10 Years of Cyberspace Independence

Posted Thursday, February 9th 2006

On February 8th 1996, John Perry Barlow declared the Independence of Cyberspace. It’s not exactly a revolutionary date, and hardly a date most people would have remembered, but a friend of mine passed me the link, and I recalled reading the declaration a few years ago.
It’s actually a very interesting text - and everyone should read it - it will provide at least some insight about what we are actually trying to do - albeit this is quite an old text.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

That’s just a part of it, and it’s actually sad to see how much of what the author speaks against in his text has actually come true. Imposed regulations, rules and benchmarks, all supposedly “for our own benefit and protection” suffocate the Internet before our very eyes. Various governing bodies wage a diplomatic war over who will be in control, and giant corporations limit our very freedom of information in order to protect their products.

10 years have passed. Seems like eternity.