[Prev|Next|Index] 2/14/96, baby-x@swarm.com, San Francisco, CA USA Reclaiming Cyberspace Much of this is about language. Words themselves have always been both a battleground and a weapon. This is nothing new or unique -- except perhaps for the fact that this is a battle over the control of a medium that relies almost exclusively upon written expression, and therefore upon language. The medium itself represents the sheer power of the word. It should come as no surprise, then, that one place the battle is fought is in the arena of language. It's been argued that when a society is confronted with something it does not understand, that something is ignored, then it is trivialized, and then it is demonized. I would argue that there is a fourth element in this series (or perhaps it is merely an aspect of one or all of these three elements): The hostile take-over of that something's language. Someone once told me that words conjure. What precisely do they conjure, then? For one thing, words exert control. Words build meaning and construct the spaces within our minds that we use to hold our descriptions and definitions of the world; they also construct the descriptions and definitions themselves. They certainly construct these spaces in our public lives where we interact with others. Therefore, who controls the language wins by being able to define the context of the battle itself, to build the language arena for the fight -- and not just for the fight, but for the spaces we will have afterwards. And to the degree that language defines how we see the world around us, then what words conjure is reality itself. Language is culture. Language is politics. Language is power. The history of the net this past year has been the history of a fight over language, a fight over the very lifeblood of what the net has been. The months-long Congressional fight against Senator Exon's "Communications Decency Act" and it's offspring should leave little doubt that the United States remains a world leader. After that bill's introduction into the U.S. Senate, an international feeding frenzy began. Nation after nation began announcing restrictive policies when it came to the net -- from Germany to China, New Zealand to Great Britain. All over the control of words. Largely lost in all of this, largely absent from media coverage or Congressional speeches, has been the words of net users themselves. Those whose words comprise both signal and noise in this medium were on the whole not allowed to speak for it. As a result, public perception of cyberspace has been dominated by the images drawn by the narrow agendas of politicans or the pre-fab (and usually sensationalistic) positions of the major media outlets. This cannot continue. Those of us for whom the net has increasingly woven itself into the fabric of our everyday lives must re-assert ownership of its definition. The language used to (re)present the net -- inasmuch as such a thing is possible; something as large and complex as cyberspace can really only be its own representation -- must be our language. The words used to draw the images of the net that the public sees must be our own. Start with the much-maligned word cyberspace. While it is generally traced to Gibson's "consensual hallucination", I would argue that there is something more than that in the sort of thing that exists for us today via the net. All technological development of media has in some way increased the connections between individual minds. The net follows suit, to the degree that these interconnections have become so prevalent that the spaces they created ended up with a name: cyberspace. It is precisely because the word in fact has real meaning to it that it ought to be reclaimed by its rightful owners. What is created along the medium of wires and bits is every bit as "real" as anything we do offline, except in its physicality (or lack thereof). But since so much of what we construct into being real is defined by language, and exists only insofar as we tell ourselves "this is how it is", why isn't a place constructed entirely of language (re)presented as being real? Meanwhile, what does all this have to do with democracy? When this "24 Hours of Democracy" project was introduced, it was claimed that on the day President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Reform Bill, "cyberspace was redefined by the US government" -- a statement which well exemplifies the steady confusion of the medium's meanings with it's infrastructure. If cyberspace truly is the place where the expressions of individual minds interact, then it is not a place that government can in reality alter. While it could be correctly noted that governments have always managed to launch campaigns against the expressions of individual minds, the impulse towards communication and connection has never fully been subverted by those campaigns. Someone got it wrong. It is not the Internet which views censorship as an error and routes around it; it's cyberspace. This is not to claim that the recent decisions of various governments regarding either the infrastructure or content of the Internet have no effect at all upon the communication and connection that occurs there. Merely that we have to learn to disassociate the wires and bits from the communication and connection. One is material, the other is not. One can be controlled by authoritarian force, the other ultimately cannot. Meanwhile, what does all this have to do with democracy? Censorship of the Internet might very well be a palatable choice to the general public. The oft-used quote from Benjamin Franklin about trading liberty for security is no longer the devil's deal of the day. While society continues to make this particular trade, it is no longer the most sickening. This dishonorable position belongs to the trading of liberty for mere convenience. The public at large continues to be sold the tale of the (Commerical) Information Superhighway, wherein their consumerist dreams will be fulfilled by Big Media's careful programming and marketting. They're being sold a controlled and sanatized vision of existence precisely contrary to what computer-mediated communications allegedly provides. They're being sold the tale of yet another aspect of their lives being planned by people other than themselves, and in return they get to shop and watch movies on demand from home. It looks like Choice and Freedom relative to what the powers-that-be have allowed the public thus far. In reality, it is the Liberty-for-Convenience "bargain" dressed up as greater choice for the consumer. Notice: It is not about the citizen, but about the consumer. This is precisely why the telecom bill passed and why it was signed. It doesn't matter how many supporters of the over-all bill think the censorship provisions are unconstitutional, because what's good for the consumer is more important than what's good for the citizen. At least, that's the message inherent in the government's actions. The battle over the Internet is not about pornography, bomb-making, or any other smoke-screen issue they toss our way. It's simply the ages-old battle between "the authority of the tyrant and the authority of the realized self". It is the battle against those who all but demand that you have a permit to exist. So perhaps this essay at least isn't about democracy. I'm not sure I know what democracy is, because I'm far more concerned with how individuals see themselves as individuals (or rather, if they see themselves as such at all) than with the notion of how individuals conduct themselves in some collective civic or political sense. Indeed, without "the authority of the realized self" being pre-eminent in the lives of individuals, any political sphere is bound to become not far removed from farce. What does this mean for us here on the net? What does it mean that government and media forces seem intent (deliberately or not) on mutating this medium into one for consumers instead of one for individuals? Not a God damned thing. The net may indeed break under the weight of their assault. But the impulse toward communication and connection between individual minds -- cyberspace -- will not even bend. Don't let the bastards drag you down. Right now, immediately, live as if the battle were already won. Christopher D. Frankonis Rootless Cosmopolitan, Swarming Systems baby-x@swarm.com http://www.swarm.com/~baby-x/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Blue Ribbon] [Hands Off! theNet] [Electronic Freedom March] And if you're in California, be sure to participate in NetDay96 -- an electronic barn-raising to wire all of our state's schools.