A Manifesto for Cyberspace

From: Brad Neuberg <neuberg@rosco.vt.com>
Date: 13 Jun 1995 00:38:44 GMT
Organization: Valley Tech Corporation

The Internet is not a medium of communication; it is a medium of 
simulation.  You see, what makes the internet so special is it's close 
ties to the computer, a machine of simulation.  When we use the internet 
for communication, it is because we are SIMULATING a telephone, or a 
bulletin board, or a radio.  When we interact with a HotJava educational 
site, we are running a simulation.

The internet is becomming filled with a horde of concurrent programs 
simulating our world.  It's simulating our cash, our means of 
communication, our entertainment systems, our communities, and our 
countries.

The internet is even beginning to simulate reality, through virtual 
reality.  Before you know it, all the concurrent simulations will come 
together seamlessly to create a virtual world.

We will soon approach the time when we will live in two worlds, two 
countries in fact!  For me, it will be the united states and some online 
communities.

And where do these communities exist?  The underlying hardware for them 
may be massively distributed across twenty countries!  Where do they 
exist?  Under whose jurisdiction do they lye?

NONE OF THE PHYSICAL COUNTRIES SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO JURISDICT THIS 
COMMUNITIES AFFAIRS!  As soon as we throw virtual reality into the mix, 
this community becomes a country of it's own.  There may be hundreds of 
countries throughout cyberspace, a country of physicists, a country of 
poets, a country of children, a country of people who just love 
flamewars.

There will come a day when our physical countries will just have to 
accept that we hold dual citizenship.

A specter, a ghost of information, is haunting the physical world -- the 
specter of cyberspace.  All the powers of the old world have entered into 
a holy alliance to hunt down and exorcise this specter: Industrialists 
and socialists, democrats and republicans, the far right and the far 
left.

Peace,
  Brad Neuberg
  neuberg@rosco.vt.com