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Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias
A wide-ranging collection of writings on emerging political structures in cyberspace. In Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias , Peter Ludlow extends the approach he used so successfully in High Noon on the Electronic Frontier , offering a collection of writings that reflects the eclectic nature of the online world, as well as its tremendous energy and creativity. This time the subject is the emergence of governance structures within online communities and the visions of political sovereignty shaping some of those communities. Ludlow views virtual communities as laboratories for conducting experiments in the construction of new societies and governance structures. While many online experiments will fail, Ludlow argues that given the synergy of the online world, new and superior governance structures may emerge. Indeed, utopian visions are not out of place, provided that we understand the new utopias to be fleeting localized "islands in the Net" and not permanent institutions. The book is organized in five sections. The first section considers the sovereignty of the Internet. The second section asks how widespread access to resources such as Pretty Good Privacy and anonymous remailers allows the possibility of "Crypto Anarchy"—essentially carving out space for activities that lie outside the purview of nation states and other traditional powers. The third section shows how the growth of e-commerce is raising questions of legal jurisdiction and taxation for which the geographic boundaries of nation-states are obsolete. The fourth section looks at specific experimental governance structures evolved by online communities. The fifth section considers utopian and anti-utopian visions for cyberspace. Contributors
Richard Barbrook, John Perry Barlow, William E. Baugh Jr., David S. Bennahum, Hakim Bey, David Brin, Andy Cameron, Dorothy E. Denning, Mark Dery, Kevin Doyle, Duncan Frissell, Eric Hughes, Karrie Jacobs, David Johnson, Peter Ludlow, Timothy C. May, Jennifer L. Mnookin, Nathan Newman, David G. Post, Jedediah S. Purdy, Charles J. Stivale
Richard Barbrook, John Perry Barlow, William E. Baugh Jr., David S. Bennahum, Hakim Bey, David Brin, Andy Cameron, Dorothy E. Denning, Mark Dery, Kevin Doyle, Duncan Frissell, Eric Hughes, Karrie Jacobs, David Johnson, Peter Ludlow, Timothy C. May, Jennifer L. Mnookin, Nathan Newman, David G. Post, Jedediah S. Purdy, Charles J. Stivale
451 pages, Paperback
First published April 16, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 30, 2014
Since I was familiar with Peter Ludlow’s writings and philosophies on linguistics and the Internet via some of Noam Chomsky’s writings, I saw the title and author of this book and thought it would be right “in my wheelhouse�. I wasn’t wrong. While only the introduction and first chapter are written by Ludlow, he has chosen several tech writers and online activists� pieces to flesh out his views of the online realm and its governance (or lack thereof). I found this book to be fascinating and full of philosophical and ethical ponderings about our online world, such as "who watches the watchers?"...which is an important question in this time of ever-present NSA and CIA online surveillance. Since this book was published in 2001 it is slightly out of date on some topics…but it's still relevant enough overall to be a great read for anybody who works or lives in the online realm of ‘The Net�. It’s also a mixed bag of topics and writers, so if any one of them seem too archaic or irrelevant to you it’s easy to just move on to the next chapter (although I didn't find myself doing that very often). Overall, I recommend it to anyone who may me interested in the subject matter.
May 13, 2023
Based on the title I expected a collection of essays (mostly from crypto-anarchists or their opponents), similar to the kind of thing one would find in the Agorist Primer, but more historical-analytical rather than ideological.
What I got instead for the most part was a majority of essays that I could only describe as boring. Even doing my notes was a chore. The essays range from the ideological declarations of crypto-anarchists and libertarians to stuffy professors sobbing and seething about how the internet is making governments more subject to market forces, or how it makes taxation, law imposement and other forms of state control increasingly difficult, or doing dry historical analyses and waxing poetic about how a specific internet community many of them focused on (LamdaMOO) could be legally recognized as a country or a club or something or other.
A lot of flexing of muscles, a lot of big words aimed more at justifying a professorial salary than at providing anything useful. The only useful takeaway is maybe Hakim Bey's TAZ essay, and seeing how some of the predictions made turned out. It was interesting for example, that in the 1990s people thought it was ever possible to regulate cryptographic software, and waxed poetic in complete ignorance about how it could be controlled, when such control was impossible.
I would not recommend it, unless you are really into the author or the type of essays this book provides.
What I got instead for the most part was a majority of essays that I could only describe as boring. Even doing my notes was a chore. The essays range from the ideological declarations of crypto-anarchists and libertarians to stuffy professors sobbing and seething about how the internet is making governments more subject to market forces, or how it makes taxation, law imposement and other forms of state control increasingly difficult, or doing dry historical analyses and waxing poetic about how a specific internet community many of them focused on (LamdaMOO) could be legally recognized as a country or a club or something or other.
A lot of flexing of muscles, a lot of big words aimed more at justifying a professorial salary than at providing anything useful. The only useful takeaway is maybe Hakim Bey's TAZ essay, and seeing how some of the predictions made turned out. It was interesting for example, that in the 1990s people thought it was ever possible to regulate cryptographic software, and waxed poetic in complete ignorance about how it could be controlled, when such control was impossible.
I would not recommend it, unless you are really into the author or the type of essays this book provides.
January 25, 2023
Who watches the watchers?
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