Software Development: Cyber rights

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<h1 style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:1.0in'>Cyberspace and the American
Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age</h1>

Release 1.2, August 22, 1994 

This statement represents the
cumulative wisdom and innovation of many dozens of people. It is based
primarily on the thoughts of four "co-authors": Ms. Esther Dyson; Mr.
George Gilder; Dr. George Keyworth; and Dr. Alvin Toffler. This release 1.2 has
the final "imprimatur" of no one. In the spirit of the age: It is
copyrighted solely for the purpose of preventing someone else from doing so. If
you have it, you can use it any way you want. However, major passages are from
works copyrighted individually by the authors, used here by permission; these
will be duly acknowledged in release 2.0. It is a living document. Release 2.0
will be released in October 1994. We hope you'll use it is to tell us how to
make it better. Do so by:

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>Sending E-Mail to <a href="mailto:mail@pff.org">MAIL@PFF.ORG</a>

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>Faxing 202/484-9326 or calling 202/484-2312

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>Sending POM (plain old mail) to 1301 K Street Suite 650
West, Washington, DC 20005

(The Progress & Freedom Foundation is a
not-for-profit research and educational organization dedicated to creating a
positive vision of the future founded in the historic principles of the
American idea.)

<h2 style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:1.0in'>Preamble</h2>

The central event of the 20th century is the overthrow
of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth -- in
the form of physical resources -- has been losing value and significance. The
powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.

In a First Wave economy, land
and farm labor are the main "factors of production." In a Second Wave
economy, the land remains valuable while the "labor" becomes
massified around machines and larger industries. In a Third Wave economy, the
central resource -- a single word broadly encompassing data, information,
images, symbols, culture, ideology, and values -- is actionable
knowledge.

The industrial age is not fully
over. In fact, classic Second Wave sectors (oil, steel, auto-production) have
learned how to benefit from Third Wave technological breakthroughs -- just as
the First Wave's agricultural productivity benefited exponentially from the
Second Wave's farm-mechanization.

But the Third Wave, and the Knowledge
Age it has opened, will not deliver on its potential unless it adds social
and political dominance to its accelerating technological and economic strength.
This means repealing Second Wave laws and retiring Second Wave attitudes. It
also gives to leaders of the advanced democracies a special responsibility --
to facilitate, hasten, and explain the transition.

As humankind explores this new
"electronic frontier" of knowledge, it must confront again the most
profound questions of how to organize itself for the common good. The meaning
of freedom, structures of self-government, definition of property, nature of
competition, conditions for cooperation, sense of community and nature of
progress will each be redefined for the Knowledge Age -- just as they were
redefined for a new age of industry some 250 years ago.

What our 20th-century countrymen
came to think of as the "American dream," and what resonant thinkers
referred to as "the promise of American life" or "the American
Idea," emerged from the turmoil of 19th-century industrialization. Now
it's our turn: The knowledge revolution, and the Third Wave of historical
change it powers, summon us to renew the dream and enhance the promise.

<h2 style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:1.0in'>The Nature of Cyberspace</h2>

The Internet -- the huge (2.2 million computers),
global (135 countries), rapidly growing (10-15% a month) network that has
captured the American imagination -- is only a tiny part of cyberspace. So just
what is cyberspace?

More ecosystem than machine,
cyberspace is a bioelectronic environment that is literally universal: It
exists everywhere there are telephone wires, coaxial cables, fiber-optic lines
or electromagnetic waves.

This environment is
"inhabited" by knowledge, including incorrect ideas, existing in
electronic form. It is connected to the physical environment by portals which
allow people to see what's inside, to put knowledge in, to alter it, and to
take knowledge out. Some of these portals are one-way (e.g. television
receivers and television transmitters); others are two-way (e.g. telephones,
computer modems).

Most of the knowledge in
cyberspace lives the most temporary (or so we think) existence: Your voice, on
a telephone wire or microwave, travels through space at the speed of light,
reaches the ear of your listener, and is gone forever.

