CYBERSPACE:IF YOU DON'T LOVE IT, LEAVE IT
Something in the American psyche loves new frontiers.we hanker after wide-open spaces;We like to explore;We like to make rules instead of follow them.But in this age of political correctness and other intrusions on our national cult of independence,it's hart to find a space where you can go and be yourlf without worrying about the neighbors.
There is such a place:cyberspace. Lost in the furor over porn on the net is the exhilaratin n of freedom that this new frontier once promid--and still does in some quarters.Formerly a playground for computer nerds and techies,cyberspace now embraces every conceivable constituency:schoolchildren,flirtatious singles,Hungarian-Americans,accountants--along with porn fans.Can they all get along?Or will our fear of kids surfing for cyberporn behind their bedroom doors provoke a crackdown?
berneThe first order of business is to grasp what cyberspace is.It might help to leave behind metaphors of highways and frontiers and to think instead of real estate.Real estate,remember,is an intellectual,legal,artificial environment constructed on top of land.Real estate recognizes the difference between parkland and shopping mall,between red-light zone and school district,between church,state and drugstore.
In the same way,you could think of cyberspace as a giant and unbounded world of virtual real estate.Some property is privately owned and rented out;other property is common land;some place are suitable for children,and other are best avoided by all but the kinkiest citizens.Unfortunately,it's tho places that are now capturing the popular magination: places that offer bomb-making instruction,pornography,advice on how to procure stolen credit cards.They make cyberspace sound like a nasty place.Good citizens jump to a conclusion:Better regulate it.
Regardless of how many laws or lawsuits are launched,regulation won't work.
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Aside from being unconstitutional, using censorship to counter indecency and other troubling "speech" fundamentally misinterprets the nature of cyberspace.Cyberspace isn't a frontier where wicked people can grab unsuspecting chidren,nor is it a giant television system that can beam offensive messages at unwilling viewers.In this kind of real estate,urs have to choo where they visit,what they e,what they do.It's optional,and it's much easier to bypass a place on the Net than it is to avoid walking past an un savory block of stores on the way to your local 7-11.
Put plainly ,cyberspace is a voluntary destination--in reality,many destination.You don't just get "onto the Net";you have to go someplace in particular.That means that people can choo where to go and
短裤英语怎么说what to e.Yes,community standards should be enforced,but tho standards shoud be t by cyberspace communities themlves,not by the courts or by politician in Washington.
What makes cyberspace so alluring is precily the way in which it's diffrent from sho
sari是什么意思pping mall, television, highways and other terrestrial jurisdictions. But let's define the territory:
float是什么意思First there are private e-mail conversations, akin to the conversations you have over the telephone.The are private and connsual and require no regulation at all.
pullinSecond, there are information and entertainment rvices,where people can download anything from legal texts and lists of "great new restaurants" to game software or dirty pictures. The places are like bookstores, malls and movie hous -- places where you go to buy something. The customer needs to request an item or sign up for a subscription;stuff (especially pornography) is not nt out to people who don't ask for it. Some of the rvices are free or included as part of a broader rvice like CompuServe or America Online;others charge and may bill their customers directly.
Third, there are "real" communities -- groups of people who communicate among themlves. In real-estate terms, they're like bars or restaurants or bathhous. Each active participant contributes t
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o a general conversation, generally through posted messages. Other participants may simply listen or watch. Some are supervid by a moderator; others are more like bulletin boards--anyone is free to post anything. Many of the rvices started out unmoderated but are now imposing rules to keep out unwanted advertising,extraneous discussions or increasing rude participants.Without a moderator,the decibel level often gets too high.
Ultimately, it's the rules that determine the success of such places.Some of the rules are determined by the supplier of content;some of the rules concern prices and membership fees.The rules may be simple:"Only high-quality content about oil-industry liability and pollution legislation :$120 an hour." Or:"This forum is unmoderated,and restricted to information about copyright issues.people who insist on posting advertising or unrelated material will be asked to desist (and may eventually be barred)"Or:"Only children 8 to 12, on school-related topics and only clean words.The moderator will decide what's acceptable."
Cyberspace communities evolve just the way terrestrial communities do: people with like-minded interests band together. Every cyberspace community has its own character. Overall, the communities on CompuServe tend to be more professional; tho on America Online, affluent young singles; Prodigy, family-oriented. Then there are independents like Echo, a hip, downtown New York
vice, or Women's Wire, targeted to women who want to avoid the male culture prevalent elwhere on the Net.There's SurfWatch ,a new program allowing access only to locations deemed suitable for children. On the internet itlf ,there are lots of passionate noncommercial discussion groups on topics ranging from Hungarian politics to copyright law.
What ' s unique about cyberspace is that it liberates us from the tyranny of government ,where everyone lives by the rule of the
mojority.In a democracy, minority groups and minority preferences tend to get squeezed out ,whether they are minorities of race and culture or minorities of individual taste.Cyberspace allows communities of any size and kind to flourish; in cyberspace , communities are chon by the urs, not forced on them by accidents of geography. This freedom give the rules that preside in cyberspace a moral authority that rules in terrestrial environments don't have. Most people are stuck in the country of their birth, but if you don't like the rules of a cyberspace community, you can just sign off. Love it or leave it. Likewi, if parents don't like the rules of a given cyberspace community, they can restrict their children's access to it.
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over driveWhat's likely to happen in cyberspace is the formation of new communities, free of the constraints th
at cau conflict on earth. Instead of a global village, which is a nice dream but impossible to manage, we'll have invented another world of lf-contained communities that cater to their own members' inclinations without interfering with anyone el's. The possibility of a real market-style evolution of governance is at hand. In cyberspace, we'll be able to test and evolve rules governing what needs to be governed -- intellectual property,content and access control, rules about privacy and free speech. Some communites will allow any one in ;others will restrict access to members who qualify on one basis or another. Tho communites that prove lf-sustaining will prosper (and perhaps grow and split into subts with ever-more-particular interests and identities). Tho that can't survive -- either becau people lo interest or get scared off -- will simply wither away.
毕竟英语In the near future, explorers in cyberspace will need to get better at defining and identifying their communities. They will need to put in place -- and accept -- their own local governments , just as the owners of expensive real estate often prefer to have their own curity guards rather than call in the police.But they will rarely need help from any terrestrial government.
In the end, our society needs to grow up. Growing up means understanding that there are no perfect answers, no all-purpo solutions, no government-sanctioned safe havens. We haven't created a perfect society on earth, and we won't have one in cyberspace either. But at least we can have indivi
dual choice -- and individual responsibility.
