{"id":19,"date":"2013-12-03T19:47:47","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T19:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/camille\/?p=19"},"modified":"2013-12-03T20:22:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T20:22:52","slug":"a-reality-check-on-cyberspace-punks-war-and-ideologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/2013\/12\/03\/a-reality-check-on-cyberspace-punks-war-and-ideologies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u25d2 A Reality Check on Cyberspace: Punks, War and Ideologies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Commentary invited by editors of Scientific American<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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What Is War in the Digital Realm? A Reality Check on the Meaning of \u201cCyberspace\u201d<\/a><\/h1>\n

By\u00a0Camille Fran\u00e7ois<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0November 26, 2013\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0\"Comments\"2<\/a>
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Credit: Wikimedia Commons\/NASA<\/p>\n

Cyber is everywhere: in political speeches, in newspapers, at dinner conversations. There\u2019s cyberwar and cybersex and cybercaf\u00e9s (they still exist, I promise), and there\u2019s\u00a0the U.S. Cyber Command<\/a>. Once in a while, there is a new surge of\u00a0articles<\/a>\u00a0arguing that the word \u201ccyber\u201d is vague, dated and that we just should get rid of it in favor of more precise terminology.<\/p>\n

That is wishful thinking: we might lack clear definitions of the cyber prefix, but for whatever reason cyber seems here to stay, which is why we should take a moment to explore what meanings and ideologies we have been infusing in this word to better inform our debates about technology.<\/p>\n

Cyber\u2019s most popular namechild certainly is cyberspace (always cited and never defined), and it has been here with us for more than 30 years. It\u2019s time for a short review of its origins, its many variations and what\u2019s hiding behind the term.<\/p>\n

Cyberspace\u00a0<\/em>was a term brought to us by literature, and its trajectory traveled through poetry, academic analysis, politics and ideologies. It is now pervasively used by anyone who wishes to discuss security and democracy in a networked society. The stakes are crucially important. Using vague, misunderstood and meaningless language tools to articulate these debates hinders our ability to think critically about technology, something we can\u2019t afford when we should be having informed debates about our expectations on surveillance, privacy or freedom of speech.<\/p>\n

Origins in Cyberpunk<\/strong>
\nGiven the lack of clear definition, it\u2019s not surprising that\u00a0the Wikipedia entry on cyberspace<\/a>\u00a0offers a very abstract explanation: that cyberspace is \u201cthe idea of interconnectedness of human beings through computers and telecommunications, without regard to physical geography.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCyberspace\u201d was popularized by novelist William Gibson, father of the literary genre known as cyberpunk. He didn\u2019t mean to forge a political concept, though, and he\u00a0later noted<\/a>\u00a0that his word was \u201cevocative and essentially meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his 1982 short story\u00a0Burning Chrome<\/em><\/a>, the word cyberspace makes its first appearance as the name of a machine: the \u201cworkaday Ono-Sendai VII, the \u2018Cyberspace Seven.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In his 1984 novel\u00a0Neuromancer<\/em><\/a>, it becomes more than a computer\u2019s pet name and is described in more conceptual terms:<\/p>\n

\u201cCyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts\u2026. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read it one more time. This sentence has all the seeds of topics still being discussed today, it holds all the complexity of how cyberspace could be interpreted: Is it athing<\/em>, handled by its operators? Is it a\u00a0space<\/em>, an abstraction uniting the minds across all the nations? Is it a\u00a0place<\/em>, organized in clusters, or it is a\u00a0political ideology<\/em>, these hallucinations that take strength in consensus? Let\u2019s explore all of the above.<\/p>\n

Cyberspace is not a thing<\/strong>
\nYou can\u2019t \u201cfix\u201d cyberspace, and it doesn\u2019t sound right to talk about\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Cyberspace\u2014 cyberspace is not a thing. You can\u2019t really use the term \u201ccyberspace\u201d to replace \u201cInternet\u201d: the first one is more abstract that the technology described by the last one. And since we\u2019re here, \u201cInternet\u201d is not a thing either: it\u2019s a set of protocols, a technology that enabling computers to talk to each other.<\/p>\n