But people are increasingly
building cyberspatial "warehouses" of data, knowledge, information
and misinformation in digital form, the ones and zeros of binary
computer code. The storehouses themselves display a physical form (discs,
tapes, CD-ROMs) -- but what they contain is accessible only to those with the
right kind of portal and the right kind of key.

The key is software, a special form
of electronic knowledge that allows people to navigate through the cyberspace
environment and make its contents understandable to the human senses in the
form of written language, pictures and sound.

People are adding to cyberspace
-- creating it, defining it, expanding it -- at a rate that is already
explosive and getting faster. Faster computers, cheaper means of electronic
storage, improved software and more capable communications channels
(satellites, fiber-optic lines) -- each of these factors independently add to
cyberspace. But the real explosion comes from the combination of all of them,
working together in ways we still do not understand.

The bioelectronic frontier
is an appropriate metaphor for what is happening in cyberspace, calling to mind
as it does the spirit of invention and discovery that led ancient mariners to
explore the world, generations of pioneers to tame the American continent and,
more recently, to man's first exploration of outer space.

But the exploration of
cyberspace brings both greater opportunity, and in some ways more difficult
challenges, than any previous human adventure.

Cyberspace is the land of
knowledge, and the exploration of that land can be a civilization's truest,
highest calling. The opportunity is now before us to empower every person to
pursue that calling in his or her own way.

The challenge is as daunting as
the opportunity is great. The Third Wave has profound implications for the
nature and meaning of property, of the marketplace, of community and of individual
freedom. As it emerges, it shapes new codes of behavior that move each organism
and institution -- family, neighborhood, church group, company, government,
nation -- inexorably beyond standardization and centralization, as well as
beyond the materialist's obsession with energy, money and control.

Turning the economics of
mass-production inside out, new information technologies are driving the
financial costs of diversity -- both product and personal -- down toward zero,
"demassifying" our institutions and our culture. Accelerating
demassification creates the potential for vastly increased human freedom.

It also spells the death of the
central institutional paradigm of modern life, the bureaucratic organization.
(Governments, including the American government, are the last great redoubt of
bureaucratic power on the face of the planet, and for them the coming change
will be profound and probably traumatic.)

In this context, the one
metaphor that is perhaps least helpful in thinking about cyberspace is -- unhappily
-- the one that has gained the most currency: The Information Superhighway. Can
you imagine a phrase less descriptive of the nature of cyberspace, or more
misleading in thinking about its implications? Consider the following set of
polarities:

<pre style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:
1.0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt'><![if !supportEmptyParas]> <![endif]><o:p></o:p></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Information Superhighway     /     Cyberspace</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'><![if !supportEmptyParas]> <![endif]><o:p></o:p></pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Limited Matter               /     Unlimited Knowledge</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Centralized                  /     Decentralized</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Moving on a grid             /     Moving in space</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Government ownership         /     A vast array of ownerships</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Bureaucracy                  /     Empowerment</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Efficient but not hospitable /     Hospitable if you customize it</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Withstand the elements       /     Flow, float and fine-tune</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Unions and contractors       /     Associations and volunteers</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Liberation from First Wave   /     Liberation from Second Wave</pre><pre
style='margin-top:0in;margin-right:.5in;margin-bottom:0in;margin-left:1.0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt'>Culmination of Second Wave   /     Riding the Third Wave</pre>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>The
highway analogy is all wrong," explained Peter Huber in Forbes this
spring, "for reasons rooted in basic economics. Solid things obey
immutable laws of conservation -- what goes south on the highway must go back
north, or you end up with a mountain of cars in Miami. By the same token,
production and consumption must balance. The average Joe can consume only as
much wheat as the average Jane can grow. Information is completely different.
It can be replicated at almost no cost -- so every individual can (in theory)
consume society's entire output. Rich and poor alike, we all run information
deficits. We all take in more than we put out." 

