A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace (1996)

There was a while, a short while, when we thought perhaps naively that there was a chance. For those who might dismiss the sentiment, you had to be there. Things didn't turn out as we had hoped. Not all of us who hoped for something other than what we got, something better, were ageing hippies either.

The most important part is this is a quote from<p>&gt; Davos, Switzerland &gt; February 8, 1996<p>very different times, with very different problems. Mainly before &quot;cyberspace&quot; has permeated the daily live of nearly every citizen and a the same turn IRL problems have throughly permeated &quot;cyberspace&quot;.<p>It was from a time before nearly all online time was divided between a few tech pseudo-monopolies(1), before social networks where the norm and before modern instant messaging. It was before tech giants had repeatedly failed to self regulate, before populist started swamping the main sources of information for many people with endless amounts of propaganda content. A time where dark patterns and sneaky user hostile behavior (in the internet) where still the exception instead of the norm.<p>It was in a time where people still did dream from tech utopia instead of mainly trying to avoid a tech dystopia.<p>And where the idea of cyberspace self regulating effectively without the involvement of country governments at all seems viable, possible and a good idea.<p>A time many people fighting against hostile actions from governments might look at with nostalgia, because while the fight wasn&#x27;t any less important back then then now the waters where much less muddled.<p>If it where written today it would be out of touch, cringe and sounds like the person who wrote it probably best shouldn&#x27;t have any power as they might try to overthrow governments to establish a tech oligarchy. But it wasn&#x27;t written now and if you read it in the context of it&#x27;s time it&#x27;s neither cringe nor absurd.<p>But instead like a dream which seemed archival but now is lost, replaced by the cruelty of reality, leaving only a sweat nostalgic feeling behind.<p>(1) pseudo-monopoly as in technically not a monopoly but due to being extremely marked dominant in many different fields and across huge parts of the globe with strong network effects and huge patent backlogs they have effectively often more power then the actual monopolies which monopoly law was made to target.