Added By Jenna Walsh
A collection of essays from 1996, on the new digital age, with themes such as computer viruses, surveillance, and the relationship between nature and tech.
John Perry Barlow
“Neither asked nor answered in all of this was the one question that kept coming back to me: Was this trip really necessary?
For all the debate over the details, few on either side seemed to be approaching the matter from first principles. Were the enshrines
threats-drug dealers, terrorists, child molesters, and foreign enemies sufficiently and presently imperiling to justify fundamentally compromising all future transmitted privacy?”
John Perry Barlow
Yet how does that differ from biological life? If a clump of moss can attack a rock to get some sunshine and grow, it will do so ruthlessly.
We call that beautiful. So how different is that from a computer virus attaching itself to a program? If all one is concerned about is the preservation of the inanimate objects (which are ordinary programs) in this electronic world, then of course viruses are a nuisance.
THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF COMPUTER VIRUSES
Living organisms universally use the inanimate world with little concern for it, from the smallest cell which freely gathers the nutrients it needs and pollutes the water it swims in, right up to the man who crushes up rocks to refine the metals out of them and build airplanes. Living organisms use the material world as they see fit. Even when people get upset about something like strip-mining, or an oil spill, their point of reference is not that of inanimate nature. It is an entirely selfish concept (with respect to life) that motivates them. The mining mars the beauty of the landscape—a beauty which is in the eye of the (living) behold-er—and it makes it uninhabitable. If one did not place a special emphasis on life, one could just as well promote strip-mining as an