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Digital Platforms: Responsibilities Then and Now (Fall 2019)
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“A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” by John Perry Barlow, Electronic Frontier Foundation (1996).

John Bowers

This manifesto articulates a bold vision of decentralized internet sovereignty which stands in stark defiance of the global world order and its “weary giants of flesh and steel.” He presents the internet as ideally unregulated and even unregulatable. Barlow captures the techno-utopian spirit held dear by many of the internet’s framers and visionaries. Do Barlow’s words still ring true today? Is control over the internet still meaningfully decentralized?
 

“A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” by John Perry Barlow, Electronic Frontier Foundation (1996).

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