Online Class Activity #1

Barlow’s article reminds me of the movie Eagle Eye that was in cinemas in December of 2008. This movie is about two people whose lives are commanded by a computer. The computer - she - has its own aesthetically laws. Barlow article says the following below:
“We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.”

Maybe in 1995 there was a fear that cyberspace was to control us. Or that we people were going to have the capacity to command through online communication, which is what we do today through online banking, purchases, e-mail, IM, etc. But Barlow was speaking through the cyberspace’s voice which it indirectly said that it was going to control people’s lives. His article does not have sense of freedom for humans. As of today, that has not happened and we humans still control cyberspace and not vice versa.

On the other hand, “Whalen’s description of Joe Matheny and other ‘culture jammers’” (Heenan) talk about how destructive freedom can be for humans. Matheny is one of the many who could do “pirate radio and TV, computer hacking, counterfeit desktop publishing, media hoaxing, and, of course, billboard editing.” Whalen is placing a fear to readers of 1996 all the bad stuff that could happen if people start using cyberspace which is a wrong freedom. It is still seen as a wrong freedom. But the Telecommunications Reform Act “is to let anyone enter any communications business -- to let any communications business compete in any market against any other” (fcc.gov). Maybe this is the only good thing they were doing, but the Act should be rewritten to protect us from wrong deeds that harm us from wicked people who use the internet.

“Matheny and other ‘culture jammers’ are doing fit with Barlow’s idea of freedom in cyberspace” (Heenan) because they can “spread … across the Planet so that no one can arrest” (Barlow) their thoughts. But these culture jammers would go too far if they did hacked or used someone’s bank account to purchase online.