We are at the precipice of fully inhabiting cyberspace
“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather”
These are the opening sentences of John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” published in Davos in 1996. You read that correctly: 1996.
The precision of Barlow’s predictions is remarkable. Cyberspace is finally coming into its own with respect to its ability to withstand nationstate government intervention.
It is emerging as a realm with its own rules, its own governance and its own sovereignty.
Many will argue that the missing piece in facilitating this transition was Bitcoin. “Cybermoney”, as the authors of the 1997 book “The Sovereign Individual” called it, “reduces the capacity of the world’s nationstates to determine who becomes a Sovereign Individual […] and liberates the holders of wealth from expropriation through inflation.”
We are at the precipice of a new world in which nationstates will struggle to maintain their power, likely culminating in several transition crises.
On the other end is a new world: a more just, more egalitarian and more humane society, with significantly greater prospects for human flourishing.
