If you hunger for a lot more email than you're currently getting, I strongly recommend doing something as quixotic as declaring the independence of cyberspace.
Since February 8, when I generated a polemic demanding the governments of the world leave us alone and emailed it to about 50 friends (stag4.wired.com/wired/if/declaration), it has reproduced across cyberspace like kudzu, prompting as many as 300 responses a day - some of them from places I didn't even know had electricity, let alone electronic mail.
Most of this vast virtual echo - say, 95 percent - has been hyperinflative to the ego. If I wanted to believe that I were some kind of god (or, at least, the reincarnation of Jefferson), there would be plenty of evidence here.
But unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on how you feel about humility - most of the best-written bits of correspondence, and certainly the lengthiest, were from folks who found my actions anything but godlike. I have found myself excoriated by people I might have thought would be receptive to the thoughts contained in my declaration. I have been e-reamed by some of the best.
Their objections fall into several categories.
There are those who basically agree with me but think that it's premature to start poking the Beast now. Their general drift is something like, "Shut up. We don't want them to know we're here until there are enough of us to stand up and fight." I'm not much persuaded by this. They've already attacked. We can no more pretend we don't exist than the defenders of the Alamo could simply refuse to answer the door when Santa Ana came knocking with his 5,000.
Many who flamed me claim we don't exist. That is, they believe there is no collective "sense of the wired self." We are about as much a community, they claim, as are all the people with electricity in their homes. I can't refute this directly, but it does seem self-evident that there is a Net culture, manifestations of which can be found everywhere in this magazine.
Then there are the folks who are doing far too well under the existing paradigm to want to fix it much. These are successful lawyers, businesspeople, and government officials of one sort or another who wish to make cyberspace resemble the terrestrial world that already works for them.
Some are plain jealous. I've seen this sort of internecine treachery manifested among the well-intentioned all my life. They often reserve their worst invective, not for their real enemies, but for those with whom they essentially agree save for some ideological coloration. Something about the sense of impotence one feels stacked up against the Big Ugly often encourages us to attack one another instead. There, certainly, we stand a better chance of scoring a quick victory.
One criticism often levied is that my rhetoric was unnecessarily insulting and alienating. There is some truth to this. Generally, I find reasoning with the opposition will get you further. But sometimes the opposition doesn't know you exist. Sometimes you have to shout.
The most interesting criticisms come from those who take issue with my drawing any distinction between the virtual and physical worlds. As one particularly disgusted critic, David Bennahum, put it, "Will we deal with the real world or retreat into our own private delusion - one that places cyberspace above and beyond the realities of the physical world?"
There was a lot of that. Much of it came attached to accusatory associations with drugs, '60s utopianism, and other weaknesses a songwriter for the Grateful Dead might be presumed to possess.
But I rather like the realities of the physical world. Prefer them, in fact. And it's certain that whether I like them or not, the realities of the physical world will always be with us. There will always be bodies starving, bodies in prison, bodies dancing, bodies making love.
Cyberspace is no more separate from the realities of the physical world than the mind is unrelated to the body. Indeed, the relationship between the social space that exists in, say, Manhattan and the social space that exists in cyberspace is precisely the relationship between mind and body.
But there is also a necessary separation between thought and action. Action is what the body does, over which physical authority may be exercised. In cyberspace, I might threaten to kill you. In New York, I can slit your throat.
This is why I said in my declaration that "we must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies." I'm not seeking to evade legal responsibility for our physical actions. But rendering the depiction of crimes criminal is an effort to extend government authority beyond the physical and into the mental.
I've never felt anybody's thoughts should be under the control of governments, even when the government could clearly define the thinkers as dwelling within its physical jurisdiction. I favor it even less now that any government on the planet can seek to confine the entire human conversation within its own local cultural norms.
Looking back over my declaration now, I can see things I might have said more temperately - or not said at all. But I'm not sorry I did it. It continues to grow and foment discussion. Even if I wanted to, there wouldn't be much I could do to call it back at this point. It's as free and wild as I hope cyberspace will always remain.
