Déclaration d'indépendance du cyberespace (Barlow)
John Perry Barlow (1994)
Texte intégral : anglais (original), français
Tréguer :
Lorsque l’Américain John Perry Barlow a écrit en 1996 sa Déclaration, les militants européens, notamment ceux qui se regroupent autour de la mailing-list « nettime », ont critiqué son discours comme un discours “cyber-libertarien”, emblématique de la nouvelle droite de l’époque et de son agenda néolibéral forcené.
Paris Marx, "The digital revolution has failed" (Disconnect, mars 2024) :
Picking up on the melding of libertarianism, technological optimism, and neoliberal economics over the previous couple decades, they deployed a narrative that changed the way we thought about the emerging network and laid the groundwork for the commercial opportunity that followed its privatization in 1995. The following year, Electronic Frontier Foundation cofounder John Perry Barlow released a manifesto from the World Economic Forum in Davos — a fact that should’ve immediately set off alarm bells — that became a defining narrative for the era.
(...)
While Barlow had plenty of scorn to heap on governments, he didn’t have the same disdain for corporations that saw the cyberspace he proclaimed as a libertarian paradise to be a great means to make a lot of money — something that should’ve been clear from the site where he made his so-called declaration of independence.