alt Hacker News> I feel sad for the 20-year-old me who really believed in the declaration of the independence of cyberspace.
Cyberspace depends on physical reality and everything that comes from that. Resource constraints, economics, politics, arms races, warfare, etc.
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Worse, physical reality now also depends on "cyberspace".
This stuff only worked, socially and politically, when it was a niche. Echoing the comment of Nursie, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47071177 ; as soon as "everyone" is online, online is also real life. People thought it might be a haven for progressive politics, but that didn't outlast the Howard Dean campaign and it turned out that the right-wing could do online politics as well. The medium doesn't care whether your message is pro- or anti-genocide.
The ability of hyper-online memelords to inject bad ideas into the online right policy space has been an absolute disaster for all concerned. US policy is now downstream of Twitter. Let that sink in, as it were.
In a very cyberpunk dystopia way, online warfare is now co-evolved with both kinetic warfare (Ukraine's meme army trying to secure them external support) and urban warfare (following ICE agents around to post video of what they're doing on the Internet is as effective a tactic as legal action).
People forget that the "cyber" of "cyberpunk" and "cyberspace" comes from "cybernetics", meaning systems of control. In the beginning amateurs had control because it wasn't important. Now it turns out that, yes, the question of which country owns the chat client all the government staff are using is a question of national security.
Yes, all of our 20-year-old selves eventually learned that. No need to rub it in!
Missing on the list, but mostly part of it - human retardation. In politics, in private, everywhere.
The surplus binges of the 90s do not make for an accurate sample of human and politics nature.
Indeed. I first encountered the "declaration of independence of cyberspace" a few years after it was written, and at the time I was immediately reminded of the Full Metal Jacket quote that goes something like "you can give your heart to Jesus but your ass belongs to the Marine Corps!"
That is to say the Declaration is pure cringe. The idea that cyberspace could become sovereign unto itself is patently absurd: The user's ass belongs to whichever country they inhabit.
Cyberspace promised us we can all work together to create things, like one species coming together to solve problems. Now in 2026, we need to “space” for every little tribe…