Full text of DOI:10.1111/1467-954X.00241

Language and libertarianism: the politics of
cyberculture and the culture of cyberpolitics
Tim Jordan
Abstract
A significant number of theories concerning the nature of cyberspace or virtuality are
being constructed with little regard for the empirical realities of online life. This
article sets out certain simple empirical factors related to the nature first of politics in
cyberspace and second culture in cyberspace. These questions are posed as `what is
the politics of cyberculture?' and `what is the culture of cyberpolitics?'. The politics of
cyberculture revolves around issues of grossly uneven regional distribution of the
Internet and a bias toward anglo-american language and culture that is based on the
competitive individual. The culture of cyberpolitics revolves around informational
forms of libertarian and anarchist ideologies that posit cyberspace as the realm of
individual freedom. These cultures and politics can be related to each other as the
structure and action of cyberspace. The assumption that cyberspace is constituted
by individuals is revealed as an assumption of both, and connection between,
cyberpolitics and cybercultures.
Cyberpolitics and cybercultures
Posing questions of culture and politics in the abstract has been an important
way of analysing cyberspace and the Internet for some groups of anglo-
american academics and commentators. Theories of the effects of virtual
worlds are sometimes spun with only marginal concern for whether the effects
of their postulated virtuality actually exist or are ever likely to exist. Virilio's
interest in virtual sex is perhaps the most obvious and influential recent
example of such analyses but there are others 0Virilio, 1997; Burrows and
Featherstone, 1995). Alongside such abstract theorising, but often discon-
nected from it, are an increasing number of detailed empirical studies, each of
which seem only able to deal with a small corner of cyberspace 0Jones, 1995,
1
997; Smith and Kollock, 1999). Certain online communities, events or
discussion groups have been exhaustively analysed with little connection
between empirical conclusions and larger theorisations, yet this connection is
becoming crucial if our understanding of cyberspace and its effects is to
develop. This article contributes to a closing of this gap between detailed
empirical work and broad theorisations by offering an empirical and
#
1
The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 2ꢀꢀ1. Published by Blackwell Publishers,
ꢀ8 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 35ꢀ Main Street, Malden, MA ꢀ2148, USA.

Tim Jordan
theoretical exploration of the relationship between culture and politics in
cyberspace by asking mirrored questions: `what is the culture of cyberpolitics?'
and `what is the politics of cyberculture?'.
This article cannot by itself entirely reconcile the two just identified arms of
anglo-american cyberspace research but it helps close the gap by identifying
their inter-relations. Further, the viewpoint taken up here is certainly not the
only possible view, in particular analysis from what can be called, in Deleuze
1
and Guattari's sense, `minority' linguistic or cultural communities in cyber-
space would undoubtedly offer a different view, though hopefully also a
complementary one 0Deleuze and Guattari, 1986: 16±27). The perspective
explored here does not, in making its own arguments, deny other arguments
are possible or could be of great value. No hegemonic or `totalising'
assumptions need be drawn from or found hidden within this decision to
critically analyse certain anglo-american discourses on cyberspace for their
assumptions. If anything, the opposite is the result of arguments made here,
some of whose implications are that that some of the dominant analyses of
cyberculture and cyberpolitics are deeply structured by assumptions made
about the nature of cyberspace.
Putting the questions `what is the culture of cyberpolitics?' and `what is the
politics of cyberculture?' together within the context of anglo-american
analyses of online life allows some of the conditions for both politics and
culture in cyberspace and their inter-relations to be delineated. Answering
the first question shows there are conditions that structure participation in
cyberculture because only certain languages and certain cultural norms of
communication are embedded in cyberspace's technology. Here language is
limited, cultural resources specific and the politics of cyberculture is moulded
by cyberspace's technological history. Answering the second question reveals
the compelling perception that people enter cyberspace, through the screen, as
individuals and from this basis may then construct communities or societies.
This gives rise to an optimistic view of an electronic frontier where pioneers
meet beyond the interference of government and bureaucracy to found
authentic communities. Here an informational libertarianism or anarchism, the
culture of cyberpolitics, is founded on the experiences of those who come to
cyberspace. The underlying dynamic of cyberpolitics' culture and cybercul-
tures' politics lies in the complex relations between these two perspectives
2
rather than the truth of either. Language and libertarianism go together in
cyberspace creating a complex social field.
