Digital dilemmas

Jan 23rd 2003
From The Economist print edition

“GOVERNMENTS of the industrial world, 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.”

Ah, it all seems so long ago. In 1996 John Perry Barlow, a former cattle rancher, lyricist for a rock band, the Grateful Dead, and commentator on technology, posted these words in an online discussion group. His “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” was an 800-word credo which claimed that users of the internet inhabited a new world of creativity, equality and justice which would forever remain beyond the reach of existing governments. “We will create a civilisation of the mind in cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before,” he concluded with a flourish. …