When I discovered cyberspace, I realized that the frontier was bound only by the human imagination. And that we would never run out of frontiers as long as human beings could dream.
The real question is, how do we maintain a sense of ourselves in an unbounded environment, and at the same time provide sufficient tolerance for other points of view, so that we are not constantly trying to suppress them?
—John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow is a poet, essayist, and cyberlibertarian political activist. He is also a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead.
In 1986 Barlow joined The WELL online community. In 1990 he founded, along with fellow digital rights activists John Gilmore and Mitch Kapor, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As a founder of EFF, Barlow helped publicize the Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games. He subsequently became a Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Barlow is the author of the famous “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” which was written in response to the enactment of the Communications Decency Act in 1996 as the EFF saw the law as a threat to the independence and sovereignty of cyberspace. He argued that a cyberspace legal order should reflect the ethical deliberation of the community instead of the coercive power that characterizes real-space governance. He strives to promote different rules for cyberspace, much closer to the common universal dreams and values for human beings, with no other moral or cultural distinction than those that gather around the common values that all humanity shares, in the tradition of Alexis de Tocqueville, Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, and Brandeis.
Note: The following conversation took place at the encounter about digital culture, “Copyfight,” in July 2005 in Barcelona, and was later supplemented at the “Powerful Ideas Summit,” held in Valencia in January 2007. It was revised in June 2015.
Adolfo Plasencia:
In 1996, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, you read the famous “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace.”1 Would you change anything after the experience of the last two decades?
John Perry Barlow:
I did not intend to make it into a declaration of intentions but rather a declaration that would describe the present moment. And to clarify that in spite of all the attempts that the industrial period has made to establish its sovereignty over cyberspace, it has always failed.
If I had to make any change, the only thing I would change would be to make it less arrogant.
A.P.:
It seems there are many powers that would like to govern cyberspace.
John, is cyberspace governable or not?
J.P.B.:
That was what I meant to say with the “Declaration of Independence,” which was that cyberspace is naturally immune to rules by conventional means, partly because there are so many forces that would like to rule it and they cancel one another, and partly because I believe that law requires access to the physical body. As such, order in cyberspace can only be achieved by some combination of ethics and technology.
A.P.:
You published an article that first appeared in Wired, “The Economy of ideas,” which is considered one of the founding texts of free culture on the Internet.2 In that text you say, “Everything you think you know about intellectual property is wrong.”
Are so many people wrong about this?
J.P.B.:
Anyone who uses the term “intellectual property” has the wrong idea.
Property, by its nature, is something you can take away from somebody else. It’s something that one can have possession of. I can possess an idea only if I keep it to myself. But the second I reveal to another, no one possesses it. And everyone can. And if it’s a good idea, it would spread naturally. And I will still maintain that idea in my head, and nobody will have taken it away from me as it’s spread. And not only will it not become less valuable, because it’s spread, it will become more valuable. This makes it fundamentally different from real property.
If I have a large diamond, it’s very valuable. If everybody on the planet has a large diamond, it’s not valued at all. Precisely the opposite is true of an idea.
A.P.:
John, you are one of the main driving forces behind the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which sounds fascinating. Is the electronic frontier a fixed or mobile frontier, or is it a horizon that we can never reach?
J.P.B.:
Frontiers, by their nature, move. And part of the reason I wanted to name it that was because my family came to America and then for three hundred years stayed on the frontier as it moved. Suddenly, I found myself at the end of physical frontiers.
But when I discovered cyberspace, I realized that the frontier was bounded only by the human imagination, and that we would never run out of frontiers as long as human beings could dream. There will always be the same questions asked by frontiers reviving themselves anew with each change in technology.
A.P.:
It is likely that there are companies, corporations, or perhaps leaders who would like cyberspace to be an official and commercial environment. But there are also many citizens, ordinary people, who would like a free and open cyberspace.
What do you feel is the current situation, or how do you see the future for this articulation between the official, commercial Internet and the free, open Internet?
J.P.B.:
I don’t think that commerce and freedom are inconsistent. I believe in free markets, and in fact, one of the things that I did that is less well known was to help create something called the Commercial Internet Exchange, in 1990.
A.P.:
John, what is today’s “economy of ideas” like?
Is it a capitalist or socialist economy?
Is it a true market economy?
And should it be supervised or not?
J.P.B.:
It’s both capitalist and, I think, in a very pure way, Marxist—because it’s impractical for people to be expected to share physical property, but it is practical to share the work of the mind. If I have a Mercedes-Benz, I don’t want everybody to be able to drive it. It’s practical to ask people to share the fruits of thought. It’s capitalist only in the sense that a very different kind of investment is required to create wealth in cyberspace. But it’s not the kind of investment the Marxist notion of “bourgeoisie” would make in order to ensure its power. Because I could be a poor graduate student at Stanford University, without any capital at all, and create one of the most powerful institutions on the planet in the form of Google.
A.P.:
Not long ago, John, you said in an interview that you do not believe that the digital divide exists. Many say that ever since the revolution on the Web has been going on, in the same time in which this revolution has been taking place, the differences between the rich and the poor have done nothing but increase.
Is it possible that the weapon of the Internet revolution is useless in narrowing the gap between those who have more and those who have less on the planet?
J.P.B.:
I think the differences between the rich and the poor have increased, but for reasons that have nothing to do with internet. If it has happened, it is because the rich have become more greedy, more covetous, and more active in appropriating richness as a response to these changes. For example, you can see it in the United States. The government has eliminated any limit in terms of taxes to enrichment and, in alliance with the richest and the largest corporations, it has eliminated all restrictions on monopolies. As a result, the United States is becoming an oligarchy.
A.P.:
I mentioned it because for many people, this revolution was a great hope for the poorest on the planet, a possible way to get out of their misery.
J.P.B.:
I spend a lot of time in Africa. It is very rare not to find a cybercafé in any village or city of Africa. And the first slow beginnings of a starting new economy are forming rapidly in Africa.3 Starting with crime—which is how often a new economy starts anyway!
A.P.:
And what happens to that great hope?
J.P.B.:
Eventually even criminals discover that it is more profitable to earn money legally. But in order to do so, they first have to have the education, the instruments, and the contacts.
A.P.:
We are now in Spain. You live in the United States, but you travel all over the world. Is the European vision that we have of cyberspace of the Web different from the one people have in the United States or other places?
Do you think the local culture of cybercitizens affects cyberspace culture, or that when we act as such, we all act in the same way?
J.P.B.:
Had you asked me this same question only five years ago I would have answered that there exists only one global culture of Internet. And somehow, it still does exist. But what I saw as global then was in reality a strong injection of the United States’ values at the beginnings in that global culture: the belief in freedom of speech, the belief in intimacy and privacy, the belief that there should be a limited government. But as other cultures connect to the Internet, for example, those of the Arab world, their values are being injected into the Web.
The real question is, how do we maintain a sense of ourselves in an unbounded environment, and at the same time provide sufficient tolerance for other points of view, so that we are not constantly trying to suppress them?
I am optimistic enough to think that once we realize that it’s very difficult for us to suppress other peoples’ cultures, and once local cultures gather more energy among themselves, by reaching or having the largest place in which to communicate, they will solve this problem. For instance, take a look at Catalonian culture: during the print period, only so many books could be published in Catalan because the market would only support so many. Now there is no such limit.
A.P.:
Excellent! That’s everything!
Thank you very much for meeting me today and for your time. I hope to see you soon in my city, Valencia.
J.P.B.:
I hope so too!