<h2 style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>The
Nature and Ownership of Property</h2>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>Clear
and enforceable property rights are essential for markets to work. Defining
them is a central function of government. Most of us have "known"
that for a long time. But to create the new cyberspace environment is to create
new property -- that is, new means of creating goods (including ideas)
that serve people.

The
property that makes up cyberspace comes in several forms: Wires, coaxial cable,
computers and other "hardware"; the electromagnetic spectrum; and
"intellectual property" -- the knowledge that dwells in and defines
cyberspace.

In
each of these areas, two questions that must be answered. First, what does
"ownership" mean? What is the nature of the property itself,
and what does it mean to own it? Second, once we understand what ownership
means, who is the owner? At the level of first principles, should
ownership be public (i.e. government) or private (i.e. individuals)?

The
answers to these two questions will set the basic terms upon which America and
the world will enter the Third Wave. For the most part, however, these
questions are not yet even being asked. Instead, at least in America,
governments are attempting to take Second Wave concepts of property and
ownership and apply them to the Third Wave. Or they are ignoring the problem
altogether.

For
example, a great deal of attention has been focused recently on the nature of
"intellectual property" -- i.e. the fact that knowledge is what
economists call a "public good," and thus requires special treatment
in the form of copyright and patent protection.

Major
changes in U.S. copyright and patent law during the past two decades have
broadened these protections to incorporate "electronic property." In
essence, these reforms have attempted to take a body of law that originated in
the 15th century, with Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, and apply
it to the electronically stored and transmitted knowledge of the Third Wave.

A
more sophisticated approach starts with recognizing how the Third Wave has
fundamentally altered the nature of knowledge as a "good," and that
the operative effect is not technology per se (the shift from printed books to
electronic storage and retrieval systems), but rather the shift from a
mass-production, mass-media, mass-culture civilization to a demassified
civilization.

The
big change, in other words, is the demassification of actionable knowledge.

The
dominant form of new knowledge in the Third Wave is perishable, transient, customized
knowledge: The right information, combined with the right software and
presentation, at precisely the right time. Unlike the mass knowledge of the
Second Wave -- "public good" knowledge that was useful to everyone
because most people's information needs were standardized -- Third Wave customized
knowledge is by nature a private good.

If
this analysis is correct, copyright and patent protection of knowledge (or at
least many forms of it) may no longer be unnecessary. In fact, the marketplace
may already be creating vehicles to compensate creators of customized knowledge
outside the cumbersome copyright/patent process, as suggested last year by John
Perry Barlow:

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.5in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>"One
existing model for the future conveyance of intellectual property is real-time
performance, a medium currently used only in theater, music, lectures, stand-up
comedy and pedagogy. I believe the concept of performance will expand to
include most of the information economy, from multi-casted soap operas to stock
analysis. In these instances, commercial exchange will be more like ticket
sales to a continuous show than the purchase of discrete bundles of that which
is being shown. The other model, of course, is service. The entire professional
class -- doctors, lawyers, consultants, architects, etc. -- are already being
paid directly for their intellectual property. Who needs copyright when you're
on a retainer?" 

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>Copyright,
patent and intellectual property represent only a few of the "rights"
issues now at hand. Here are some of the others:

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>Ownership of the electromagnetic spectrum,
traditionally considered to be "public property," is now being
"auctioned" by the Federal Communications Commission to private
companies. Or is it? Is the very limited "bundle of rights" sold in
those auctions really property, or more in the nature of a use permit -- the
right to use a part of the spectrum for a limited time, for limited purposes?
In either case, are the rights being auctioned defined in a way that makes
technological sense?

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>Ownership over the infrastructure of wires, coaxial
cable and fiber-optic lines that are such prominent features in the geography
of cyberspace is today much less clear than might be imagined. Regulation,
especially price regulation, of this property can be tantamount to
confiscation, as America's cable operators recently learned when the Federal
government imposed price limits on them and effectively confiscated an
estimated $___ billion of their net worth. (Whatever one's stance on the FCC's
decision and the law behind it, there is no disagreeing with the proposition
that one's ownership of a good is less meaningful when the government can step
in, at will, and dramatically reduce its value.)