The politics of cyberculture: language
Who speaks?, in what language? and with which cultural resources? Answers to
these questions establish the basic conditions of any culture's politics. Answers
to each of these for cyberculture were for a long time anecdotal or unavailable
but by the late-199ꢀs an empirically solid foundation for the discussion of
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Language and libertarianism
3
virtual culture had emerged. A key general parameter is the overall number of
Internet users, which in early-2ꢀꢀꢀ was around 25ꢀ million 0Jordan,
forthcoming a). A clear demographic profile also emerged from a number of
surveys. By late-1998 Internet users had an average household income of
$
6ꢀ,ꢀꢀꢀ USA per year, were nearly 9ꢀ% white and had an average age in the
early thirties. All these trends are established over time and have varied little
since the early-199ꢀs. Gender is the only major trend to have shown significant
variation, beginning in 1994 with only around 1ꢀ% of World-Wide Web users
being women and reaching between 3ꢀ±4ꢀ% women by the end of 1995. Some
evidence suggests this figure has stabilised since 1995 at a 35±65% female-male
division, but other surveys show the gender gap continuing to close. For
example, the GVU survey collected in November 1998 found a 34±66% split
0that had been stable at these proportions for several years), whereas a survey
commissioned by Wired magazine in 1997 suggested equality had arrived
finding 48% women and 52% men and a study in early 2ꢀꢀꢀ of USA net users
found that women were in a slight majority 05ꢀ.4%) 0Jordan, 1999a; Pitkow
and Kehoe, 1998; Katz, 1997b; Reuters, 2ꢀꢀꢀ). Overall, Internet users are
white, better paid than average and in their mid-thirties. Whether they are, or
will remain, two-thirds male will only be known with future evidence. These
figures provide only the barest outline, even if they establish some important
points, and a number of other measures are needed. Numbers can be given for
the world-wide distribution of Internet hosts and for the language distribution
4
of hosts.
In early-2ꢀꢀꢀ the Internet was not merely dominated by Western or
developed countries but more specifically by the USA, which had 65% of all
hosts. This was followed by Canada with 9.5, Japan with 3.6 and the UK with
3.3% and with no other country having more than 3% 0Jordan, forthcoming
a). If the world is divided into regions the following picture emerges.
Table 1 Distribution of internet hosts by region, January, 2ꢀꢀꢀ
Host numbers
Percentage
USA=Nafta
Europe
Japan=SE Asia
Central Asia
Australasia=South Pacific
Mid-East=North Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
South America
54,ꢀ26,ꢀ41
11,ꢀ63,376
3,987,96ꢀ
51,493
1,381,659
186,886
179,6ꢀ2
75.42
15.44
5.57
ꢀ.ꢀ7
1.93
ꢀ.26
ꢀ.25
1.ꢀ6
756,ꢀ63
Total
71,633,ꢀ8ꢀ
1ꢀꢀ
Source: Jordan, forthcoming a
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Tim Jordan
As Bourbonnais and Yergau remark `The Internet was designed as a highly
redundant and fault-tolerant mesh. However, its actual structure today, on a
global scale, is much more like a US-centred star' 0Bourbonnais and Yergau,
1
2
996). Inequalities are even more marked than first appear because in January
ꢀꢀꢀ Australia and New Zealand accounted for 99.9% of Australasia=South
Pacific's hosts, South Africa accounted for 99.9% of Sub-Saharan Africa's
hosts and Israel accounted for 74.9% of Mid-East=North Africa's hosts 0Jordan,
forthcoming a). The rapid increase in the Internet's size means that some
diminution of USA dominance might be expected in the future, however there
is no reason to expect less growth in the USA than in other countries because,
despite its number of hosts, the USA is far from a saturated market. The
fundamental fact about the Internet and cyberspace is that when viewed overall
it is, first, USA dominated and, second, over-developed or industrialised
country dominated. These proportional results should not be used hide the fact
that numbers of Internet hosts are on the rise world-wide and in most regions.
When host figures are examined bi-annually from January 1997 until January
2
0
ꢀꢀꢀ, there is only one instance of a region not growing in a six-month period
Sub-Saharan Africa between July 1998 and January 1999) 0Jordan, forth-
coming a). Internet technology allows individuals to choose where they connect
and while the proportional figures reflect the growing dominance of the
dominant, raw numbers of hosts reflect growing Internet availability world-
wide. This point can be made again by looking at the shifts in both proportions
and numbers of hosts divided according to the dominant language of a nation.
