The Cyberspace Doctrines that you need to know

Since its inception, cyberspace has been a breeding ground for ideas—some utopian, others disruptive—that have shaped the minds of those who navigate its depths.

Since its inception, cyberspace has been a breeding ground for ideas—some utopian, others disruptive—that have shaped the minds of those who navigate its depths. Understanding these ideas is not just an intellectual exercise; it is a key to deciphering the hidden logics of the digital age.

Cyberspace is more than a virtual construct—it is an autonomous dimension, a vast and evolving landscape where communication, economy, information exchange, and social structures are redefined. In many ways, it has become the primordial soup of modern thought, where ideas take shape before crystallizing into the physical world.

Today, we no longer live in a reality where the digital is a mere extension of the physical. Instead, cyberspace often precedes and dictates the contours of the material realm. Technologies are born digital and only later unfold their effects in our tangible surroundings. The digital frontier is no longer just a tool—it is the battleground where sovereignty, identity, and power are reimagined.

Among the foundational theories and movements that have defined cyberspace, the following stand out:

• The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace

• The Network States Hypothesis

• The Cypherpunk Movement

• The Crypto-Anarchist Doctrine

• The Digital Sovereign Individual Paradigm

• The Post-Privacy Theory

• The Principle of Net Neutrality

Each of these concepts represents a different facet of the struggle to define freedom, governance, and self-determination in the digital era. Exploring them means understanding not only the history of cyberspace but also its possible futures.

The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace

The Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace is a document written by John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and published in 1996.

The text was written in response to the Communications Decency Act of 1996, a U.S. law that sought to regulate and censor content on the Internet.

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."

The main goal of the Declaration is to assert the autonomy of the Internet and declare the independence of cyberspace from national governments' laws and regulations. Barlow argues that cyberspace is a new frontier, different from the physical world, and that governments have no jurisdiction over it. The Declaration was published during the annual Davos meeting of the World Economic Forum, of which Barlow was a member.

A central theme is the defense of freedom of expression on the Internet. Barlow states that cyberspace is an environment where ideas can be exchanged freely, without censorship or control by governments. However, Barlow also speaks of achieving a kind of “common good” through shared cyber governance founded on the Golden Rule: do not do unto others what you would not want done to you.

In my opinion, the rule can easily become tautological and cause much harm, justifying the control and censorship that Barlow claims to fight against. After all, who would not want to combat pedophilia, terrorism, and crime in general?

"We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different."

We can say that despite good intentions, Barlow not only ends up ontologically approaching cyberspace and physical space as the same thing, but through the Golden Rule, he risks reproducing the same liberal schemes that characterize post-Enlightenment society, such as the “Social Contract,” which have led to the hyper-regulation and standardization of every human aspect.

The Network States Hypothesis

The doctrine of the Network State, very recent and decidedly more pragmatic than the Declaration of Independence, proposes a new form of political and social organization based on digital technologies and global communication networks. This concept was developed and promoted by Balaji Srinivasan in the eponymous essay.

"A network state is a social network with a moral innovation, a sense of national consciousness, a recognized founder, a capacity for collective action, an in-person level of civility, an integrated cryptocurrency, a consensual government limited by a social smart contract, an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories, a virtual capital, and an on-chain census that proves a large enough population, income, and real-estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition."

According to him, a Network State is a sort of social network that manages to channel a quasi-nationalistic consciousness and thus a shared intentionality that leads its members to act as if they were part of a community of individuals. A Network State can be founded, just like ancient communities, even by a small group of individuals with shared interests (for example, starting from a Telegram group).

Since Network States are not tied to a specific territory, their citizens can be scattered around the world. This allows membership in Network States to be detached from obsolete concepts such as nationality or physical residence, linking it instead to participation and active engagement in the digital community.

Unlike other doctrines, the Network State does not antagonize nation-states occupying physical space but aims to receive diplomatic recognition from them.

A graphical representation of a distributed Network State

According to Srinivasan, diplomatic recognition would become inevitable once the community members managed to acquire sufficient physical resources, such as assets, land, and properties worldwide, to achieve enough political weight, even if distributed.

