The Economist presents a wide ranging, boldly ambitious consideration of "The Internet Society," looking at the conditions and ramifications of where we are now and where we are going in a connected world. The information is edifying and some of the conclusions are surprising. The whole endeavor is bookended by John Perry Barlow:
- "GOVERNMENTS of the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from cyberspace, the new home of mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."
Ah, it all seems so long ago. In 1996 John Perry Barlow, a former cattle rancher, lyricist for a rock band, the Grateful Dead, and commentator on technology, posted these words in an online discussion group. His "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" was an 800-word credo which claimed that users of the internet inhabited a new world of creativity, equality and justice which would forever remain beyond the reach of existing governments. "We will create a civilisation of the mind in cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before," he concluded with a flourish.
It is hard to believe today, but Mr Barlow's musings struck a chord at the time, spreading rapidly through the internet. The declaration encapsulated the exhilaration and wonder of millions of people as they logged on to the world wide web for the first time. It really did seem possible that the internet had launched a spontaneous revolution that might lead to a brave new borderless world.
Seven years later, Mr Barlow's claims sound absurd: just another example of the 1990s hype that produced the dotcom boom and bust. The internet, it seems, has turned out to be simply another appliance, a useful new medium like radio or television, not something likely to usher in a "civilisation of the mind".
And at the other end of the survey:
- The dream of John Perry Barlow and others that cyberspace would be free of such choices, a community entirely liberated from the lumbering governments of the tangible world, always seemed eccentric. With the benefit of hindsight, it can now be seen as an escapist fantasy made plausible only by the confusion that followed the startlingly rapid growth of the internet in its early days. The truth is that we all live in the internet society now, whether or not we spend any time online. The future will bring exciting, disorienting change as electronic communication reaches ever deeper into everyone's life. The prizes will be great. A more productive and safer society is possible. But things could also go nastily wrong.
In between they touch upon "Digital Dilemmas":
- new electronic technologies deal with the very essence of human society: communication between people. Earlier technologies, from printing to the telegraph, have done likewise, and have wrought big changes over time. But the social changes over the coming decades are likely to be much more extensive, and to happen much faster, than any in the past, because the technologies driving them are continuing to develop at a breakneck pace. More importantly, they look as if together they will be as pervasive and ubiquitous as electricity. Whether this will be for good or ill is impossible to predict, because how they are applied will be a matter of social and political choice. Many of these choices will be difficult and divisive.
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