Again the message is of the dominance of an already dominant community,
perhaps best broadly termed anglo-american, and despite the overall rapid
growth of the Internet that dominance is, if anything, increasing. This does not
mean that the more than doubling of hosts in countries with a first language
other than English between 1998 and 2ꢀꢀꢀ reflects no extension of virtual
Table 2 Host numbers in nations according to English as a first language
Jan-98
Jul-98
Jan-99
Jul-99
Jan-ꢀꢀ
Total numbers of hosts
English as a first
language
23,184,2ꢀ8 28,7ꢀ5,36ꢀ 33,672,461 44,573,217 57,544,561
English not as a
first language
6,26ꢀ,ꢀ54
7,739,549
9,1ꢀꢀ,775 11,ꢀ85,ꢀ31 14,ꢀ88,519
% of Hosts
English as a first
language
English not as a
first language
78.74
21.26
78.76
21.24
78.72
21.28
8ꢀ.ꢀ8
19.92
8ꢀ.33
19.67
Source: Jordan, forthcoming a
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capabilities to those who have a first language other than English. The Internet
offers the possibility of small numbers of people using its networking and
communication abilities. Recent work on communities such as highlanders on
the Malaysian island of Sarawak and parts of the Philippines point to the
potential for small 0in Internet terms) communities to utilise Internet
capabilities, whether they connect to broader Internet communities or not
0Harris et al. 2ꢀꢀꢀ; Sy, 2ꢀꢀꢀ). The point being made here is that any such
minority use of the Internet, and it can be very powerful, occurs within the
overall dominance of English linguistic communities.
The question that follows from this initial spatialisation of cyberspace's
material substructure concerns the language of cyberspace. Embedded in
cyberspace's technology is a bias towards particularly English but more
generally languages that use Roman characters. This has led to the cultural
domination of cyberspace by English languages that ensures some cultures feel
excluded and marginalised and can make entry to many parts of cyberspace
less attractive to non-English speakers. The fundamental problem is that
Internet technology has largely been designed on the assumption that the
American Standard Code for Information Interchange 0ASCII) is adequate for
transmitting language and ASCII provides usually 128 and at maximum 256
Roman characters. This falls far short of the 7,ꢀꢀꢀ characters needed for
modern Japanese or the 15,ꢀꢀꢀ that Taiwanese authorities have stated a
preference for, even if the Han characters these languages need could be
substituted for the Roman ASCII carries. ASCII does not even provide full
support for all languages that use Roman characters, such as French or
German, because other characters like accents are sometimes not available
0Shapard, 1993: 257 and 268, Mason, 1993; Jerman-Blazic, 1996). ASCII is
assumed to be standard in the protocols controlling email, meaning sending
email in any language but English is complicated by the fundamental design of
email 0Bourbonnais and Yergau, 1996). Other Internet services fare little
better, with Usenet also assuming ASCII as standard, the Web effectively being
English based 0not only in the language of Web pages, but in the technology
needed to access or produce Webpages) and many other Internet services
provide little or no support for non-ASCII languages 0Bourbonnais and
Yergau, 1996; Yong et al., 1996; Volkmer, 1997). Various solutions to these
problems have been worked on. For example, an extension to the HTML
language used to create webpages that would make many languages
compatible with the Web's current technology has been under development
for some time, without finalisation, and the use of the computer language Java
to provide automated translations of Webpages has achieved limited success
5
0Bourbonnais and Yergau, 1996; Yong et al., 1996).
Definition of the substructure of cyberculture can be completed by noting
that the dominance of anglo-american language in cyberspace is accompanied
by its dominance of cultural norms for interaction. Again, the caveat needs to
be kept in mind that minority communities can exist outside of the dominant
cultural norms of cyberspace. However it would be equally false to focus only
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Tim Jordan
on the political effects of such minorities and to fail to define the dominant
context. As Fanon argues, `To speak means to be in a position to use a certain
syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above
all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilisation' 0Fanon,
1
986: 17±8) and cyberspace has so far supported essentially anglo-american
civilisation. This extends not only to the fundamental ability to communicate
but to the forms in which communication occurs. For example, flaming ± the
sending of abusive or short and intolerant replies ± is an often noted result of
computer mediated communication. Sproull and Keisler's experiments showed
as early as 1993 that electronically mediated discussions flatten hierarchies and
are more inclusive but abusive language and angry exchanges are also more
common 0Sproull and Keisler, 1993: 1ꢀ8±11). The cultural norms of the largest
online discussion system, Usenet, also seem riven by competitive and
sometimes abusive forms of communication. Here cultural norms for
discussion are often identified as anglo-american ones that run essentially on
the principle that `if you can't take the heat, get out of the virtual kitchen'
0McLaughlin, Osborne and Smith, 1995; Kollock and Smith, 1999). Trolling is
another, though less obviously abusive, version of this type of interaction that
involves deliberately posting a message that is false to see if someone will take it
seriously and reply. Once someone replies, or is caught by the troll, others who
have spotted the statement as a troll can join in to complicate matters 0Tepper,
1
997). For example, a troll posted on a Star Wars discussion group claimed
that Jamie Lee Curtis was in the movie Star Wars and a reply took this
seriously by pointing out it was actress Carrie Fisher. To this obvious and
correct claim, the following further troll appeared:
That was Carrie Fisher. Ridiculous. Carrie Fisher is much too small and
slight to carry that heavy hairy suit around all day on the set 0cited in
Tepper, 1997: 42).