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>The nature of capital in the Third Wave -- tangible
capital as well as intangible -- is to depreciate in real value much faster
than industrial-age capital -- driven, if nothing else, by Moore's Law, which
states that the processing power of the microchip doubles at least every 18 months.
Yet accounting and tax regulations still require property to be depreciated
over periods as long as 30 years. The result is a heavy bias in favor of
"heavy industry" and against nimble, fast-moving baby businesses.

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>Who
will define the nature of cyberspace property rights, and how? How can we
strike a balance between interoperable open systems and protection of property?

<h2 style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>The
Nature Of The Marketplace</h2>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>Inexpensive
knowledge destroys economies-of-scale. Customized knowledge permits "just
in time" production for an ever rising number of goods. Technological
progress creates new means of serving old markets, turning one-time monopolies
into competitive battlegrounds.

These
phenomena are altering the nature of the marketplace, not just for information
technology but for all goods and materials, shipping and services. In
cyberspace itself, market after market is being transformed by technological
progress from a "natural monopoly" to one in which competition is the
rule. Three recent examples:

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>The market for "mail" has been made
competitive by the development of fax machines and overnight delivery -- even
though the "private express statutes" that technically grant the U.S.
Postal Service a monopoly over mail delivery remain in place.

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>During the past 20 years, the market for television has
been transformed from one in which there were at most a few broadcast TV
stations to one in which consumers can choose among broadcast, cable and
satellite services.

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>The market for local telephone services, until recently
a monopoly based on twisted-pair copper cables, is rapidly being made
competitive by the advent of wireless service and the entry of cable television
into voice communication. In England, Mexico, New Zealand and a host of
developing countries, government restrictions preventing such competition have
already been removed and consumers actually have the freedom to choose.

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>The
advent of new technology and new products creates the potential for dynamic
competition -- competition between and among technologies and industries,
each seeking to find the best way of serving customers' needs. Dynamic
competition is different from static competition, in which many providers
compete to sell essentially similar products at the lowest price.

Static
competition is good, because it forces costs and prices to the lowest levels
possible for a given product. Dynamic competition is better, because it allows
competing technologies and new products to challenge the old ones and, if they
really are better, to replace them. Static competition might lead to faster and
stronger horses. Dynamic competition gives us the automobile.

Such
dynamic competition -- the essence of what Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter
called "creative destruction" -- creates winners and losers on a
massive scale. New technologies can render instantly obsolete billions of
dollars of embedded infrastructure, accumulated over decades. The
transformation of the U.S. computer industry since 1980 is a case in point.

In
1980, everyone knew who led in computer technology. Apart from the minicomputer
boom, mainframe computers were the market, and America's dominance was
largely based upon the position of a dominant vendor -- IBM, with over 50%
world market-share.

Then
the personal-computing industry exploded, leaving older-style
big-business-focused computing with a stagnant, piece of a burgeoning total
market. As IBM lost market-share, many people became convinced that America had
lost the ability to compete. By the mid-1980s, such alarmism had reached from
Washington all the way into the heart of Silicon Valley.

But
the real story was the renaissance of American business and technological
leadership. In the transition from mainframes to PCs, a vast new market was
created. This market was characterized by dynamic competition consisting of
easy access and low barriers to entry. Start-ups by the dozens took on the
larger established companies -- and won.

After
a decade of angst, the surprising outcome is that America is not only
competitive internationally, but, by any measurable standard, America dominates
the growth sectors in world economics -- telecommunications, microelectronics,
computer networking (or "connected computing") and software systems
and applications.

The
reason for America's victory in the computer wars of the 1980s is that dynamic
competition was allowed to occur, in an area so breakneck and pell-mell that
government would've had a hard time controlling it _even had it been paying
attention_. The challenge for policy in the 1990s is to permit, even encourage,
dynamic competition in every aspect of the cyberspace marketplace.

