Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 82 posts

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

#41

Post by Ajedi32 »

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.

I don't think it necessarily has to be all the time; just having anonymity available when you want it could be enough in theory.

I guess the issue there is that if the general population spends most of its time on platforms which discourage anonymity then it becomes that much more difficult to achieve anonymity when you do need it.

Cyberspace can only be independent so long as it is a place that "is not where bodies live". "Our identities have no bodies" isn't true if your online identity is associated with your real name and photograph. You can't have a world that "all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth" if "all" doesn't include people whose race, economic power, and station of birth hasn't been disclosed to you in advance.

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

#42

Post by tomjen3 »

na85 wrote: post #9
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.

I remember those days. There was a lot of optimism and a feeling of being powerful , especially things like watching the early days of Anonymous vs Scientology. The internet was supposed to be the great enabler of the masses, and instead assholes like Zuckerberg co-opted it to line their own pockets by selling us wholesale to advertisers. In any case, I also remember reading TFDeclaration a year or two after it came…

As I recalled it, he found himself with a bullet in the head, his life in ruins.

My ass doesn't belong to anybody but me, but yeah there are people out there who wants it and quite a lot of people who want to tell me it belongs to them.

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

#43

Post by toyg »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #36
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…

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.

And some people are simply overwhelmed. In many ways, it was easier to follow cultural development when it was more limited in scope and availability: "this month you'll read this book, listen to this album, watch this movie, and that's it." If you wanted more, you had to work for it, or even travel.

Now there are millions of choices to be made every single day, all at one's fingertips, and it's just so much. Should I read this or that? Which of the gazillion movies and series, on umpteen streaming services, do I want to watch? Etc etc. In comparison, tv-zapping was cognitively trivial: just cycle through channels until you get bored, no need to reason about your wishes and inclinations.

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

#44

Post by api »

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…

The flaw in this vision was the naive assumption that all or at least most of this information would be honest and correct. It’s the usual failure of mostly honest people to factor in just how many sociopaths there are and to imagine what those with no ethics (or “end justifies the means” ethics) will do.

Instead we have entered a “fog of war” situation where it’s almost impossible to figure out what’s happening. Add to that the new practices of online cult indoctrination (“pilling”) and you now have tons of bad faith sophistry on top of all that bad faith propaganda. Online popular intellectuals now “hide their power level” in a gamified quest to indoctrinate people.

I’ve been predicting for a while that at some point civilization will be forced to make lying illegal. To knowingly state a falsehood that is not clearly labeled as fiction or satire would be a felony subject to large fines and loss of access to certain media for corporations and/or prison sentences for people.

The reason this has never been done is the thorny problem of determining truth, but at some point we might be forced to either go there or shut off the net. There will be a ton of collateral damage and chilling effects, but I wonder if the choice is between this and death by suffocation in bullshit.

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

#45

Post by toyg »

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…

Perfect anarchy will require going beyond democracy. Once all individuals can internalize altruistic social values in a perfect manner, coercion should not be required. That is effectively the sentiment behind a lot of the '60s philosophy that Barlow is channeling here.

The question is whether this state is realistically achievable. I would argue that most people, like you, eventually grow disillusioned enough to believe this will never happen - and with that premise, the entire discourse inevitably crumbles.

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

#46

Post by sparks1970 »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #40
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 challenge you to come up with any knowledge I can't click my way through to.

Yesterday I was in the village of Broadwell, just outside Stow on the Wold, UK.

I sat on a bench which had a plaque on it. It was a memorial to Malcolm Jeffries who died on his birthday in 1974 aged 20 years. His birth day and month was not mentioned.

I felt like this was an event, something notable and I wanted to know more about it. I searched the web but so far I haven't found anything.

I'm not really challenging you, I guess I'm just saying that a lot of "knowledge" hasn't made it to the web and likely never will.

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

#47

Post by gego »

If countries try to nationalise cyberspace as their "territory" that they will censor and spy on, it's clear that this collides head on with what users want... the way forward would be an international space like the high seas, but that could only be established by treaty... so it will take time for mare liberum digitalis to happen ;)

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

#48

Post by gmadsen »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #36
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…

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.

all knowledge includes quality and crap. The average citizen doesn't have the tools or training to discern the two.

The average citizen shouldn't need college level statistics and logical fallacy training to lead a comparably normal/healthy life.

But maybe there is an argument to be made to completely revamp k-12 with the sole goal of training people to be able to discern good and bad information.

Its not easy, plenty of professorial researchers fall for some of the same traps.

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

#50

Post by Banana699 »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #40
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 challenge you to come up with any knowledge I can't click my way through to.

That's actually super easy : obscure data sheets for embedded devices, private R&D that companies everywhere hoard, pre-internet content that nobody cares enough about to digitize, any content that rotted or was taken down by the original hosters before being mirrored, things that (dominant) search engines don't archive, things that was left behind by the SEO arms race in a priorty bucket so low it might as well not exist for any reasonable amount of effort, and etc... . Things get even worse if you consider legal questions e.g. the SciHub saga or the YouTube copyrights fiasco

I'm sure there is more if one thinks carefully enough, the internet is wonderful memory, but it's _memory_, it _will_ fail you at some point or another. Distribution merely decreases the probability of faliure, but any arbitarily small probability can be made arbitarily large by multiplying by enough population size.

Post reply on HN