An interesting theory, which I do not rule out could gain traction in the near future, once the torpor of minds characterizing the end of the Industrial Age is overcome.

The Cypherpunk Movement

The Cypherpunk movement exists in the liminal space between the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace and the cold pragmatism of Network States. It’s a fragmented current of thought—an underground force that has silently reshaped the architecture of digital freedom.

Born in the twilight of the '80s and '90s, the movement emerged from a circle of enigmatic figures—activists, cryptographers, and visionaries—who deciphered the hidden potential of cryptography. They did not merely advocate for privacy; they saw in encryption the alchemical key to a new political order, a silent revolution unfolding in lines of code.

This doctrine was captured in The Cypherpunk Manifesto, a text that echoes from the early days of cyberspace. Penned in 1992 by Eric Hughes, one of the movement’s original founders, it is a blueprint for a world where secrecy is power and cryptography is the new sword of sovereignty.

The movement had very concrete consequences in the development of numerous technologies we now call “privacy-enhancing technologies,” which, thanks to cryptography, enhance user privacy and anonymity.

A paradigmatic case was Phil Zimmerman, who in 1991 developed and published the PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) protocol, still in use today. Another example is Bitcoin, whose protocol is rooted in 30 years of research in privacy-enhancing technologies and electronic currencies.

As described in the Manifesto, Cypherpunks were first and foremost builders of digital technology for privacy protection. They knew that with the beginning of the Digital Age, there would be a need to create tools to protect people's privacy and thus their freedom:

"We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. […]

We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money. […]

Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and we're going to write it."

The Crypto-Anarchist Doctrine

Crypto anarchism is an ideology that combines the principles of the Cypherpunk movement with those of anarchism, understood in a libertarian sense: no authority, no central government, and self-governance of the interested parties.

The idea was presented in 1988 by Tim May, another co-founder of the Cypherpunk movement, in the Crypto Anarchist Manifesto and further explored through a series of subsequent essays.

"Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner.

Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive re-routing of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering."

According to Tim May, the nature of cyberspace and the proliferation of privacy-enhancing technologies would allow people to interact anonymously and securely, safe from any interference by pre-established physical space authorities.

Tim May actually imagined the birth of what he called “crypto-anarchic virtual communities” and anonymous global markets. Crypto Anarchy is a chaotic-neutral theory, as it grants everyone — even criminals, terrorists, pedophiles and murders the tools to be anonymous and untraceable online:

"Crypto anarchy will allow national secrets to be traded freely and will allow illicit and stolen materials to be traded. An anonymous computerized market will even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and extortion. Various criminal and foreign elements will be active users of CryptoNet. But this will not halt the spread of crypto anarchy."

You won’t find any reference to the “Golden Rule” of the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace in Crypto Anarchy. Only a pure and radical freedom to act without interference.

You can learn more about crypto-anarchist communities here:

Pirate islands and crypto-anarchist utopias

The Digital Sovereign Individual Paradigm

The Digital Sovereign Individual paradigm is based on the idea that, thanks to digital technologies and globalization, individuals can achieve an unprecedented form of personal sovereignty.

The paradigm approaches Crypto Anarchy, albeit less focused on the political and social aspect of the Digital Age revolution, and much more on the Promethean potential of digital technology. The theory is explored in the book "The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age" by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, written in 1997.

"In the new millennium, knowledge and information will become the most important source of power and wealth, overshadowing traditional resources like land and capital."

According to Davidson and Rees-Mogg, cyberspace and digital technologies will allow the most capable and aware individuals (i.e., Privacy Chronicles readers) to become “sovereigns” of themselves.

Technological decentralization and the advent of cryptocurrencies, in particular, will enable these individuals to operate commercially on a global level, detached from any national territory, thus allowing them to choose the most favorable jurisdictions even in terms of taxation.

According to this theory, also based on the historical observation of “megapolitical” phenomena that have always characterized human evolution, digital technology will gradually cause nation-states to lose all their power, thus encouraging the spread of these new sovereign individuals, among whom the best will achieve extreme freedom of action and economic power akin to small nation-states (eventually, a one-man billion-dollar company will emerge thanks to AI).

