Wise persons from ancient animists to Kevin Kelly, Thomas Berry, E. O. Wilson and Juan Enriquez have, each in their own spheres of interest, suggested that beings participate in their own evolution by acts of volition, creative synthesis and the cultural processes that shape habits, expectations and developments.
- Cyberspace is evolving among our culture just now. Are there intelligent designers intentionally devising this new extension of the public domain?
- Is it public? Should it be? Up to where?
- Does it have formative Community Master Plans, Cyberspace Use Regulations and Construction Codes?
- Who says?
- Who can do what where how to whom there, and when will they be able to?
- Who else can or will be able to?
Space happens as dimensions and forces interact - a constantly evolving and morphing expression of interdependent origination.
Our culture has, throughout its evolution, regularly devised new dimensions of space.
- The distance of our hearing and the sweep of our vision.
- The circle of light cast by a campfire, and the greater circle cast by a giant bonfire.
- The racing edge of fire gone wild, and the dimensions of the smoky wind foretelling catastrophe.
- The sound of bells cast of hard won ore, echoing and de-crescendoing down our valleys.
- The brief bulletins of beacon fires and the mountain-speak of yodeling.
- The directives of semaphore, and the inklings of intuition.
- The distance a courier can run from the sea into the nearby mountains and say why he ran here before expiring.
- How far a horse can run before you need to trade him off before proceeding.
- And how many way stations it takes to reach the edges of safe domain.
I'll leave the reader to fill in the increments of new dimensions our predecessors left for us to inhabit, right up into the space we are currently devising among us - cyberspace.
Kelly and Enriquez suggest that the technologies we have for ever been developing are evolutionary extensions of our selves.
Skeptical? Remember the last time you forgot your smart phone, were disconnected from the possibilities that exist only in cyberspace and felt incomplete? Ever experienced the technological equivalent of "phantom limb syndrome" - felt the vibration of a cell phone that wasn't in your pocket?
How much time do you spend in Mediaspace? Have you ever, of an afternoon, decided not to go stroll in the park, but to spend time visiting with friends in cyberspace?
What animal functions do you accomplish in cyberspace? Find community? Pursue politics? Make business? Store valuables? Have sex? How many generations of avatars have you spawned? How many web alter egos do you have? Has anything happened to any of them while you were distracted by reading this?
Hadn't you better go look in on the place where you can find them? Is your financial portfolio still where you left it? Has anyone kidnapped your identity while it was being conveyed from here to there?
What intrigues me is - Who's designing cyberspace anyway? Who decides where the new rivers of data will flow, and who can build on their banks and harvest their cataracts?
How is the pollution of those man-made natural resources noticed, defined and ameliorated?
Isn't cyberspace part of the Commons, that space too valuable to be owned, the life making place, the 3rd Place, the Great Good Place, depended on by all for the well being of this and future generations?
Who has the right to fence it? What constrains the behavior of those given the franchise to realize cyberspace? Does it become theirs? Am I trespassing if I find myself there?
Who told that troll he could make me pay to enter that commons?
Did you know that the USA has, even up until today, lacked a national broadband policy? The FCC is embarking on crafting one just now.
What ways do your communities shape the development of this new public right of way, the web commons?
Do you have access to its benefits? How would you have a say about it, as you expect to have a say about your meatspace Master Plan and Development regulations?
And are the answers to these questions acceptable to you?
Here are some links to web places where these issues are being grappled with:
- Designing the Intelligent Public Way
- Designing the Intelligent Public Way - Bronx White Paper
- National Broadband Strategy Call to Action
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