From here participants may realise that the claim that Jamie Lee Curtis was
the body within the Wookie suit is not meant to be taken seriously or more
discussion will occur, dividing those who get the joke from those who do not.
Such competitive forms of discussion, often far less benign than in trolling,
are common in net discussions and offer cultural forms opposed to many
non-anglo-american cultures 0Jones, 1995; Porter, 1997; Kollock and Smith,
1
999). For example, Japanese cultural norms consist, in part, of slowly
building a consensus behind decisions in ways that avoid any participant
appearing to be obviously wrong either within the process of making the
decision or about the resulting decision 0Shapard, 1993; Yong, et al., 1996).
Similarly, examination of the islands of Kiribati suggests cultural differences
between the Kiribati people and the general cultures of both the net and those
promoting the net, help explain the relative failure of the Internet to grow
there 0Sofield, 2ꢀꢀꢀ). This and other ways of interaction that are not similar
to the individualist and competitive ethos that is part of anglo-american
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communication often find little place on the Internet or may be `balkanized'
into separate communities.
The answers to the questions `who speaks?, in what language? and with
which cultural resources?' delineate some of the pre-conditions for cybercul-
ture. These do not determine cyberculture in any simplistic way or remove the
possibilities of opposing dominant cyberculture but provide issues and trends
that all cybercultures confront and react to. The answers to these three
questions reveal what might be called the `social structures' of cyberculture, in
the sense that they are the conditions that individuals take action within. Any
virtual individual or group that develops a cyberculture will do so, in part, by
consciously confronting or unconsciously working within the fact that
cyberspace is largely populated by wealthier whites and is mainly conducted
in the English language according to anglo-american norms for communica-
tion. There is no reason why these structures should entirely pre-determine any
particular cyberculture or any individual's actions and many cybercultures can
be found that explicitly attempt to negate some aspect of these dominant
structures. For example, many discussion groups attempt to limit or control
flaming by introducing moderators who examine contributions before allowing
them into a discussion. But whether cybercultures swim within the currents
created by social structures or react against them, cybercultures' existing
structures are constituted in the late 199ꢀs by the answers just outlined to three
simple questions.
The culture of cyberpolitics: libertarianism and anarchism6
Social structures are always and everywhere accompanied by individuals and
groups in action. Cyberspace is no different. Social structures do not eliminate
individuals but are the conditions individuals meet when they try to take
action. This means that along with the social structures that have just been
identified, the politics of cyberculture, there may be forms or types of action
that virtual individuals commonly take; a culture of cyberpolitics. These forms
can be found in the typical ways that virtual individuals and groups attempt to
control and govern their particular corners of cyberspace. As noted several
times above, though there is clearly a dominant culture in online life this
does not mean minority, in Deleuze and Guattari's sense of transgressive,
communities cannot also develop within cyberspace. However, the purpose
here is to explore dominant forms of virtual structure and action. The culture
of cyberpolitics can be seen as a type of informational libertarianism or
anarchism that is expressed in many ways, from the editorials of Wired
magazine to the rants of hackers, and builds not from ideological commitments
but from a particular perception experienced by most who enter cyberspace.
Nearly everyone begins each journey into cyberspace as an individual. Alone
in front of the computer screen people confront their singularity before
building a sense of others in the electronic world. There is a double sense of
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individuality here. First, people must simply connect to cyberspace by logging
in, almost certainly involving an individual entering their online name and their
secret, personal password to be rewarded with their little home in cyberspace
0most likely consisting of their email, list of favourite web-sites, online
documents and customised browser=interface). The first moment in cyberspace
is spent by nearly everyone in their own individualised place. Second, moving
from this home to other virtual spaces usually involves some moment of self-
definition; choosing an online name, choosing a self-description or outlining a
biography. For example, when a hacker called Par was on the run from law
enforcement his communication with his lover, called Theorem, continued on a
chat system 0that allowed the appearance of text on both screens as soon as it
was typed by physically separated individuals). Par created a user name and
password for Theorem, a password that would become Theorem's passport to
a virtual lover's tryst. The password was `ParLovesMe!'. Par attempted to allay
his worries at losing the lover he could no longer see by ensuring her individual
moment of password entry would help construct Theorem as Par's lover.