"As the logic of violence changes, the institutions that have historically relied on force for their existence, including the nation-state, will be increasingly challenged and rendered obsolete. […]

Individuals will achieve greater autonomy and personal freedom as the capacity of states to tax and control diminishes."

Learn more here:

Gunpowder, Cryptography, and Sovereign Individuals

Post-Privacy

Post-Privacy theory is an emerging concept that explores the idea that privacy, as traditionally understood, is becoming increasingly obsolete due to digital technologies and the hyper-sharing culture born with social networks.

The idea comes from authors like David Brin, author of "The Transparent Society," and Christian Heller, author of "Post-Privacy." Post-Privacy advocates claim that total transparency and the open sharing of all personal information and data would lead to a more honest and fair society.

Some translated excerpts from Heller's essay:

"The minimalist approach to data that an individual can afford is limited. Often, they only have the choice to participate in the social cosmos of the internet – or not. Those with accounts on popular internet services like Amazon, Facebook, or Google have already given them the key to their intimate selves. They may abstain from consciously spreading images, opinions, or descriptions of themselves. But […] the thinking machines of the network know more about us than we do, more than our parents and friends combined. […]

But almost no one stops using Google or deletes their Facebook profile for this reason. […] There are no long-term defense possibilities against the multiplication of eyes and ears around us."

Heller is essentially resigned to a world where total transparency is the default state of human existence in cyberspace, and that it is in no way avoidable.

Indeed, we are the ones who want it! And how could we avoid it, when, as the author states, "there will be real-time streaming cameras in every pair of glasses"? Who knows if Heller imagined that a few years later, Meta would create the first pair of sunglasses with an integrated camera.

In fact, Post-Privacy is more a recognition of the current reality than a theory. After almost 20 years of social networks, we are probably at the peak of the sharing and surveillance culture. We have all now accepted being constantly recorded by hundreds of cameras whenever we move around the city, and constantly monitored by the tracker we call a smartphone. It is possible that new generations could drastically change course, as often happens.

I disagree with those who, in the context of Post-Privacy, argue that total transparency could reduce power asymmetries and promote accountability and honesty. According to the proponents of this theory, rather than hiding their information, people should focus on its control and responsible sharing.

Needless to say, total transparency is the foundation of social scoring systems, and we know well what a slippery slope that can be. The idea of absolute transparency might work within closed communities (Crypto Anarchic or Network States) where people are protected by anonymity or pseudo-anonymity or where there are clear shared rules that can protect people from possible abuses.

The Principle of Net Neutrality

Finally, it is worth mentioning the concept of Net Neutrality, a fundamental principle for the open and free functioning of the Internet. This principle holds that all data on the Internet should be treated equally, without discrimination or preference based on content, application, website, platform, type of equipment used, or communication mode.

According to the principle of Net Neutrality, ISPs (Internet Service Providers) should not block, slow down, or prioritize any content, application, service, or customer. A small blog like Privacy Chronicles must be accessible to anyone, just like a global online streaming platform.

According to Net Neutrality supporters, this is a fundamental principle to guarantee freedom of expression and fair competition among people and companies in cyberspace. In the West, there are laws that establish the principle of Net Neutrality, although there are continuous attempts to modify or abolish them altogether.

According to ISPs and other opponents, Net Neutrality is too restrictive a principle that prevents operators from freely and effectively managing their networks. In fact, the principle of Net Neutrality would not allow ISPs to facilitate access to their commercial partners' websites (or slow down competitors' access) and would not allow them to impose different rates based on the types of websites being visited.

Although the principle of Net Neutrality may seem entirely sensible at first glance, a libertarian might argue that it is not right to prevent an ISP from managing its property (network infrastructure and connectivity) as it sees fit. The debate is far from closed.

This is Privacy Chronicles: the only newsletter that explains the Digital Age by navigating the relationship between privacy, free will, and technology. With a touch of philosophy and technical advice.

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