
Stop pretending cyberspace exists - wamatt
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/12/the_end_of_cyberspace/
======
jholman
Well, I agree that we abuse the heck of out the "cyberspace" metaphor, and say
a lot of stupid things because of that metaphor. But aside from that, there's
a lot to sneer at in this article.

First, on government and the internet. It's true that _"most Internet activity
takes place in particular territories governed by states ... [as are] users,
... servers, ..."_ , but so what? States are not only trying to govern what is
done within their borders, they are trying to govern what is done outside
their borders. If I start a server in China, and serve pirated software to
users in the UK, a country I have never visited, the UK government will still
try to prosecute me. But all the things within the UK are things that do not
belong to me and that I do not control! I'm not taking a position here on
whether they should or should not.... I'm pointing out that Micheal Lind is
encouraging an even dumber mental model than "cyberspace".

And it makes _perfect_ sense to say that California or the US is _"extending
their jurisdiction “into” cyberspace"_. It is _not_ the case that they have
jurisdiction over everything within their borders. For an extreme and
unambiguous example, the US refuses to take -- and forbids California from
taking -- jurisdiction over my religious belief. More relevantly, as I
understand it, in 1900 the US took no jurisdiction over the movement of gold,
and then later they extended their jurisdiction. States (both the kind that
the US is, and the kind that California is) do extend their jurisdiction from
time to time (and very rarely contract it). Again, Lind is talking nonsense.

As others have pointed out, people complain all the time about corporations
invading abstract things. Public spaces, the classroom/academy/etc, your
living room, the national news agenda... those are all "spaces" that people
have complained about corporations invading, and they're not all literal
spaces (and of the ones that are, at most one involves a literal physical
presence). Metaphorical invasions, including of non-spatial things. Welcome to
the English language, Michael Lind, are you new here? Or just disingenuous and
demagogic?

All in all, the bulk of this article is worse than the thing it denounces.

That said, props for the mention of “A Declaration of the Interdependence of
Cyberspace”, which I hadn't heard of or read, and which I think is a pretty
great rant (even if I think casting aside Article 27.2 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights just might be a good idea).

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9236603/A_Decla...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9236603/A_Declaration_of_the_Interdependence_of_Cyberspace)

------
mercuryrising
Extreme one way: Stop pretending the United States exists. It's an imaginary
line in the sand that has changed many times through the years. There is
nothing different about the physical land between Mexico and the United
States, or the borders between any countries.

Extreme the other way: Cyberspace is a reflection of the world that we live in
(kind of like a mirror - it's the same as the 'real' world, but a little bit
different). It's real when we want it to be (print out this paragraph, it's
now physical), it's a place where thoughts and actions occur, it's the
'coffeehouse' of our generation, where like minded souls can find one another
and communicate. I can see pictures and videos of places I've never been to,
imagine one day when I get a robot with a holographic camera that I can drive
around to places I've never been to - but I might experience it just like I
was there. The bridge between 'reality' and 'cyberspace' is strengthening
everyday, with more and more people trusting this cyber world. If we all
believe hard enough, can we make it just as real as the world we live in?

~~~
etherael
It seems to be something of a pattern that when the state has in recent
history held monopoly power over something that is evolving in a way corrosive
to that power, they immediately jump to the stage of dismissing it as "unreal"
in some way, and just end up shooting themselves in the foot by pointing out
that their own claims of sovereignty are exactly as "unreal".

The state rules by force, its currencies are real because they say they are
and have the power to force behind them, its borders are real because they say
they are and have the power of force behind them.

As soon as they lose that power, as in the case of bitcoin for currencies or
other digital property or jurisdiction in the case of cryptographically
protected distributed spaces which simply have no visible anchoring in the
physical world, their claims are worth exactly nothing.

It will be an interesting world as more and more things move out of the sphere
of state control and into this sphere.

