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Libertarian Politics from the Salons of the Digerati
A Review of Esther Dyson’s Release 2.0: A Design
for Living in the Digital Age
The greatest honor that a visitor to eighteenth-century
France could receive was an invitation to dinner at Madame Marie-Therese
Geoffrin’s. Poets, philosophers, musicians, artists, and statesmen—the
cultural elite of Europe, England, and the United States—vied to attend
upon Mme. Geoffrin, host of the most famous of the French salons. Pulling
off these weekly dinners required of Mme. Geoffrin a remarkable combination
of social prestige, money, wit, grace, diplomacy, and uncommon sense. Today,
the closest person we have to the greatest of the eighteenth-century salonnieres
is Esther Dyson. A venture capitalist specializing in high-technology
companies, editor of the monthly newsletter Release 1.0, board member
of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and organizer of forums attended
by the most notable of the digerati, from Mitch Kapor (founder of Lotus
Development Corporation) to Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft), Dyson combines
the qualities of Mme. Geoffrin with a healthy dose of unabashed free-market
libertarianism.
The jacket of Ms. Dyson’s book, Release 2.0: A Design for Living
in the Digital Age, sports a picture of the author in a pose doubtless
meant to remind one of the classic bust of Nefertiti. The comparison is
apt. The bust of Nefertiti suggests wisdom and mystery. Reading Dyson,
one finds wisdom, indeed, about the implications of our technologies. One
also gets the distinct impression that what she has to say is based on
a lot more than she’s telling us. After all, Dyson’s living, both as a
venture capitalist and as pundit, is made on the basis of knowing who’s
doing what behind the scenes in high tech. However, there is one
sense in which the comparison with Nefertiti fails utterly. Akhenaton’s
empress was, well, imperious, and Dyson is anything but. Her book overflows
with practical good humor and good will. It serves as a welcome antidote
to the diatribes against new media that one finds in the mainstream press
and in the speeches of politicians.
The Threat of the Net
The mainstream media, fueled by a need
to attract readers with lurid stories and naturally suspicious of a medium
that is stealing away customers, view the Internet with deep distrust. Never
mind that the Internet has become the primary research medium of the nation’s
middle-class students and a carrier of as many birthday greetings and letters
to Mom as the U.S. Postal Service. Never mind that it has created a renaissance
for small business. Never mind that it is getting people out from in front
of the boob tube, bringing the world closer together, and doing more for
communication among artists, business people, scientists, students, and
hobbyists than any other innovation since moveable type. To read U.S. newspapers
or to watch evening news programs, one would think that the Internet was
especially conceived as a medium for con artists, sexual predators, terrorists,
drug smugglers, foreign spies, neo-Nazis, and other n’er-do-wells.
Of course, the negative press coverage encourages people who don’t really
have any experience of the Net to think that the government ought to do
something. In the past few years, Congress
has inundated us with new laws supposedly designed to protect us from the
Net, the most infamous of which, the Communications Decency Act, was overturned
by the Supreme Court in the summer of 1997. Dyson is at her best when explaining
the issues involved in such ill-conceived legislation. Dyson speaks Russian
and has a love-hate relationship with the country. She
has seen first-hand how centralized control left Russia with “a huge, dysfunctional
economy where people strike for back wages, not for pay hikes” (22). As
a result, she has an understandable distaste for attempts to regulate the
online world. Far from being frightening to Dyson, the Net, in all its
anarchy, seems to her the provide some positive lessons about governance.
As she points out,
It’s common wisdom that the primacy of the central-authority nation-state
is on the decline for a variety of reasons apart from the Net—the growth
of multinational business, air travel, and telecommunications in general,
and the complex interaction of all these factors. This doesn’t mean that
nation-states will disappear, but that they are losing power to other forces,
to multinational businesses and big media, as well as to small businesses
that operate worldwide over the Net. . . . In
general, power is shifting away from nation-states to commercial entities,
following a pattern reminiscent of what happened in the Middle Ages, when
feudal power gave way to commercial organizations (guilds of craftsmen
and merchants and banks) on the one hand, and to nation-states on the other.
But this time around, power is not only shifting but also diffusing . .
. to small businesses, small media, and to small nongovernment organizations.”
