Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
"Governments of the Industrial World," Barlow wrote, "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. We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you
with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the
global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek
to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of
enforcement we have true reason to fear. Governments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite
you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your
borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project.
You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions. You have
not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our
marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already
provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions ... We
are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the condi-
tions of our world, not yours. Our world is different. Cyberspace consists of transactions,
relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our commu-
nications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies
live. We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by
race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where
anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of
being coerced into silence or conformity. Your legal concepts of property, expression, iden-
tity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is
no matter here."
This philosophy was brilliant and idealistic - just like the bold vision of the revolu-
tionaries at the old Home Brew Computing Club. But also like that lost dream for PCs, it
was unrealistic. Barlow was, in fact, writing in the face of rising governmental regulations
and looming commercialization: the settlement and development of the once lawless, and
totally free, electronic frontier. Still, Barlow saw technical innovation as the domain of free
and brilliant minds - these to be the inevitable, ultimate winners in a contest defined by new
rules.
"In the United States," Barlow continued, "you have today created a law, the Telecom-
munications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams
of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must
now be born anew in us. 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 bur-
eaucracies 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 an-
