Democracy In Cyberia

In the fourth chapter of his book, Prometheus Wired, Darin Barney advances a bold thesis. He observes that students of the relationship between Information Technology and politics miss the transformational effects of the Internet on political institutions. What is argued in the literature on politics, law, and communications technology is that the global character of the Internet defies national attempts to regulate transactions and other activities. The solution advanced most often is an international agency or world confederation with a mandate to control Internet activities and products like child pornography, hate speech, or gambling. Barney asserts, to the contrary, that such images of the relations between government and networks miss the point: The Internet is itself the new form of political authority in the world. There has been a transfer of power, heretofore unnoticed, and any thought that national sovereignties can combine to regulate cyberspace is hopelessly anachronistic and illusory.

This provocative assertion is not the thesis that Barney pursues ultimately. Indeed, his main claim in Prometheus Wired is that the radical promises of the Internet — the idea that all old knowledge and political categories like national sovereignty, pluralism, and citizenship have been rendered otiose — are inflated, empty, and hide the truth that traditional political theory has much to offer an analysis of this technology and its social consequences. Underlying this explicit thesis is the question I wish to explore in this essay: How different is cyberspace from “real-time” space? That is, should cyberspace be perceived as entailing an ontological, epistemological, and political sea change? Or should it be seen in a continuum with our traditional notions of a physical and political world? There are differences between real time and cyberspace, to be sure; but do these differences add up to a dividable world?

The projections of those technophiles who see the Internet as a liberation from all strictures imposed by the frictional world are part of a larger culture of metaphysical escapism that is as understandable as it is untenable. Whether we are discussing Plato’s form world or the various attempts by mathematicians and logicians to fashion a symbolic language that is detached from the imprecision and prejudices of natural languages, escapism has been a consistent theme across human cultures.1 Cyberspace does afford users a variety of “Ring of Gyges”-type escapes from the world of real time. I can, for example, participate in a variety of role-playing fantasy games where my avatar’s character — an alter ego of my own design — can accumulate all sorts of prestige, weapons, and powers. If I wish, I can leave my gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality, physical infirmities, social status, and reticence at the threshold of cyberspace and thrill in expressing myself as a completely different identity. Through chat rooms I can become a member of different communities, confess intimate secrets and desires to anonymous “friends,” have cybersex, or perpetrate virtual acts of violence.

But just how different are these activities from the real time world? Could I not commit my imaginative flights from my true life to paper and write stories and novels? Would a relationship with a pen pal be as fulfilling as a chatroom conversation? Is cybersex anything more than mutual masturbation (at this point in the technology)? We move between these realms with relative ease. And there are areas of imbrication. For instance, I have a student who made almost twenty thousand dollars last year by playing fantasy games, acquiring weapons and powers in these games, and then selling these virtual properties on e-Bay. Real cash for a fantasy wizard’s wand! Viewed differently, all this student has done is trade time — the time it takes him to find these desirable game tools — for money paid by people who have the means and enjoy the role-playing, but do not have...