January 2006: Internet Liberation: Alive or Dead?

Lead Essay

Reaction Essays

Open source software guru Eric S. Raymond takes issue with Lanier's characterization of "lock-in," his antipathy to the command line, and his discussion of ambiguity. Raymond claims that if Lanier's point was just that the Internet is "a conduit of expression between people," then he would stop in agreement. But, he writes, "the actual point seems to be to maintain an opposition between capitalism and (gift) culture that I think is . . . mistaken."

» Reply by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Glenn Reynolds—taking pieces from both Lanier and Raymond—argues that small proprietary zones within the big open Internet—"semigoras" in Lanier's terms—might prove "very fertile places for innovation and growth on the Internet" with the potential to empower individuals and small groups to "achieve the worker's paradise" through technology and markets.

» Reply by John Perry Barlow

Ten years after his "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," John Perry Barlow insists that "the Internet continues to be an anti-sovereign social space, endowing billions with capacities for free expression that would have been unthinkable a generation ago." A liberating future is still ahead, Barlow argues, but we must be on guard against a deep fact of both biology and markets: "New success inspires creativity. Old success tries to kill it."

» Reply by David Gelernter

While taking issue with a number of Lanier's specific claims, Yale computer scientist David Gelernter signs on to what he takes to be Lanier's underlying message: "the software world doesn’t understand itself clearly enough—doesn’t understand where it’s been, where it is, and where it’s going."