Theorem would first of all enter cyberspace and then, alone, remind herself
that Par loved her just before typing to him 0Dreyfus, 1997: 141±3).
These two recurring moments of individualisation provide a forceful
perception to people that they are individuals in cyberspace. This is true to
the extent that if someone chooses their part of cyberspace well they may be
7
able to entirely reconstruct their individuality. Communities, social structures
and collectives may all appear to the virtual self as built from virtual
individuals, not because of a prior political commitment to theories that posit
the self-interested individual as the basis of all social life, but as a simple
conclusion drawn from a recurring experience in cyberspace. From this basis it
is no surprise that the political ideologies that most emphasise individual
liberty and the right to self-government have been powerful on the Internet;
libertarianism and anarchism. At their heart, both ideologies emphasise the
ability of people to come together in free associations and create just
communities; both tend to emphasise a politics whose major poles are
authoritary versus liberty, rather than left versus right. Louis Rosetto, ex-
editor and co-founder of Wired magazine, one of the homes of cyberspace
8
libertarianism, has argued;
the question is no longer what sort of statists we should be supporting:
Republicans or Democrats, communists or fascists. The question really is
what sort of libertarians we should be supporting. There is no alternative to
a world that's out of control. Central power not only doesn't work, it is not
even possible any more 0cited in Hudson, 1997: 173).
John Perry Barlow, a net ideologue and co-founder of online civil liberties
organisation the Electronic Frontier Foundation 0EFF), argued that cyberpo-
litics is small `l' libertarian because people experience a `genuinely functional,
large-scale anarchy' online and this convinces many that government could be
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smaller or need not exist at all 0cited in Jordan, 1999b; 91). Libertarianism and
anarchism have been articulated by a number of communities in cyberspace
and two will be briefly examined to show how they permeate the language of
cyberpolitics. These communities are online civil rights organisations and
hackers. While undoubtedly important communities within cyberspace, these
two are being used here to illustrate the argument and indicate some empirical
support. The extensive survey of most corners of online life that would be
necessary to empirically establish the claim being made is beyond this article.
Close analysis of one of the earliest and most influential online civil rights
organisations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation 0EFF), shows that its
conception of cyberpolitics is fundamentally two-sided with, on the one hand,
libertarian beliefs and, on the other, an opposition to technological
determinism. EFF's interventions in cyberpolitics began in 199ꢀ and continue
to the present day. EFF had an important role in framing the Clinton
administration's fabled and failed information superhighway proposal, it
played an often central role in nearly all the major episodes of cyberpolitics
since the 199ꢀs 0including late 199ꢀs arguments about encryption and the USA
government, the Rimm porn and Communications Decency Act attempt to
censor the Internet, early 199ꢀs hacker and civil rights cases, to widespread
general education about the nature of cyberspace) and was involved in the
creation of another key civil rights organisation, the Center for Democracy and
Technology. Through this long 0for cyberpolitics) history, EFF has developed
a libertarian view rooted in the belief that a functioning free market of, in
particular, ideas but also goods operates in cyberspace. One founder's
libertarian beliefs have already been mentioned and here is another founder
and Board member, John Gilmore, explaining the way the net's free market in
ideas functions.
People who say things that further investigation shows are bogus, just don't
get listened to. People who say things that are true can build followings.
People who do things that don't tend to work, don't get adopted on the net
and there are very low barriers to adoption ... . There's just been a very
positive trend on things that bear truth in reality, things that turn out over a
period of time or through a lot of discussion to be true. And I think that the
politics of people on the net has tended to follow that rule 0John Gilmore
cited in Jordan, 1999b; 92).
Gilmore, a key figure in the history of Usenet, Sun Microsystems and the
Internet Society as well as EFF, outlines the basis for claiming that larger
state or government structures are not needed in cyberspace because
individuals are capable of self-governance, mediated by the `truth in reality'
that a free market of ideas enables. With such beliefs it is no wonder that
EFF's online activist, Stanton McCandlish, argues that EFF is fairly centrist
on a left=right axis but strongly libertarian on a liberty=authority political
axis 0Jordan, 1999b; 91±4).