~~~
derleth
> its currencies are real because they say they are and have the power to
> force behind them

No. Currencies are real because people trust they'll have value tomorrow and
tomorrow and tomorrow, as Shakespeare said. Otherwise, the old Zimbabwe dollar
would be in use, as opposed to being dumped after the hyperinflation.

~~~
etherael
Hyperinflation doesn't so much make a currency unreal as simply worthless,
Zimbabwean dollars were still Zimbabwean dollars, and the government was still
charging taxes in that currency and enforcing its laws and systems by fines in
that currency, but it becomes a little bit of a moot point when as you point
out the currency is devalued, there's no real way for governments to stop
that.

That surely hasn't stopped them from trying, either in the Zimbabwe case or
all throughout history, governments are extremely fond of making ridiculous
proclamations to support their currencies whilst undergoing hyperinflation to
very little effect, but when the great majority of people refuse to listen to
you anymore and you have no credibility it ceases to matter.

------
quasque
The author is severely underestimating the utility of metaphor. Space doesn't
have to be physical, it can be abstract and related more to the imagination
than a direct experience of our immediate physical world.

Cyberspace is an excellent term to cover this otherwise strange notion of
real-time interaction with our fellow humans based on an abstraction of their
identity and representation of their ideas, rather than geographical distance.

~~~
russell
It's certainly easier to say than than the "Information Superhighway". (For
you youngsters, that was the metaphor that got the Internet funded. ;-)

~~~
damian2000
Yes - that term really sucked. I actually heard it used on a TV news show last
weeked and cringed.

------
DanBC
EDIT: I kind of hope that the idea of cyberspace doesn't die, because current
metaphors for information handling suck. Cyberspace probably isn't the right
metaphor to replace them, but something would be good. And I want things like
Google Glass, or virtual retinal displays to become more real.

> _Let’s start with government and cyberspace. Most Internet activity takes
> place in particular territories governed by states. The users of the
> equipment, as well as the infrastructure of servers, wireless towers, and so
> on, apart from satellites, are physical entities located in sovereign
> states._

Obviously untrue, since the US will happily claim that a .com can be seized no
matter where the servers are; and the US will ask for people to be extradited
no matter where those people are (or if they're not breaking any laws in their
country) and etc etc.

> _Nobody complains that electric utilities are “invading” the Virtual Realm
> of Electricity by generating and selling power,_

I seem to remember plenty of people who were annoyed at Enron for artificially
restricting the supply of electricity to create profit - a lot of that
criticism fits the "these corrupt profiteers should not raid Electricity"
(where electricity was a nebulous concept of generation and delivery).

I also remember a lot of people very annoyed at Russia turning off the natural
gas pipes to EU.

One of the reasons that metaphor of "virtual land" isn't as strong for
electricity or gas is that those are just much simpler, and people don't do
stuff in them, unlike online.

~~~
wmf
The servers for .com itself are in the US and .com is owned by a US company.

------
hakaaaaak
Cyberspace is real in that there is much going on in the world that is not
reported on in the news.

For example, if a man or woman had 1,000,000,000 highly detailed pictures of
porn in his/her house and that got reported to the news because they were
stacked up on the porch, flying around everywhere, it might make the evening
news in a "What a perv!" segment. But if that same person has access to even
more pictures than that on the web and views them, they aren't called out on
it if it is within the range of acceptable online and offline behavior.

By the same token, I'd post what I think on HN and would say it in person to
the same people in a bar having a drink, but I'd never post the same things in
an editorial in a newspaper or on a blog. However, on HN everything is public
and global. It just isn't the same as the rest of the world, even if in the
end it is contained in physical space with real physical people communicating
with one another. So we have another term for it.

Our world itself is just as unreal, though. The media and government and even
our friends and family just show us part of what is going on, and don't act or
communicate as they would if they were being true. This is the reason that
both philosophers such as Plato and Socrates differentiated between truth and
what we learn in the world, and why popular religions such as Christianity
teach us that the world is not truth- that there is something beyond it that
we must aspire to.

------
INTPenis
My interpretation of this piece is that we're putting too much focus on online
activism when we should be doing offline activism to change the world.

