[Mb-civic] Cybercreeps Amok - Michael Kinsley - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

<>Cybercreeps Amok
Internet Libertarians Should Learn Civil Discourse

By Michael Kinsley
Sunday, July 24, 2005; Page B07

Cyberspace, to its early denizens, was supposed to be a prelapsarian 
world, free from the taint of commerce and other vices of "meatspace" 
(as the material world is known), full of sweetness and light and 
universal siblinghood. In fact, the story line was Genesis in reverse. 
Our troubles started when Eve ate the apple of knowledge. Now knowledge 
had accumulated to the point where it could undo the damage, reconstruct 
the apple (or Apple) and restore our innocence. Geeks who did math were 
going to succeed where hippies who smoked dope and lefties who read Marx 
had failed. They were going to get us out of crass and ugly modern life 
and get us back into Eden.

Well, have you visited cyberspace lately? Of course you have. And of 
course the Internet has vastly improved life for anyone likely to be 
reading this column. But as a friendly place to hang out, give me 
meatspace any day.

<>There is commerce aplenty, but that's not the problem. The happiest 
and most peaceful parts of the World Wide Web are the places where 
people are buying things. The nasty parts are where people are doing 
what the Founding Surfers intended: expressing themselves and forming 
communities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/22/AR2005072201630.html?nav=hcmodule 

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