* just like the internet itself

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There was once a declaration of intent, to claim the internet, which was a new frontier in human intellectual space, as separate from the politics, capital and culture of the rest of human experience.

In this declaration existing governments were not welcome, existing systems of governance and control were not welcome, only the inquisitive mind.

This though was all a fiction.

The internet had grown out of the Military / Industrial complex and whilst a number of those who had access to it initially were taken by the science fiction of future societies at no point was this new ‘space’ separate from capital and ownership and therefore control.

Whilst the declaration and other statements that came after it espoused the disembodiment of participation in this new space, it ignored the simple fact that it all ran on complex and expensive infrastructure. Power and telecommunications networks, as well as computation hardware that was already incredibly environmentally destructive and also the source of great wealth for a small number of individuals.

Whilst individuals and groups created a story about the internet that told a story of intellectual egalitarianism the space itself was being created in the crucible of capitalism and political control.

At some point every component in this new space had a monetary cost attached to it, this was not the free space of the mind that had been defined in that original declaration document.

What is more, instead of trying to design out or manage these costs of access and running those designing the internet instead attempted to commoditise all activity that took place in the space.