I agree with this, but at the same time, someone must fight for the internet
because information is knowledge, free exchange of information is free
exchange of knowledge, and as we all know, knowledge is power.

------
dylangs1030
Wittgenstein would be rolling in his grave.

Here's another argument that is parsed exactly the same way as this CyberSpace
one:

"Is all that is good beautiful?" As Wittgenstein would note, wonderful
intellectual gymnastics, but you've essentially achieved nothing.

The author doesn't understand the concept of a metaphor. No one believes there
is a mystical Narnia of 1s and 0s "somewhere out there" - no one reasonable,
whose opinion matters at least.

CyberSpace is a way to visually describe certain perceived catastrophes, such
as the internet being consolidated into public domains that restrict user
rights - whether or not the catastrophes are valid is a separate debate.
CyberSpace itself is a valid _framework_ of looking at internet protocols,
communities and basic rights. It doesn't necessitate other views.

The author built a strawman argument by trying to invalidate CyberSpace in the
"Fax Space" and "Telephone Space" argument. Okay, those two terms don't port
easily, but that's only _one nuanced area of discussion_. Do you really
believe you need to view CyberSpace as some sort of sovereign territory to
understand what someone is talking about when they say the government is
restricting rights? That's not the point. We _know_ there isn't an internet
continent/kingdom/nation/whathaveyou being invaded by a host of other nations
trying to use it selfishly. That's missing the point. The real point is, if
the government has their way, you could lose the ability to make blog posts
like this. That's the reality. And whether or not you _agree_ with this
argument, that _is the argument_ \- not that the internet is being visualized
as a sovereign nation of idealist hackers somewhere.

The author's rant on CyberSpace is simply too literal and completely misses
the point. It sounds good at first, but when you examine the real logic behind
it, the author is not arguing anything that has ever really been said by
notable representatives of internet communities. Taking this article's view on
"CyberSpace" to it's logical extrapolation, the article must think people who
argue against SOPA and PIPA are ignorant of basic linguistics. But really, the
author is just being deliberately obtuse for argument's sake, or is simply
ignorant of the fact that _analogies are not designed to translate perfectly
into concrete descriptions_. You can break an analogy by stretching it too
far. And this is what the author did in analyzing the use of the term
"CyberSpace" - extended it too far (and much farther than it is ordinarily
used), and then defeated the argument he constructed.

~~~
maqr
> No one believes there is a mystical Narnia of 1s and 0s "somewhere out
> there" - no one reasonable, whose opinion matters at least.

I think a lot of people _do_ believe that "cyberspace" really exists and that
it's a place where we should be conducting war.

source: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare>

~~~
trotsky
Just like they believe in the twin lands of "Information" and "Electronic" two
other places we travel to for conflict?

Or, you know, it could just be that when we militarize something we're not
used to being involved in war we call it something something warfare.

------
jimfl
If nothing else, cyberspace can be delineated economically.

In meatspace, the economic leverage of a traditional business is scarcity and
the leverage of traditional parasitic distribution business is distance. The
economics of cyberspace can be based on neither of these things, because once
a single instance of something is created, it is everywhere without scarcity.
Traditional business attemts to create artificial scarcity and distance, but
this is madness.

------
girvo
Stop pretending cyberspace is owned by one country and set of laws, Salon.
Idiotic article that misses the point of a lot of legitimate issues.

------
hanleybrand
The assertion/snow clone "[x] makes you dumber just for hearing it" can
sometimes be more accurately formulated "I do not have an adequately developed
set of reasoning tools to grapple with and understand [x]."

Usually it's paired with that "doesn't know enough to recognize inadequacy"
problem.

------
s_baby
Are abstractions like freedom, rights, and individual any more real than the
abstraction of cyberspace? Author is going down a slippery slope.

------
guscost
Relevant blog? <http://guscost.com/2012/06/18/content/>

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melloclello
You want cyberspace? It looks like this

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Hg2Ft0Vtc>

