Cato Unbound: Internet Liberation: Alive or Dead

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The January issue of Cato Unbound launches Monday. Jaron Lanier’s lead essay is a trip. Here’s the scoop:

As the Internet burgeoned and blossomed through the early to mid-nineties, visionary manifestos about its transformative social, political, and economic potential clogged VAX accounts the world over. After a solid decade of intense commercial development, much go-go nineties prophesying now seems a triumph of Utopian hope over hard reality. Does hope of Internet liberation yet remain? Or has the bright promise of the Internet been dimmed by corporate influence and government regulation? Are ideas like virtual citizenship beyond the nation-state, untraceable electronic currency, and the consciousness expanding powers of radical interconnectivity defunct? Is there untapped revolutionary power waiting to be unleashed?

Virtual reality visionary Jaron Lanier will kick off the discussion with a mind-bending lead essay. Commentators John Perry Barlow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, open source software guru Eric S. Raymond, Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, and Yale computer scientist David Gelernter will grapple with Lanier’s vision, and offer their own wisdom on what the Internet still has to offer for the future of freedom.

Should be fun! Tell your friends.

8 thoughts on “Cato Unbound: Internet Liberation: Alive or Dead”

  1. My theory is:

    The powers that be easily kept the masses in the dark through limited literacy and corporate control of info.

    Now that the internet has broken that control…the powers that be seek control through confusion. Hard to find the nuggets of truth among all the b.s. on the net.

  2. My theory is:

    The powers that be easily kept the masses in the dark through limited literacy and corporate control of info.

    Now that the internet has broken that control…the powers that be seek control through confusion. Hard to find the nuggets of truth among all the b.s. on the net.

  3. I have no idea what these guys are talking about. If you do, can you act as translator? I doubt I am alone, either.

  4. I have no idea what these guys are talking about. If you do, can you act as translator? I doubt I am alone, either.