Cyberspace is a concept describing a widespread interconnected digital technology. "[The expression dates] from the first decade of the diffusion of the internet. It refers to the online world as a world 'apart,' as distinct from everyday reality. In cyberspace people can hide behind fake identities, as in the famous The New Yorker cartoon ..." The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security professionals, governments, military and industry leaders and entrepreneurs to describe the domain of the global technology environment, commonly defined as standing for the global network of interdependent information technology infrastructures, telecommunications networks and computer processing systems. Others consider cyberspace to be just a notional environment in which communication over computer networks occurs. The word became popular in the 1990s when the use of the Internet, networking, and digital communication were all growing dramatically; the term cyberspace was able to represent the many new ideas and phenomena that were emerging.
A declaration of independence, declaration of statehood or proclamation of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another state or failed state, or are breakaway territories from within the larger state. In 2010, the UN's International Court of Justice ruled in an advisory opinion in Kosovo that "International law contains no prohibition on declarations of independence", though the state from which the territory wishes to secede may regard the declaration as rebellion, which may lead to a war of independence or a constitutional settlement to resolve the crisis.
John Perry Barlow was an American poet, essayist, cattle rancher, and cyberlibertarian political activist who had been associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for the Grateful Dead, a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and an early fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.
Real life is a phrase used originally in literature to distinguish between the real world and fictional, virtual or idealized worlds, and in acting to distinguish between actors and the characters they portray. It has become a popular term on the Internet to describe events, people, activities, and interactions occurring offline; or otherwise not primarily through the medium of the Internet. It is also used as a metaphor to distinguish life in a vocational setting as opposed to an academic one, or adulthood and the adult world as opposed to childhood or adolescence.
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is a well-known phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence. The phrase gives three examples of the unalienable rights which the Declaration says have been given to all humans by their Creator, and which governments are created to protect. Like the other principles in the Declaration of Independence, this phrase is not legally binding, but has been widely referenced and seen as an inspiration for the basis of government.
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, was launched in 1985. It is one of the oldest continuously operating virtual communities. By 1993 it had 7,000 members, a staff of 12, and gross annual income of $2 million. A 1997 feature in Wired magazine called it "The world's most influential online community." In 2012, when it was last publicly offered for sale, it had 2,693 members. It is best known for its Internet forums, but also provides email, shell accounts, and web pages. Discussion topics are organized into conferences that cover broad areas of interest. User anonymity is prohibited.
Spencer Reiss is a former Newsweek foreign correspondent in Asia, Africa, Middle East and Latin America, now a contributing editor at Wired magazine. He began working for Wired as a senior editor in San Francisco in 1996. He was responsible for covered energy issues, new media, commercial space travel, and the human impact of technology. He has also been also a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal and MIT Technology Review.
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, the center was elevated to an interfaculty initiative of Harvard University as a whole. It is named after the Berkman family. On July 5, 2016, the center added "Klein" to its name following a gift of $15 million from Michael R. Klein.
Cult of the Dead Cow, also known as cDc or cDc Communications, is a computer hacker and DIY media organization founded in 1984 in Lubbock, Texas. The group maintains a weblog on its site, also titled "Cult of the Dead Cow". New media are released first through the blog, which also features thoughts and opinions of the group's members.
The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier is a work of nonfiction by Bruce Sterling first published in 1992.
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" is an adage and Internet meme about Internet anonymity which began as a caption to a cartoon drawn by Peter Steiner, published by The New Yorker on July 5, 1993. The words are those of a large dog sitting on a chair at a desk, with his paw on the keyboard of the computer before him, speaking to a smaller dog sitting on the floor beside him. Steiner had earned between $200,000 and $250,000 by 2013 from its reprinting, by which time it had become the cartoon most reproduced from The New Yorker.
Information technology law concerns the law of information technology, including computing and the internet. It is related to legal informatics, and governs the digital dissemination of both (digitized) information and software, information security and electronic commerce aspects and it has been described as "paper laws" for a "paperless environment". It raises specific issues of intellectual property in computing and online, contract law, privacy, freedom of expression, and jurisdiction.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet civil liberties.
Nation.1 was a project to create what was described as an "online country" – a conceptual country based on the Internet. It was to be owned, populated and governed by the children of the world. Its borders were defined by the age of its citizens, as opposed to geography or ethnicity. The central goal of Nation.1 was to empower young people with a voice and representation in world affairs.
Law of the Horse was a term used in the mid-1990s to define the state of cyberlaw during the nascent years of the Internet.
Assistive Media, Inc. is a nonprofit Internet-based reading service to serve people with visual and reading impairments.
In internet governance, network sovereignty, also called 'digital sovereignty' or 'cyber sovereignty', is the effort of a governing entity, such as a state, to create boundaries on a network and then exert a form of control, often in the form of law enforcement over such boundaries.
Dražen Bošnjak is a composer and sound designer based in New York City. He founded Q Department, Mach1, and Department of Records. He has created soundtracks and sound design for a number of films, television shows, video games, advertisements, and more recently, virtual reality projects.
HyperNormalisation is a 2016 BBC documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. It argues that governments, financiers, and technological utopians have, since the 1970s, given up on the complex "real world" and built a simpler "fake world" run by corporations and kept stable by politicians. The film was released on 16 October 2016 on BBC iPlayer.
