
20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence - sinak2
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/its-been-20-years-since-this-man-declared-cyberspace-independence/
======
vinceguidry
Every 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.

~~~
marssaxman
I 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.

~~~
vinceguidry
The world has frontiers for days. Everywhere society isn't, is a frontier.
Every idea has a fringe of people that are out on the edges of that idea.
Bitcoin, weight-lifting, Indian-Mexican fusion cuisine, van-dwelling. All
these things have groups of people that operate outside of the norm, who have
made sacrifices to exist more strongly in that space.

The Internet has made finding a frontier to settle in easier than ever.

~~~
marssaxman
Maybe so, but those are little subcultures with small horizons; the future
doesn't live there, the way it used to live on the Internet. I'm not just
looking for people to hang out with, I'm looking for the next big thing, the
next opportunity to help undermine the old power structures and build
something better.

~~~
vinceguidry
You can look to history for ideas.

Once the West was won, America needed raw materials to actually build all the
infrastructure. Civilization moves slowly, so there was always opportunity to
get out ahead of it and strike it rich. Gold mining, oil prospecting,
surveying, offered up a continuous range of gradations of closeness to
civilization. You could have worked for the railroad or gone out and, say,
ranched or prospected on your own.

You can see these elements in today's Internet frontier. The equivalent of
prospecting would be making a Bitcoin startup, those who would have preferred
a more civilized life working for the railroad might join an established
startup.

The American frontier moved from being geographical to being industrial. It's
a different kind of culture and different goals. But the stakes of this
frontier were even larger, the benefits that came after the West was won had a
much greater impact than the Wild West itself ever did.

And so you see the same with the Internet frontier. If you know what to look
for, the civilizing process has only begun, there's still lots and lots of
money to make and influence to have. But the pioneers time is over. We need
those who can actually build something real.

------
oniMaker
The 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
Think 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.

~~~
GuiA
> low power

> high bandwidth

> high distance

The laws of physics compel you to choose 2.

~~~
jacquesm
No, that's wrong. It's correct if you add the requirement that you're
omnidirectional but if you want to let go of that requirement then low power,
high bandwidth and long distance can be there at the same time.

------
Animats
Well, 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
There 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.

------
shmerl
It'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.

------
edward
John 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)

~~~
knotty66
I think he had a heart attack, not a stroke.

~~~
edward
Sorry, you're right. My mistake.

------
Kinnard
Wonder who's gonna write this for the Blockchain.

~~~
natrius
Blockchains 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
My 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
Blockchains 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.

------
Zikes
I 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
Well, 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
When 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.