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While EFF is only one online activist organisation and has been at times
subject to criticism, its longevity and history mean that its libertarian
9
convictions are emblematic for cyberpolitics. Not all online activist or civil
rights organisations take up libertarian beliefs but all work within them as a
1
ꢀ
`
framing' culture. In contrast, the hacking or cracking community tends to
take up the characteristic tropes of anarchism, rather than libertarianism, to
emphasise its outlaw status. Hackers are often misconceived as pathological,
obsessive individuals who communicate more easily with computers than other
human beings. Such populist misunderstandings consign hackers to the bin of
social outcasts who commit incomprehensible crimes for unintelligible reasons.
While hacker crimes can be technically complex, they typically consist of little
more than exploiting well-known security loopholes or stealing passwords and
their motivations are clear, if the hacker community is listened to. The main
mistake when discussing hackers is to assume that they are not part of any
community, but it is a rare hacker who does not hack with others or has not
swapped knowledge and ideology with other hackers 0Jordan and Taylor, 1998;
Taylor, 1999).
When the hacking community is taken as an object a number of structures
emerge that provide a greater understanding of hackers than simply as
pathological individuals. Two aspects of this community are relevant here.
First, hackers spend time discussing their motivations for hacking and, in
doing so, provide a means by which they can recognise each other as members
of the same community. A type of informational anarchism that focuses on the
need to keep information free and freely available online often features
prominently in these discussions as the language through which any political
commitment to hacking is articulated. For example, Count Zero from the
influential hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow expressed his basic principle
this way, `Freedom of expression is very important to hackers. Anything that
seriously stifles that is wrong' 0Count Zero, 1999; Jordan and Taylor, 1998).
Second, hackers have great difficulty distinguishing themselves from the
computer security industry professionals they see as their nemesis. This is for a
number of reasons. First, the actions both hackers and security professionals
take are remarkably similar, almost indistinguishable. For example, teams of
security professionals can be hired to hack into a company, testing its security
but also acting exactly as hackers would 0Lohr, 1997). Second, many security
professionals once were hackers and, so rumours go, vice versa. It is a common
belief among hackers that they can become security professionals, even that a
spectacular intrusion will lead to a job. The resulting problem for hackers is
that they cannot differentiate themselves from their mortal enemies by their
actions or any formal notion of membership. The means hackers have
developed for establishing their community's boundaries, and solving this
problem, is a series of elaborate metaphors that both explain the nature of
hacking and establish its ethical meaning; typically a hacker might say hacking
is an intellectual pursuit like chess, while a security professional might say it is a
crime like burglary 0Jordan and Taylor, 1998). One way these metaphors are
1
ꢀ
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developed is by embedding them within different political ideologies that
clearly demarcate the different groups and these are usually the same ideologies
found in hackers' discussions of motivations. Hackers typically reach for
anarchism as their ideology to claim that everybody has the right to
cyberspace's information and that cyberspace should be self-governed. This
is most simply expressed in the almost universal hacker slogan `information
1
1
wants to be free' and in a virulent opposition to governments, corporations or
anything that is part of an often vaguely defined `system'.
This is our world now ... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty
of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for
what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you
call us criminals. We explore ... and you call us criminals. We seek after
knowledge ... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin colour,
without nationality, without religious bias ... and you call us criminals. You
build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us to
make us believe that it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I'm a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of
judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. 0Mentor
cited in Stirling, 1992: 86)
It is a rare hacker meeting place or electronic bulletin board that does not
contain files or discussions about anarchy or ring with the sentiments hacker
Mentor wrote down. Hackers articulate what might be called an informational
anarchism that draws mainly on symbols and slogans from the Western
tradition of anarchism, rather than a deep reading of its literature. We can take
Count Zero again in his shouted definition of hacktivism, the term that has
come to stand for politically motivated hacking, `focusing on empowering the
people in those places [he is referring to China and Iraq] with the TOOLS
of hacktivism ... making the WORLD know about the injustices and human
rights abuses ... in other words, getting the FLOW of INFORMATION
pumpin' around the globe ... UNIMPEDED and UNCENSORED ...
THAT'S hacktivism ...!' 0Count Zero, 1999, `...' are included by Count Zero,
see also Jordan, forthcoming b). Here Count Zero expresses at the heart of one
of the most politically articulate hacking groups the central principle of free
flows of information. This at times extreme emphasis on freedom ensures
anarchism and libertarianism are essential ideologies within hacking. This
informational anarchism at times descends into ominous but vague attacks on
the enemy of governments, security forces and corporations, but it also
consistently uses anarchist tropes to argue for the individual's right to explore
all information in cyberspace 0and elsewhere). By often using the most extreme
forms of anarchist language, hackers establish a boundary between themselves
and computer security professionals who work for the despised governments
and corporations. Hackers use a form of individualist, informational
anarchism as their political ideology.