Could cyberspace be a \u201cspace\u201d?<\/strong>
\nWhat it could be, though, is a metaphorical space emerging from the technology. \u201cCyberspace\u201d could describe the abstract space in which the conversations of people using Internet are happening. It could be the name of the theoretical online salon, the public square that one can access in a couple of clicks, even though that opens questions like: whose space is it, who is ruling it, who is excluded from it, and are all the people thinking that they are in\u00a0cyberspace\u00a0<\/em>truly in the same salon? This understanding is a fun conceptual alley to explore, and its road is paved with\u00a0great academic research<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Could cyberspace be a \u201cplace\u201d?<\/strong>
\nNow, what\u2019s the difference between a space and a place? A space is much more of an abstract and moving concept than a place; a\u00a0place<\/em>\u00a0is more structured, has rules, people, frontiers. A\u00a0place\u00a0<\/em>is closer to the idea of a territory.<\/p>\n

Europe\u00a0<\/em>can be analyzed as a\u00a0space<\/em>\u2014its people share some sort of common history and principles, but when its frontiers and ideology are discussed, they evolve with various political projects. Tracing its borders, defining its rulers, declaring its principles, institutionalizing power in it, and making it a territory (the\u00a0European Union<\/em>) becomes a political act.<\/p>\n

Calling a space a \u201cplace\u201d is making a political statement; it imprints an ideology on it. This is why \u201ccyberwar\u201d is an ideological turn.<\/p>\n

Can Cyberspace be at war?<\/strong>
\nThe cyberwar rhetoric turns the abstraction of\u00a0cyberspace\u00a0<\/em>into a new zone of combat\u2014and aligns it with land, sea, air and space. Most of the definition problems around cybersecurity and cyberwar have to do with their first five letters: if you can\u2019t define cyber, what are you going to secure? What are you declaring war on?<\/p>\n

In 1996, The Advent of Netwar is described in a RAND report explaining that we must protect \u201cThe Net\u201d, and that for such a task offense will be our best defense. These elements are deep at the core of the cyberwar rationale.<\/p>\n

Cyberwar is the political ideology that proposes new principles for the space, new actors to rule it. Cyberwar is an ideology that hides behind the discourse of reality: there are, indeed, very real cyber-attacks, and there are security concerns for critical infrastructures connected to the network, but what does it mean to declare war\u00a0on<\/em>cyber? Cyberwar paints a metaphorical space as the subject of threats; it depicts the cyberspace as a proper\u00a0place\u00a0<\/em>in which power has to be deployed and conquered.<\/p>\n

Cyberspace as an ideology<\/strong>
\nIt may seem that \u201cspace\u201d or \u201cplace\u201d is a minor distinction. But this small change in perspective indicates a significant change and an ideological turn.\u00a0\u201cCyberspace\u201d,\u00a0<\/em>by that standard, could also be seen as first ideology to take network society as a battleground.<\/p>\n

By the mid-1990s, the word \u201ccyberspace\u201d had transformed from a vague poetical and literary concept into a concrete political utopia.\u00a0John Perry Barlow\u2019s\u00a0Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(1996) captures the significance of this shift. As Barlow writes: \u201cGovernments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this declaration, \u201cplacehood\u201d is an aspiration made clear. Cyberspace is a \u201chome\u201d for the mind, where some will \u201cgather.\u201d Cyberspace is an alternative to state power, a place to build to escape authorities and rules of the state. It is a political utopia, both etymologically (\u1f50 \u2013 \u03c4\u03cc\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2 ,\u201cno-place\u201d in Greek) and philosophically (\u201can imagined place in which everything is perfect\u201d writes the Oxford English Dictionary). Six years before that text, in 1990, Barlow had co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the first advocacy group for digital rights, who outlined this framework by calling itself the \u201cfirst line of defense\u201d of cyberspace\u2019s \u201cfrontier\u201d: very geographical vocabulary.<\/p>\n

