It's always interesting to see how various companies attempt to go against these ideas and fail. Geoblocking for instance goes against the borderless idea mentioned there. The core of their failure is always the attempt to use physical logic in the digital space. Some just never learn.
20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
11–20 of 42 posts
Re: 20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
#12The message is probably one we can all get behind in principle. However, the internet has a real, physical infrastructure that is definitely owned and operated by behemoth organizations like governments and private corporations. In fact, the Internet was created by a government. What makes you think they'd give it up willingly? If you want to create your own internet, you certainly can. But even if you find the monet…
What about techniques that obscure the source of information?
Whether it be something like Tor, or something like a distributed database, internet communication may require hardware and physical location of data, but there are ways to allow information transmission without being strongly reliant on a fixed physical source.
Also, this capability is not limited to the internet.
Re: 20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
#13The message is probably one we can all get behind in principle. However, the internet has a real, physical infrastructure that is definitely owned and operated by behemoth organizations like governments and private corporations. In fact, the Internet was created by a government. What makes you think they'd give it up willingly? If you want to create your own internet, you certainly can. But even if you find the monet…
Think very long distance wireless. It has yet to be invented but I believe one day it will be possible to communicate point-to-point across the globe with low power devices at high bandwidths. Such a technology would make these arguments moot. Certainly we have to be practical about our present situation but the broader idea of cyberspace is not limited to current technology. In 1996 moderates would have laugh if you…
Where would you house the wireless endpoints? How would you obscure their source? These aren't magical devices. They're still real-world physical objects.
Re: 20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
#14The message is probably one we can all get behind in principle. However, the internet has a real, physical infrastructure that is definitely owned and operated by behemoth organizations like governments and private corporations. In fact, the Internet was created by a government. What makes you think they'd give it up willingly? If you want to create your own internet, you certainly can. But even if you find the monet…
What about techniques that obscure the source of information? Whether it be something like Tor, or something like a distributed database, internet communication may require hardware and physical location of data, but there are ways to allow information transmission without being strongly reliant on a fixed physical source. Also, this capability is not limited to the internet.
None of those technologies are bulletproof. Tor can be (and at least partially has been) compromised.
Re: 20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
#15The message is probably one we can all get behind in principle. However, the internet has a real, physical infrastructure that is definitely owned and operated by behemoth organizations like governments and private corporations. In fact, the Internet was created by a government. What makes you think they'd give it up willingly? If you want to create your own internet, you certainly can. But even if you find the monet…
Think very long distance wireless. It has yet to be invented but I believe one day it will be possible to communicate point-to-point across the globe with low power devices at high bandwidths. Such a technology would make these arguments moot. Certainly we have to be practical about our present situation but the broader idea of cyberspace is not limited to current technology. In 1996 moderates would have laugh if you…
> low power
> high bandwidth
> high distance
The laws of physics compel you to choose 2.
Re: 20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
#16Wonder who's gonna write this for the Blockchain.
Blockchains don't need independence from governments. Blockchains are independence from governments. Blockchains allow individuals to enforce rules on their governments without needing to navigate bureaucracies and legislatures that are already captured by the wealthy and powerful.
Inalienable rights are a powerful concept. It suggests that there can be rights that people aren't using—not because they don't have them, but because they don't know they have them. This was the story of the Enlightenment, and I believe it's the story of blockchains as well.
Blockchains give the people information about their economy that they can use to see the flow of economic power, and they can use this information to decide whose power to submit to. No one can take this right away. Rejecting power used to require a violent revolution. Soon it'll only require an app.
Re: 20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
#17The message is probably one we can all get behind in principle. However, the internet has a real, physical infrastructure that is definitely owned and operated by behemoth organizations like governments and private corporations. In fact, the Internet was created by a government. What makes you think they'd give it up willingly? If you want to create your own internet, you certainly can. But even if you find the monet…
Think very long distance wireless. It has yet to be invented but I believe one day it will be possible to communicate point-to-point across the globe with low power devices at high bandwidths. Such a technology would make these arguments moot. Certainly we have to be practical about our present situation but the broader idea of cyberspace is not limited to current technology. In 1996 moderates would have laugh if you…
There are some severe physical limitations to work around here. Higher frequencies support higher bandwidth, but they tend to go right through the ionosphere rather than treating the ground-ionosphere system as a waveguide. Lower frequencies can propagate further (like AM radio at night), but as you drop the frequency there's suddenly a lot less spectrum to go around. And you need huge antennas.
Re: 20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
#18John Perry Barlow is recovering from a stroke. Here is at San Francisco's Ocean Beach: https://twitter.com/JPBarlow/status/692198084265254914
I think he had a heart attack, not a stroke.
Re: 20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
#19Wonder who's gonna write this for the Blockchain.
Blockchains don't need independence from governments. Blockchains are independence from governments. Blockchains allow individuals to enforce rules on their governments without needing to navigate bureaucracies and legislatures that are already captured by the wealthy and powerful. Inalienable rights are a powerful concept. It suggests that there can be rights that people aren't using—not because they don't have them…
My understanding is that blockchains are designed to ensure that it would be economically irrational to attempt to expend resources competing with the blockchain, creating create a stable equilibrium in which rational participants cooperate.
It might not be worth a scammer's money to buy enough computing power to double-spend, but that doesn't mean a government mightn't find it worthwhile to spend money to tamper with or destroy something it perceives as a threat.
Re: 20 Years Since John Perry Barlow Declared Cyberspace Independence
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blockchains don't need independence from governments. Blockchains are independence from governments. Blockchains allow individuals to enforce rules on their governments without needing to navigate bureaucracies and legislatures that are already captured by the wealthy and powerful. Inalienable rights are a powerful concept. It suggests that there can be rights that people aren't using—not because they don't have them…
My understanding is that blockchains are designed to ensure that it would be economically irrational to attempt to expend resources competing with the blockchain, creating create a stable equilibrium in which rational participants cooperate. It might not be worth a scammer's money to buy enough computing power to double-spend, but that doesn't mean a government mightn't find it worthwhile to spend money to tamper wit…
Blockchains can be tampered with, but they're tamper-evident. Sure, a government can 51% attack Bitcoin and lower its value. The value of Bitcoin doesn't matter. What matters is the ability to reach consensus on a sequence of events. Such attacks only make that harder temporarily.