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Tim Jordan
It must be emphasised that not all organisations and individuals involved
in cyberspace are libertarians or anarchists. The point of exploring the two
examples of online civil rights organisations and hackers is to show that all will
engage with libertarianism or anarchism as the culture of cyberpolitics even if
someone's aim is to change that culture. For example, Barbrook and Cameron
attack the proponents of cyberspace's libertarianism:
they are passionate advocates of what appears to be an impeccably
libertarian form of politics ± they want information technologies to be used
to create a new `Jeffersonian democracy' where all individuals will be able to
express themselves freely within cyberspace.
However, by championing this seemingly admirable ideal, these techno-
boosters are at the same time reproducing some of the most atavistic
features of American society, especially those derived from the bitter legacy
of slavery. Their utopian vision ... depends upon a wilful blindness toward
the other ± much less positive ± features of life on the West Coast: racism,
poverty and environmental degradation. ... each member of the `virtual
class' is promised the opportunity to become a successful high-tech
entrepreneur. Information technologies, so the argument goes, empower
the individual, enhance personal freedom, and radically reduce the power of
the nation-state. Existing political and legal power structures will whither
away to be replaced by unfettered interactions between autonomous
individuals and their software. 0Barbrook and Cameron, 1997: 45 and 53)
Barbrook and Cameron, and others, see libertarianism and its individualist
basis as a smokescreen through which elites attempt to impose their will, for
their advantage and in ways that repeat the inglorious US history of slavery,
racism, poverty and pollution 0Barbrook and Cameron, 1997; Kroker and
Weinstein, 1994). This analysis of libertarianism as part of a `Californian
ideology' was distributed around the Web before it was printed and led to a
vigorous online discussion, that Hudson recounts, making it clear the attack on
libertarianism had resonance in online discussion because libertarianism was,
for many, taken for granted 0Hudson, 1997: 173±259). The point for the
present analysis is not that Barbrook and Cameron, and many others, disagree
with libertarianism but that libertarianism is the ideology they have to engage
with in order to intervene in cyberpolitics. A further, perhaps back-handed,
example is Barbrook's recent provocation in his claim that the gift economy in
online life is leading, inevitably, to cyber-communism. Barbrook's central point
revolves around the free exchange of information that he reads as negating
capitalism's reliance on commodity-exchange. He argues `Far from intensifying
commodification, the Net is the practical vindication of the old hacker slogan:
`
`information wants to be free'' ' 0Barbrook, 2ꢀꢀꢀ, 21±2). Even within
passionately anti-capitalist readings of online life we find the same presump-
tion of free flows of information that underpin informational libertarianism
and anarchism.
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Language and libertarianism
The culture of cyberpolitics has developed as libertarian or anarchist. This
does not mean it cannot change or that everyone online is a libertarian or an
anarchist. But to engage in cyberpolitics means engaging with an individualism
that is driven not by ideology or self-interest but by the compelling perception,
experienced daily by virtual selves, that people come and exist online as
individuals.
The cyberculture of cyberpolitics of cyberculture
Language and libertarianism are the structure and action of cyberspace; the
former as the politics of cyberculture and the latter as the culture of
cyberpolitics. The duality of structure and action has often provided the
framework for analyses of society with the argument being over which
dominates the other, but many sociological theorists now claim it is not a
matter of the dominance of one over the other but their ongoing inter-
dependence that determines social forms 0Barnes, 1995). Such a claim of inter-
dependence would be born out by the twins of cyberculture and cyberpolitics.
The concluding point of the present analysis emerges here, for it is not a matter
of identifying whether cultural conditions or political action determine each
other in cyberspace but of recognising that the two flow together. This
conclusion springs from notions of cyberculture and cyberpolitics that lie at the
center of debate in the now thriving area of cyberstudies in anglo-american
research. This has been the first limitation of this analysis. The second
limitation is the impossibility of making the broad arguments that are
necessary to draw out the connections of cyberculture and cyberpolitics while
also providing conclusive empirical evidence. This is clear in the discussion of
host distribution and language dominance on the Internet, where figures show
conclusively the dominance of English but cannot explore a more fine-grained
analysis that might show important uses of the Internet outside of linguistic
dominations. These limitations need to be kept in mind but are worth
entertaining as they allow relations of structure and agency within anglo-
american cyberculture and cyberpolitics to be identified and drawn out. The
concluding point is that within some of the dominant forms of cyberculture
and cyberpolitics the individual is deeply embedded as the hinge around which
virtual structures and virtual actions swing.
