mind in cyberspace

Civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace

In his Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace (1996), John Barlow expresses his frustration with the attempts of government bureaucracies to control the content of the Internet with the formal laws of societies. On one hand, considering this essay was authored in 1996 at the dawn of the Internet (then "World Wide Web") age, the piece is surprisingly accurate. Barlow wrote this almost a decade and a half before the current demonstration of how the cyber universe could reach beyond the controls of even the most repressive governments such as we have recently witnessed in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. On the other hand, the article also shows a certain degree of naivete in that Barlow was apparently under the assumption that no formal laws of government could be appropriately used to control or limit the use of Internet technology.

The Concept of a Civilization of the Mind

Barlow uses the phrase "creating a civilization of the mind" but does not provide any specific details about what that actually is. However, in his description of the limitations and controls that this new type of civilization is meant to eliminate, it becomes clear what he means. Barlow makes a reference to the oppressive governments that, even already in 1996, had begun trying to limit the availability of cyberspace to their citizens. He regards this as a futile attempt to control people's thoughts and expresses the belief that it is both impractical and morally wrong to attempt to control the transmission of ideas, beliefs, and opinions over the cyber medium because those transmissions amount to nothing more than people's thoughts. He views controlling the Internet (or the "WWW") as being a form of mental censorship.

Barlow describes the futility of trying to apply the traditional laws of modern governments to the cyber medium and suggests that doing so will ultimately be impossible because there is no physical or tangible aspect of cyberspace to control. By "civilization of the mind" Barlow clearly means that the Internet will be and must be a free medium for the same reason that private thoughts of individuals are not appropriately subject to government control. In Barlow's view at the time, the cyber medium would be nothing more than a community of individuals sharing the product of their private and sovereign thoughts.

Practical Limitations of the Civilization of the Mind Concept

In so far as Barlow meant the freedom to communicate thoughts and the freedom of access to information, his criticisms and his expectations of what the civilization of the mind would (and should) become were accurate. Today, free societies fully recognize that their citizens have every right to communicate freely and to access information via the cyber medium. Barlow was also accurate in his expectation that cyberspace would also provide a new social medium and in that respect, his article is especially impressive in the accuracy of that prediction.