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A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

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Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#31

Post by antihero »

freeflight wrote: post #17
fouc wrote: post #5

It's a sad reminder of the optimism for the power of the internet we had in the 90's. This sort of reality only becomes true if we all use cryptographic measures all the time perhaps.

> This sort of reality only becomes true if we all use cryptographic measures all the time perhaps. Not necessarily, I can imagine a post-privacy scenario were absolute transparency turns private information commercially worthless by making it a good readily and freely accessible to everybody. I admit it would be a rather radical paradigm change and difficult to actually implement but actually fits perfectly fine wit…

I guess it's about personal privacy vs private privacy.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#32

Post by krylon »

chip-8 wrote: post #25
belorn wrote: post #15

A common hope back then was that we would enter a new world by giving every child access to every book every written, with technology and knowledge being the gateway to a better future. The censorship of knowledge and culture would be forever be broken. In 2004 there was en excellent talk by Eben Moglen on the subject called "Die Gedanken Sind Frei". It focused heavily on the struggle for freedom of thought. The talk…

I remember that hope for a future where all knowledge would be available at the click of a button, where the internet would be used to enlighten and enrich ordinary people. The internet of today is truly tragic in contrast. A future where all human knowledge is at one’s fingertips is still a possibility. The problem is that our society is based on the profit motive. This means corporations will subsume everything the…

I mostly agree with you, but it's not all bad. Wikipedia, for all its flaws, is a tremendous repository of knowledge, so are its sister projects. Project Gutenberg stores vast amounts of literature. archive.org preserves literature, video, software, audio data. Librivox offers audio book recordings of public domain literature. And last but not least, free/open source software puts mountains of software for nearly every purpose I could imagine at one's fingertips.

All of these are free for anyone to access and contribute.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#33

Post by zozbot234 »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #28
chip-8 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember that hope for a future where all knowledge would be available at the click of a button, where the internet would be used to enlighten and enrich ordinary people. The internet of today is truly tragic in contrast. A future where all human knowledge is at one’s fingertips is still a possibility. The problem is that our society is based on the profit motive. This means corporations will subsume everything the…

> The internet of today is truly tragic in contrast. It's not all black and white, though. The amount of knowledge available at, say, youtube, is still absolutely mind-bogglingly vast. Imagine learning to flint knap in the 90s, good luck if you can't get access to one of the very few experimental archaeologists who are able to teach this; now there are entire courses on youtube, free for all. And all those tools and…

YouTube is a centralized service that's likely not even economically sustainable in the long term, given the sheer amount of random video junk that gets uploaded on there every minute. I'll take this argument more seriously when a comparable service can be built on 100% commodity tech (probably using some variety of IPFS for cdn-like distributed sourcing) and be made economically sustainable for creators as well (the various crowdfunding platforms are showing that something like this can work).

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#34

Post by zozbot234 »

krylon wrote: post #32
chip-8 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember that hope for a future where all knowledge would be available at the click of a button, where the internet would be used to enlighten and enrich ordinary people. The internet of today is truly tragic in contrast. A future where all human knowledge is at one’s fingertips is still a possibility. The problem is that our society is based on the profit motive. This means corporations will subsume everything the…

I mostly agree with you, but it's not all bad. Wikipedia, for all its flaws, is a tremendous repository of knowledge, so are its sister projects. Project Gutenberg stores vast amounts of literature. archive.org preserves literature, video, software, audio data. Librivox offers audio book recordings of public domain literature. And last but not least, free/open source software puts mountains of software for nearly eve…

Many of these projects got started in the late 1990s or early 2000s, with the 1996 'Declaration' as a key rallying point.

The social-media dominated Internet of today is the polar opposite; it's very explicitly trying to make cyberspace as thin a layer as possible onto ordinary meatspace, because this is how large social media firms can maximize short-term "growth", "engagement" and advertising profits. This could even be acceptable on its own terms, but these large social media sites tend to be sources of spillover that affects even the formerly more independent Internet, and reduces its effectiveness quite a lot compared to what it could be.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#35

Post by jabl »

digislave wrote: post #26
hkt wrote: post #21

I used to love this, until I saw the profound antidemocratic sentiment behind it. What Barlow is saying is that there will be a world that cannot be reached or governed, where only (rugged) individuals matter. By extension, votes will matter less, and restrictions on the abuses of the powerful will cease to be. It felt utopian the first time I read it, but now I really do see it as dystopian. After all, democracy is…

But maybe no government is better. It only says all other forms of government are worse.

I believe the "no government" state is unstable. Something will fill that power vacuum. Which is why places with "no government" tend to be hellholes where warlords wage civil war trying to become the king of the hill.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#36

Post by bobcostas55 »

chip-8 wrote: post #25
belorn wrote: post #15

A common hope back then was that we would enter a new world by giving every child access to every book every written, with technology and knowledge being the gateway to a better future. The censorship of knowledge and culture would be forever be broken. In 2004 there was en excellent talk by Eben Moglen on the subject called "Die Gedanken Sind Frei". It focused heavily on the struggle for freedom of thought. The talk…

I remember that hope for a future where all knowledge would be available at the click of a button, where the internet would be used to enlighten and enrich ordinary people. The internet of today is truly tragic in contrast. A future where all human knowledge is at one’s fingertips is still a possibility. The problem is that our society is based on the profit motive. This means corporations will subsume everything the…

All human knowledge _is_ at one's fingertips. Virtually all books are available through gutenberg or libgen. The vast majority of academic research through sci-hub. The truth is that people are simply not interested.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#38

Post by indigochill »

zozbot234 wrote: post #33
dividedbyzero wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The internet of today is truly tragic in contrast. It's not all black and white, though. The amount of knowledge available at, say, youtube, is still absolutely mind-bogglingly vast. Imagine learning to flint knap in the 90s, good luck if you can't get access to one of the very few experimental archaeologists who are able to teach this; now there are entire courses on youtube, free for all. And all those tools and…

YouTube is a centralized service that's likely not even economically sustainable in the long term, given the sheer amount of random video junk that gets uploaded on there every minute. I'll take this argument more seriously when a comparable service can be built on 100% commodity tech (probably using some variety of IPFS for cdn-like distributed sourcing) and be made economically sustainable for creators as well (the…

What's wrong with PeerTube (aside from it being niche, but that's not really a problem per se, more an opportunity)? Is it difficult to deploy (again, an opportunity to create an easier deployment experience)?

I think economic sustainability of content creation is orthogonal to the hosting problem. Crowdfunding, like you say, could work, independently of the platform. I see lots of YouTube channels I follow use Patreon, for example.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#39

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

> 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.

This has to be one of the most naive statements ever to gain popularity.

As long as government can still imprison, fine, or even execute people (which they can), they can enforce their will about what they do with the Internet.

Re: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

#40

Post by hypertele-Xii »

chip-8 wrote: post #25
belorn wrote: post #15

A common hope back then was that we would enter a new world by giving every child access to every book every written, with technology and knowledge being the gateway to a better future. The censorship of knowledge and culture would be forever be broken. In 2004 there was en excellent talk by Eben Moglen on the subject called "Die Gedanken Sind Frei". It focused heavily on the struggle for freedom of thought. The talk…

I remember that hope for a future where all knowledge would be available at the click of a button, where the internet would be used to enlighten and enrich ordinary people. The internet of today is truly tragic in contrast. A future where all human knowledge is at one’s fingertips is still a possibility. The problem is that our society is based on the profit motive. This means corporations will subsume everything the…

I challenge you to come up with any knowledge I can't click my way through to.
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