Cyberculture and cyberpolitics as conceived within anglo-american cyber-
studies are deeply intertwined. They communicate with each other through the
common reference point of the individual. Libertarianism and anarchism, as
they are espoused in cyberspace, assume the individual as their starting point
and devote most of their attention to the consequences of this assumption. The
liberty of the individual and the right to self-governance are the central
principles of cyberpolitical culture. The pre-conditions of cyberculture usually
involve the linguistic and communication norms of anglo-american societies
in which the aggressive, competitive individual is enshrined. Cybercultural
#
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Tim Jordan
practices, such as flaming or trolling, negate more co-operative cultural norms
of communication and privilege the right and ability of the individual to
communicate how they wish and to disconnect when they wish. While the
individual is the basis of cyberspace's libertarianism and anarchism, conversely
the individual is the result of cyberspace's cultural pre-conditions. Across this
common conception of the sovereign individual, cybercultures and cyberpo-
litics constantly condition each other; on the one hand predetermining cultural
and political possibilities and on the other underpinning the remaking of
culture and politics. Cybercultures and cyberpolitics stand in reciprocally
determining and determined relations that tell us much about how some
conceive the virtual life, the virtual society and the possibilities for culture and
politics in cyberspace.
Open University
Received 29 July 1999
Finally accepted 25 September 2ꢀꢀꢀ
Notes
1
For Deleuze and Guattari `minority' is not about numerical superiority but marks languages
that deterritorialize, are political and are collective 0Deleuze and Guattari, 1986, 16±17). This
definition is appropriate for the arguments presented here as they often revolve around
linguistic communities and any use of the term `minority' in this paper should be read as
meaning Deleuze and Guattari's definition.
2
3
4
For discussion of the co-existence of contradictory `truths' of power in cyberspace, see Jordan
1
999a.
The methodologies for the following are fully explored in Jordan, 1999a; 49±54 and Jordan,
forthcoming a.
Technically a host is a computer with an Internet Protocol IP address. For the purposes of this
paper, a host can be thought of as a computer that is connected to the Internet and therefore
host counts measure the material substructure of the Internet.
5
6
7
It is also true, though not necessarily acceptable, that the use of ASCII provided a common
standard that allowed the Internet to develop rapidly, when any attempt to develop an entirely
inclusive linguistic basis for computer networking would have involved long periods of
negotiation between nationally-based linguistic communities. This is shown by the attempt to
develop a common standard for Chinese, Korean and Japanese that proposed some
standardisation of characters between the languages, which both Korea and Japan rejected
arguing that their languages were unique and not just subsets of the Han characters that make
up Chinese 0Shapard, 1993: 267±7ꢀ).
Libertarianism and anarchism each have complicated histories and ideologies. To untangle the
relationship between these separate traditions and the informational libertarianism and
anarchism developed in cyberspace would take far too much space and time for present
purposes. Instead of locating cyberspace's versions of these ideologies within their own
traditions, I will focus on delineating libertarianism and anarchism as they appear in cyberspace
and defining their virtual sources. Of course, this does not mean claims about the nature of
libertarianism or anarchism in-general are being made, this being a subject for a different
research project.
There are several places in cyberspace where you can change your race, gender, personality and
even become entirely fantastic 0that is, a dragon or other similar creature). MUDS 0Multi-User
Domains) and IRC 0Internet Relay Chat), along with other possibilities, allow the construction
1
4
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Language and libertarianism
of identity entirely through text thereby allowing the wholesale reconstruction of offline
identities when online. For full discussion of identity online see Turkle, 1995, Jordan, 1999a;
chapter three.
8
9
Though this commitment may be changing since Rosetto's departure in 1999.
Nor should it be assumed that staff and Board members of EFF hold the same libertarian views.
There is a range within the organisation from strong libertarian to views that do not see the
state as entirely irrelevant. The point is that in terms of cyberpolitics nearly all staff and Board
members operate within a broadly libertarian framework.
1
1
ꢀ Hacking used to be applied to those who were innovative with computer technology, however it
has become more closely associated with illicit computer intrusion 0Taylor, 1999). Those who
wish to retain hacking with its original meaning often use cracking to denote illicit computer
intrusion. In deference to the more widespread understanding of hackers as computer criminals,
hacking will be used to denote the cracking community.
1 A slogan usually credited to Stewart Brand. See Jordan, 1999a; 193±5 for an analysis of its
meaning.
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