us....

I appear doomed to live a long time, but I don’t think I’ll live to see the world I dreamed of when I was dashing off my little manifesto 10 years ago. Nevertheless, I believe that world is being born. It won’t be paradise, since it will be full of human beings and all our less noble qualities, but it will be more enlightened and enlightening than anything we have experienced so far.

Technorati Tags: culture, cyberspace, end of cyberspace, internet, John Perry Barlow, politics

Other quotable moments in the article:

Back when I wrote the declaration, I was delighted by what I knew would be its greatest boon, the empowerment of the small against the large. But I was thinking of the likes of myself becoming asymmetrically advantaged against the State. I hadn’t considered the possibility of Osama bin Laden, who used the Internet quite effectively in organizing and defending an attack that turned the most powerful nation on earth into a paranoid child with persuasive justifications for imposing fascism on its citizens....

There are, in addition, areas where I was simply wrong. At least, so far. In 1996, I was convinced that giving everyone a voice would change the balance of political power. But, meanwhile, back in the physical world, which is still armed and dangerous, things continue their own ugly course....

[M]y strident and fundamental point about the impotence of those "weary giants" has been demonstrated, but with occasionally different results than I would prefer. Liberty has its downsides; though, considering the alternative, I’ll cast my lot with freedom....

AND YET... IT'S NOT AS IF THE ARISING "CIVILIZATION OF MIND"
has yielded no benefits so far....

I still dream of a world where anyone can express anything he or she chooses, no matter how odious or unpopular, without fear of official reprisal.... I imagine a future where intelligence will be the primary economic resource, and the location of one’s cerebral cavity will be irrelevant to the earning potential of its contents.