Cyberspace vs. cyberwar<\/strong>
\nToday, making cyberspace a harbor free of states\u2019 influence seems like a lost battle. The unfolding debate on state surveillance, Internet censorship and the many other manifestations of state power exercising sovereignty over the network make that very idea sound foolish, or outdated.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t back in the time \u2013 How did it look then? What was the Internet in 1996, and what did the space for conversation it enabled look like?<\/p>\n

In its early days, Internet created a forum for like-minded intellectuals over privileged parts of the wired world, an infrastructure mainly used to share academic material. When developed in 1989, the World Wide Web (a specific application of Internet protocols enabling people to view and navigate pages on a browser) was the solution Tim Berners-Lee envisioned for sharing the CERN\u2019s research papers to strengthen academic collaboration with other institutes. Publishing this research on paper proved to be very expensive because it needed to be constantly updated. If considering the development and adoption of TCP\/IP as a landmark for the birth of Internet infrastructure, the 1996 Internet was a 14-year-old teenager. The Web was a six-year-old child.<\/p>\n

At this time, there was not yet anything critical to steal or protect on the Internet. No real-world political battle was fought there yet\u2014cyberspace, as a political project, still stood a chance. There was limited incentive for states to truly deploy power there, even if the intent had always been considered.<\/p>\n

In March 1995,\u00a0Time<\/em>\u00a0Magazine\u2019s cover story\u00a0Welcome To Cyberspace\u00a0<\/em>describes the new trends of the Net, at risk of \u201cturning into a shopping mall\u201d, but still concludes: \u201cAt this point, however, cyberspace is less about commerce than about community. The technology has unleashed a great rush of direct, person-to-person communications, organized not in the top-down, one- to-many structure of traditional media but in a many-to-many model that may \u2013 just may \u2013 be a vehicle for revolutionary change. In a world already too divided against itself \u2013 rich against poor, producer against consumer \u2013 cyberspace offers the nearest thing to a level playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not what the Internet looks like today. It changed a lot with its growth and democratization. There is plenty to steal and plenty to protect. People\u2019s credit-card numbers, terrorists\u2019 emails, nuclear plant and air-traffic control systems\u2013they are all connected to the Internet. \u00a0And if you look to the ways in which states use the Internet for political advantage\u2014as a tool of espionage, as a way of winning hearts and minds, or as a tool of war against other states\u2014it becomes clear that cyberspace has been unable to realize itself as a bastion against state encroachment.<\/p>\n

That, of course, is truly disappointing for those who aspired for the technology to provide a safe harbor from the state\u2019s power. Yet, as history many times has taught us, we must oppose our principles to the ideologies that rise against what we believe in. If cyberspace is colonized by war, there is one essential question: what doescyberpeace<\/em>\u00a0look like?<\/p>\n

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\u25d0 View original post on Scientific American’s website here:\u00a0http:\/\/blogs.scientificamerican.com\/guest-blog\/2013\/11\/26\/what-is-war-in-cyberspace-a-reality-check-on-the-meaning-of-cyber\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentary invited by editors of Scientific American What Is War in the Digital Realm? A Reality Check on the Meaning of \u201cCyberspace\u201d By\u00a0Camille Fran\u00e7ois\u00a0|\u00a0November 26, 2013\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a02 Share\u00a0\u00a0Email\u00a0\u00a0Print Credit: Wikimedia Commons\/NASA Cyber is everywhere: in political speeches, in newspapers, at dinner conversations. There\u2019s cyberwar and cybersex and cybercaf\u00e9s (they still exist, I promise), and there\u2019s\u00a0the U.S. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6239,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6239"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/21"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/camille\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}