<h2 style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>The
Nature of Freedom</h2>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>Overseas
friends of America sometimes point out that the U.S. Constitution is unique --
because it states explicitly that power resides with the people, who delegate
it to the government, rather than the other way around.

This
idea -- central to our free society -- was the result of more than 150 years of
intellectual and political ferment, from the Mayflower Compact to the U.S.
Constitution, as explorers struggled to establish the terms under which they
would tame a new frontier.

And
as America continued to explore new frontiers -- from the Northwest Territory
to the Oklahoma land-rush -- it consistently returned to this fundamental
principle of rights, reaffirming, time after time, that power resides with the
people.

Cyberspace
is the latest American frontier. As this and other societies make ever deeper
forays into it, the proposition that ownership of this frontier resides first with
the people is central to achieving its true potential.

To
some people, that statement will seem melodramatic. America, after all, remains
a land of individual freedom, and this freedom clearly extends to cyberspace.
How else to explain the uniquely American phenomenon of the hacker, who ignored
every social pressure and violated every rule to develop a set of skills
through an early and intense exposure to low-cost, ubiquitous computing.

Those
skills eventually made him or her highly marketable, whether in developing
applications-software or implementing networks. The hacker became a technician,
an inventor and, in case after case, a creator of new wealth in the form of the
baby businesses that have given America the lead in cyberspatial exploration
and settlement.

It
is hard to imagine hackers surviving, let alone thriving, in the more
formalized and regulated democracies of Europe and Japan. In America, they've
become vital for economic growth and trade leadership. Why? Because Americans
still celebrate individuality over conformity, reward achievement over
consensus and militantly protect the right to be different.

But
the need to affirm the basic principles of freedom is real. Such an affirmation
is needed in part because we are entering new territory, where there are as yet
no rules -- just as there were no rules on the American continent in 1620, or
in the Northwest Territory in 1787.

Centuries
later, an affirmation of freedom -- by this document and similar efforts -- is
needed for a second reason: We are at the end of a century dominated by the
mass institutions of the industrial age. The industrial age encouraged conformity
and relied on standardization. And the institutions of the day --
corporate and government bureaucracies, huge civilian and military
administrations, schools of all types -- reflected these priorities. Individual
liberty suffered -- sometimes only a little, sometimes a lot: 

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>In a Second Wave world, it might make sense for
government to insist on the right to peer into every computer by requiring that
each contain a special "clipper chip."

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>In a Second Wave world, it might make sense for
government to assume ownership over the broadcast spectrum and demand massive
payments from citizens for the right to use it.

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>In a Second Wave world, it might make sense for
government to prohibit entrepreneurs from entering new markets and providing
new services.

<![if !supportLists]>o       
<![endif]>And, in a Second Wave world, dominated by a few
old-fashioned, one-way media "networks," it might even make sense for
government to influence which political viewpoints would be carried over the
airwaves.

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>All
of these interventions might have made sense in a Second Wave world, where
standardization dominated and where it was assumed that the scarcity of
knowledge (plus a scarcity of telecommunications capacity) made bureaucracies
and other elites better able to make decisions than the average person.

But,
whether they made sense before or not, these and literally thousands of other
infringements on individual rights now taken for granted make no sense at all
in the Third Wave.

For
a century, those who lean ideologically in favor of freedom have found themselves
at war not only with their ideological opponents, but with a time in history
when the value of conformity was at its peak. However desirable as an ideal,
individual freedom often seemed impractical. The mass institutions of the
Second Wave required us to give up freedom in order for the system to
"work."

The
coming of the Third Wave turns that equation inside-out. The complexity of
Third Wave society is too great for any centrally planned bureaucracy to
manage. Demassification, customization, individuality, freedom -- these are the
keys to success for Third Wave civilization.

