74

Declaration of Independence

Author: John Perry Barlow
Year: 1998 Edit Add
Book: Remediation

Benjamin's argument that technologies of mechanical reproduction are politically enabling has its counterpart today in the claim by some enthusiasts that new media, particularly the Internet, will bring about a new kind of democracy. For example, according to Howard Rheingold (1994), "The political significance of [computer- mediated communication] lies in its capacity to challenge the existing political hierarchy's monopoly on powerful communications media, and perhaps thus revitalize citizen-based democracy" (14). In the most extreme version of this argument, we find John Perry Barlow proclaiming in his "Declaration of Independence" (http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/John.Perry.Barlow/barlow_O296.declaration April 17, 1998) that cyberspace is a new political territory in which the laws of industrial capitalism no longer apply and that a new political order lies on (or perhaps just beyond) our monitors.


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File type: video
Info: Recording of John Perry Barlow reading his "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" produced by Q Department for Department of Records. Video by IDEALOGUE
Original Url: https://vimeo.com/111576518
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