Clarification: ISOC and its Charter

The future of the ISOC is obviously unclear; it could degenerate, but I don’t believe this is likely (at least for a long time yet). I believe that there are good reasons to enter into liasison arrangements with other international entities, etc. The Internet is not an toy anymore. It’s frighteningly real, and becoming more so. In my view, we have two choices: to step up our governance and sense of responsibility, and continue to have a role in guiding the Internet, or fail, and watch all that power pass to others, who will, I *assure* you, not do as good a job as we have done to date. The ISOC represents, in my view, the best chance to prevent the latter course. It is a reasonably democratic organization, and I hope everyone on this list will participate fully in the ISOC to keep it on the right path.

Clarification: ISOC and its Charter

The single all-encompassing organization model is patently folly – it no longer even exists in the telco world … By the end of 1994, there will be more networks outside the U.S. than within – this is a revolution that is occurring around the world. As they are now, I expect (and hope) that these will continue to be specialized, highly active, innovative forums of interested parties. I subscribe to the Dave Clark motto – no kings, but running code … as things continue to scale exponentially, it’s in everyone’s common interest to craft some kind of organizational fabric that maintains the culture of Internet autonomy and innovation and the Clark Motto. I’m proffering the ISOC as one of several potential means of doing that, lest some particular parties form their own global institution(s) (or buy into an existing institution) that doesn’t maintain these Internet traditions.

The Crucible of Radical Capitalism: How the Information Revolution Will Transform the Politics of Power

Who will build and control the “Information Superhighway” that will unleash these changes? Anyone who thinks that this revolution will be dominated by any one power, much less the Barry-Diller-John-Malone-Bell-Atlantic-Time Warner shovel-more-at-them-and-they’ll-eat-it school of marketing, is a fool. This is a bogeyman that has been created by the self-appointed advocates of the information “have-nots” in their efforts to create a new round of complex government dependencies and new industrial policies. The rush to protect us from the 500-channel cable monster is a ruse to justify one last desperate grasp for power. The growth of Cyberspace will not and cannot be planned by any central authorities, government or corporate. It will be a spontaneously self-organizing, continuously evolving, chaotic free-for-all shaped only by the uncoerced choices of the millions of individuals that populate it. And this will make it the perfect crucible for Radical Capitalism.

The Crucible of Radical Capitalism: How the Information Revolution Will Transform the Politics of Power

The arrival of cyberspace is destined to engender a fundamental discontinuity in the course of human relations. This is a source of great optimism and opportunity for those of us who believe in freedom … I would like to announce the formation of a new group – DigitaLiberty – that has chosen a different path. We intend to bypass the existing political process. We reject consensus-building based on the calculus of compromise. Instead, we plan to leave the past behind, much as our pioneering forefathers did when they set out to settle new lands. It is our mission to create the basis for a different kind of society.

The Crucible of Radical Capitalism: How the Information Revolution Will Transform the Politics of Power

What will happen when the redistributive powers of government are rendered impotent by the inability to pick our digital pockets? … Will the megacorporations really be the ones that gain? No. Because the tools used to create a symbiotic relationship between large corporations and the State will no longer be effective when turned against the entrepreneurs, the virtual corporations, and the fluid adhocracies that will thrive on the net. Cyber-organizations will know no boundaries and will keep little physical property at risk. The mega-corporations, as economic political entities, will NOT be made stronger by the Information Revolution. Quite the contrary, they will be de-fanged. They will be outflanked. They will melt down in a brain drain of historic proportions as the most productive of their employees flee to pursue free-agency on the net, released from the physical constraints that kept them bound to their jobs, while the least productive employees will hang on for dear life, bringing their employers down with them.

The Crucible of Radical Capitalism: How the Information Revolution Will Transform the Politics of Power

Digital cash can be exchanged for gold or the national currency of your choice in competing tax havens throughout the world or, more importantly, can be spent to procure other goods and services on the net. Imagine the possibilities … [The] exodus of the productive will ultimately touch off a revolution that will result in the practical separation of Commerce and State, a radical, outrageous, earth-shaking development that will be a tremendous threat to the existing social order and will challenge the moral underpinnings of all governments as they are now conceived … Once the new digital infrastructure reaches critical mass it will kick off a worldwide game of “catch us if you can.” When the combined might of nations tries to chase society’s producers of goods and services down the “Information Superhighway” making claims on the fruits of their labor, they will simply disappear into the ether.

The Crucible of Radical Capitalism: How the Information Revolution Will Transform the Politics of Power

In less than a generation, the “net” could become home to the bulk of our significant economic activity – the common marketplace of choice, our place of work, our refuge for leisure, our very medium of exchange. This will have a profound impact on the balance of power among nations, corporations, and individuals … information, by its essential nature, is difficult to restrain, command, tax, ignore, or suppress. It will soon be impossible for sovereigns to monitor and manipulate the streams of data that will become the substance of our commerce. While the state has always had the power to seize a coal mine or an oil well or a paycheck, most often in the name of “the public good,” no government can seize an idea. It is a lamentable fact that the owner of a threatened coal mine cannot spirit his property into the night. But an idea? An idea can cross the world in milliseconds.

2 Groups Plan Projects on Computer Standards

There is going to be a Tower of Babel of computer languages and we want to avoid having to use five different telephones or five different computers to perform five different applications.

A Merger of Giants: The Vision; A Phone-Cable Vehicle for the Data Superhighway

“Dialing” itself, in fact, is likely to be a vastly different experience when such services arrive in the next century. Rather than pecking at numbers on a telephone keypad, it is likely that a telephone caller will simply use a remote control to point at an icon on the television screen. The call might be audio only, or it could include full-motion video, if the two – or more – parties agree.

A Merger of Giants: The Vision; A Phone-Cable Vehicle for the Data Superhighway

Cable industry entrepreneur John C. Malone held out the vision of a single powerful box on top of each home television set that would combine the diverse streams of information that now flow separately into the home: telephone calls, television shows, video rentals, newspapers and even books. If the vaunted information superhighway is coming, this set-top device will be the steering wheel, combining the video controls of a cable converter box, the two-way capabilities of a telephone and the information-processing power of a personal computer. In short, “it will allow us to control all the communications needs of a household with one device,” Mr. Malone said.