<h2 style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>The
Essence of Community</h2>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>If
the transition to the Third Wave is so positive, why are we experiencing so
much anxiety? Why are the statistics of social decay at or near all-time highs?
Why does cyberspatial "rapture" strike millions of prosperous
Westerners as lifestyle rupture? Why do the principles that have held us
together as a nation seem no longer sufficient -- or even wrong?

The
incoherence of political life is mirrored in disintegrating personalities.
Whether 100% covered by health plans or not, psychotherapists and gurus do a
land-office business, as people wander aimlessly amid competing therapies.
People slip into cults and covens or, alternatively, into a pathological privatism,
convinced that reality is absurd, insane or meaningless. "If things are so
good," Forbes magazine asked recently, "why do we feel so bad?"

In
part, this is why: Because we constitute the final generation of an old
civilization and, at the very same time, the first generation of a new one.
Much of our personal confusion and social disorientation is traceable to
conflict within us and within our political institutions -- between the
dying Second Wave civilization and the emergent Third Wave civilization
thundering in to take its place.

Second
Wave ideologues routinely lament the breakup of mass society. Rather than
seeing this enriched diversity as an opportunity for human development, they
attach it as "fragmentation" and "balkanization." But to
reconstitute democracy in Third Wave terms, we need to jettison the frightening
but false assumption that more diversity automatically brings more tension and
conflict in society.

Indeed,
the exact reverse can be true: If 100 people all desperately want the same brass
ring, they may be forced to fight for it. On the other hand, if each of the 100
has a different objective, it is far more rewarding for them to trade,
cooperate, and form symbiotic relationships. Given appropriate social
arrangements, diversity can make for a secure and stable civilization.

No
one knows what the Third Wave communities of the future will look like, or
where "demassification" will ultimately lead. It is clear, however,
that cyberspace will play an important role knitting together in the diverse
communities of tomorrow, facilitating the creation of "electronic
neighborhoods" bound together not by geography but by shared interests.

Socially,
putting advanced computing power in the hands of entire populations will
alleviate pressure on highways, reduce air pollution, allow people to live
further away from crowded or dangerous urban areas, and expand family time.

The
late Phil Salin (in Release 1.0 11/25/91) offered this perspective: "[B]y
2000, multiple cyberspaces will have emerged, diverse and increasingly rich.
Contrary to naive views, these cyberspaces will not all be the same, and they
will not all be open to the general public. The global network is a connected
'platform' for a collection of diverse communities, but only a loose, heterogeneous
community itself. Just as access to homes, offices, churches and department
stores is controlled by their owners or managers, most virtual locations will
exist as distinct places of private property."

"But
unlike the private property of today," Salin continued, "the
potential variations on design and prevailing customs will explode, because
many variations can be implemented cheaply in software. And the 'externalities'
associated with variations can drop; what happens in one cyberspace can be kept
from affecting other cyberspaces."

"Cyberspaces"
is a wonderful pluralistic word to open more minds to the Third Wave's
civilizing potential. Rather than being a centrifugal force helping to tear
society apart, cyberspace can be one of the main forms of glue holding together
an increasingly free and diverse society.

<h2 style='margin-right:.5in;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>The
Role of Government</h2>

<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-right:.5in;mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;margin-left:1.0in;tab-stops:45.8pt 91.6pt 137.4pt 183.2pt 229.0pt 274.8pt 320.6pt 366.4pt 412.2pt 458.0pt 503.8pt 549.6pt 595.4pt 641.2pt 687.0pt 732.8pt'>The
current Administration has identified the right goal: Reinventing government
for the 21st Century. To accomplish that goal is another matter, and for
reasons explained in the next and final section, it is not likely to be fully
accomplished in the immediate future. This said, it is essential that we
understand what it really means to create a Third Wave government and begin the
process of transformation.

Eventually,
the Third Wave will affect virtually everything government does. The most
pressing need, however, is to revamp the policies and programs that are slowing
the creation of cyberspace. Second Wave programs for Second Wave industries --
the status quo for the status quo -- will do littl 

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Saturday, 22 September 2012

Cyber rights

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