Cyberspace

Cyberspace is the amorphous, supposedly “virtual” world created by links between computers, Internet-enabled phones, personal digital assistants, servers, routers, fiber optic cables, and wireless links throughout [Page 190]the world. As opposed to the Internet itself, cyberspace is the place produced by these links existing, from the perspective of some, apart from any particular nation-state. The term cyberspace was used first by Canadian author William Gibson in 1982 in an Omni magazine story and then in his book Neuromancer. In this science fiction novel, Gibson described cyberspace as the creation of a computer network in a world awash with artificial intelligence beings and the demise of the nation-state. The Matrix, a film released in 1999, included references to Neuromancer in its depiction of our reality as false and the creation of intelligent machines of the future.

In the popular culture of the 1990s, cyberspace as a term was taken on to describe the “location” in which people interacted with each other while using the Internet. This is the place in which online games occur, the land of chat rooms, and the home of instant messaging conversations. In this sense, the location of the games or the chat room itself can be said to “exist” in cyberspace. Cyberspace has also become an important location for social and political discussion, with the popular emergence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century of Web-based discussion boards and Internet Weblogs, or blogs. Blogs are typically produced by an individual who includes his or her personal writing and often offers running commentary and links to other locations on the Web they deem of interest. With the emergence of “blogging” software, even those people unfamiliar with software programming for the Web can create their own Weblog. Thus, blogs can be seen as offering an opportunity for public discussion in cyberspace that is not available in the offline world.

Early in the evolution of the Internet, in the middle of the 1990s, many users believed and argued that the world of cyberspace should be free from the regulations of any national government. John Perry Barlow's “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” proposed that current national governments should play no role in the governance of cyber-space. He argued that the community existing in cyberspace would create its own rules and manage conflicts apart from the laws and judiciary of any particular country. Particularly important was the protection of free expression and exchange among the “bodiless” personalities of cyberspace. This perspective would be particularly relevant if it was possible to hide the physical location and identity of a person participating in an activity “in cyberspace.”

Since the emergence of the Internet, however, national governments and their analysts have shown both the relevance of national regulations and international agreements on the character of cyberspace. Those bodiless actors in cyberspace must access this other realm through their corporeal form, and thus continue to be constrained by the laws governing their physical location. The Chinese government maintains strict controls on who is able to access the Internet and what content is available to them. The U.S. government limits certain online activities, such as the sharing of digital data, through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In addition, the United States has developed a strategy for the security of cyberspace in order to prevent and respond to attacks on the Internet infrastructure. The control of cyberspace is thus important not only because of the actions of individual participants, but because the infrastructure of cyberspace, the network linking everyone together, which is now fundamental to the functioning of national and international security systems, trade networks, emergency services, basic communications, and other public and private activities. Because national governments see potential threats to the security of their citizens and to the stability of their regimes arising within cyberspace, they act to control both access and content.

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