Wednesday, September 13, 2006
A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace
"You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different." --John Perry Barlow
Is it true that we don't want any governing body in Cyberspace? Who will play watchdog in a world without borders? Many of the sites that we visit are considered taboo by typical societal standards, and we assume that much of our online activity remains private. But can we trust the watchdog, whether that be a government like that of the United States, a government of Cyberspace--an online police/peacekeeping force, or users of the internet --as suggested in the document--to keep the peace and respect our privacy at the same time?
The people of this democracy of the "real" world would seem to be in confliction when choosing between our liberty and our security. On one hand, if we allow the government to wiretap our phones--the legitimacy of which as has been recently debated--what else must we then allow our government to do in times of "necessity"? Shall we allow this government to read our mail before we receive it? If they can wiretap our phones, what says that they haven't already read our emails, or checked our history of viewed websites? Should we feel threatened by our own government to avoid educating ourselves in subjects that are considered taboo?
During the Red Scare, reading books on Communism would have seemed dangerous. Perhaps during World War II, attempting to learn some Japanese would have been risky. but what is wrong with knowing thy enemy? And if we are the watchdog, then we must keep watch on the government, while also watching one another. Overall, it would appear that for an online community to exist so freely as Barlow suggests, we will sacrifice our privacy to a certain degree. How is that absolute freedom?
Comments:
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A great post.
You have raised some key issues here. Who will rule the net? There are several powerful contenders both international, governmental and corporate. The key question is whether the net can be governed at all? Is anarchy built into the very architecture of the web?
The trade-off of privacy/security vs. freedom and interaction is a crucial issue we will be discussing
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You have raised some key issues here. Who will rule the net? There are several powerful contenders both international, governmental and corporate. The key question is whether the net can be governed at all? Is anarchy built into the very architecture of the web?
The trade-off of privacy/security vs. freedom and interaction is a crucial issue we will be discussing
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