Regulation Of Cyberspace Quotes

It seems to me that it’s still an open question whether computers and networks will help or hurt human freedom—but this is one place where the extreme scenarios are also the most plausible. I think we could easily go in the direction Tim May indicates, perhaps ending up with a world very like the one in Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age. On the other hand, there are the “Four Horsemen” that Tim, Alan, and Lenny remark upon. All four Horsemen are good excuses for the incremental tightening of regulation and enforcement (some being more effective with one constituency than another), but I think the “Terrorist Horseman” is the one that could shift our whole society toward strict controls. Just a few really ghastly terrorist incidents would be enough to cause a sea change in public opinion. It’s not hard to imagine the entire country run the way airports were run in the late twentieth century. But there are worse nightmares: Imagine a government that mandated control of some part of each communicating microchip. In that case, the computing power of the Internet could be used for much tighter control than George Orwell described.

Cyberspace has become the new psychological landscape of humanity, a space we inhabit with our thoughts, our mind, our imagination, and one that, on average, absorbs more of our physical time than any other activity. Within it, desire and knowledge intertwine, intimacy and distance coexist, freedom and dependence overlap. Participation in cyberspace, however, inevitably entails interaction with others, and this interaction is often experienced in a looser, less regulated way than in-person encounters. It is here that the need arises to rethink citizenship, not as belonging to a state, but as conscious participation in a shared digital reality.