(105)
A recurring
theme in Dyson’s book is that the Net empowers individuals. It allows them
to form communities. It allows them to compete effectively against large
corporations. It allows them to express themselves, whatever they have
to say, and that expression is judged freely. If people want to hear the
message, they will come to it, and a community will form. Dyson points
out that as communities grow on the Net, the discover the need to create
methods of governance for themselves. In one Net community, anonymity will
be acceptable. In another it will not. But
these Net governments are very different from what Dyson calls “terrestrial
governments”:
While terrestrial governments are natural monopolies in their own territories,
cyberspace governments compete. Terrestrial governments get overthrown
when things get too bad; cyberspace governments simply lose citizens, much
as a business loses customers. Former members may even go into competition
with their old communities. The terrestrial government game is all-or-nothing
(despite the possibility of a loyal opposition), whereas net governments
can coexist. “Citizenship” is voluntary.
A net-based government can operate only by consent of the governed.
Any net government must therefore provide its citizens with real benefits
if it wants them to stick around. (107-109)
Dyson’s book contains fascinating chapters on content control, privacy,
and security, all of which reflect her basically libertarian, free-market
philosophy. On the issue of content control, Dyson explains how totalitarian
governments fear the Net because it encourages open, unfettered communication.
In her view, the Net may be the greatest of all weapons for spread of democratic
ideals. Many people, Dyson included, are troubled by the proliferation
of smut, drug-related chat, and other material on the Net that is harmful
to children. However, Dyson points out
that on their own, Net communities are developing and employing means to
address the problem, without government intervention. Employers can purchase
software that will block non-work-related sites and that can even make
exceptions during coffee breaks and lunch hours. People of a conservative
bent can purchase and use CYBERsitter, which not blocks not only porn but
also words and phrases associated with liberal concepts and causes, such
as gay rights and safe sex. People with a liberal bent can purchase Cyber
Patrol and block the porn sites without blocking sites related to sex education.
Independent organizations exist that provide databases of sites acceptable
for people of various religious persuasions and age groups. New
ratings systems and organizations, such as the W3 Consortium’s Platform
for Internet Content Selection (PICS) and the Recreational Software Advisory
Council for Internet (RSACi) offer the means for content providers to rate
themselves (something that the smut merchants want to be able to do to
avoid scrapes with the law). If content is clearly labeled, and if parents
can choose which of a number of filters to buy or ratings organizations
to subscribe to, then the purpose of protecting children is served by a
market process, without government censorship. In the words of Justice
John Paul Stevens, whose decision in the CDA case is cited by Dyson, “is
more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage
it” (167). Likewise,
the arena of privacy, Dyson argues that “We don’t need new government regulation
that stops the free flow of information voluntarily given, outlaws cookies,
and makes customization difficult (except perhaps where children and coercion
are concerned)” (201). Instead, Dyson explains, we can make use of systems
such as TRUSTe, a disclosure and validation system that lets users control
information given out about themselves, and the Platform for Privacy Preferences,
which allows users to “express and negotiate privacy preferences” (201).
With regard to encryption, and the government’s attempt to keep strong
encryption algorithms out of widespread use, in part to ensure the government’s
ability to spy on electronic communications for law-enforcement purposes,
Dyson is adamant:
If banning encryption were effective in fighting
crime (which it won’t be), it would be worth considering. But in fact,
just like locks in cars, widespread use of encryption technology would
help prevent crime, by giving individuals, businesses, and governments
as well as criminals the means to protect themselves. To transform a much-used
saying: “If we outlaw encryption, then only outlaws will use encryption.”
. . .
In an open society, there are always some criminals who go unpunished
by the state. In a totalitarian society, the criminals are the state. Having
spent considerable time in Russia, I’m more concerned with protecting the
weak against the strong than with empowering governments; both governments
and individuals can be good or bad, but governments almost always have
more power. (267)
Dyson might well be called a libertarian. But perhaps a better characterization
is that she is simply someone who cares about liberty. She sees the Net
as fostering communities and providing unparalleled opportunities for individual
self-realization and growth, from the person who starts an online chatroom
about gardening to the one who uses the Net to sell harp strings to other
harpists around the globe. She understands that we need laws. But the laws
that already apply to extortionists, traffickers in child pornography,
and so on, are sufficient. An avalanche of new Internet-related legislation
would simply stifle the development of a medium that shows every indication
of delivering on the promise on giving everyone a shot at liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.
There’s much more to Dyson’s book than the political argument. The book
is also full of fascinating observations about the effects of the Internet
on our personal lives. In fact, Dyson’s book might be seen as a long proof
of the slogan that the personal is the political and the political is the
personal. The Internet allows people to pursue their inclinations, good
and bad, and it depends, at present, on a powerful force to police itself,
the force of community. Community is what the Internet is all about. If
Esther Dyson’s work is an example of the kind of thinking that goes on
in the salons of the digerati, we can be grateful that those high-tech
communities, despite their exclusivity, exist.
Reference
Dyson, Esther. Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age.
New York: Broadway, 1997.
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