26
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski
users from those regions, Internet users in places like China, India, Latin America, and
Southeast Asia will soon dwarf these early adopting constituencies. With these new
digital natives will come a different culture of governance and a new set of strategic
interests. Although it is not assured that these values, norms, and interests will clash
wholesale with the prevailing modes of cyberspace practices, they are bound to do so
in various ways that will invariably lead to contestation. Already the signs of such
contestation are visible and seem destined to grow in scale and importance.
Images and metaphors of cyberspace are a useful way to portray its dominant characteristics. William Gibson, the science fi ction author who coined the term “ cyberspace, ” paints a picture of the domain as a virtual reality matrix in which users would
physically plug their minds into and escape into a world of “ endless city lights receding. ”
15 The image evokes clean spheres and precise mathematical coordinates — like
the contours of 3D computer graphics. Gibson was infl uenced by his experiences of
the game arcades that peppered downtown Granville Street in Vancouver, Canada,
where he lived. For many cyberspace users today, this consumerist abstraction is still
the dominant impression.
Elsewhere, we have characterized cyberspace as a kind of gangster version of New
York — private and public actors intermixing with criminals and quasi authorities in a
myriad of overlapping rules and regulations.
16 For the next phase of its evolution, the
more appropriate image is perhaps the favela , or the shantytown — which better
describes from where the next billion cyberspace users are likely to come. The majority
of new Internet users in 2010 came from the developing world.
17 While many Western
analysts like to think of cyberspace as the realm of high-tech chrome and virtual light,
it is in the back streets of the developing world, with its intermittent power, crowded
Internet caf é s, and burgeoning wireless access points, that the future of the Internet
is now being forged.
These next-generation digital natives are very different from the ones that until
now have ruled and shaped cyberspace. These digital natives are also emerging under
much different contexts than those that applied to the Silicon Valley generation. For
this next generation, the Internet has not been a public (and often free) resource that
they have encountered in libraries, schools, offi ces, and living rooms. It is, rather, a
relatively precious resource that has to be bought, built, or stolen, and carefully
weighed against other competing expenses and needs. Whereas for the Silicon Valley
generation the dream of cyberspace had to do with access to information, freedom of
speech, social connections, and entrepreneurial fl air, for the new digital natives cyberspace may be something completely different, as well as a means for following dreams
that are otherwise thwarted in their local contexts. For these new digital natives,
cyberspace may offer the best means not only for routing around structural barriers
to socioeconomic advancement; it offers a way to gain access to global markets — and
gain economic riches far in excess of those available locally. Such access does not
Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski
users from those regions, Internet users in places like China, India, Latin America, and
Southeast Asia will soon dwarf these early adopting constituencies. With these new
digital natives will come a different culture of governance and a new set of strategic
interests. Although it is not assured that these values, norms, and interests will clash
wholesale with the prevailing modes of cyberspace practices, they are bound to do so
in various ways that will invariably lead to contestation. Already the signs of such
contestation are visible and seem destined to grow in scale and importance.
Images and metaphors of cyberspace are a useful way to portray its dominant characteristics. William Gibson, the science fi ction author who coined the term “ cyberspace, ” paints a picture of the domain as a virtual reality matrix in which users would
physically plug their minds into and escape into a world of “ endless city lights receding. ”
15 The image evokes clean spheres and precise mathematical coordinates — like
the contours of 3D computer graphics. Gibson was infl uenced by his experiences of
the game arcades that peppered downtown Granville Street in Vancouver, Canada,
where he lived. For many cyberspace users today, this consumerist abstraction is still
the dominant impression.
Elsewhere, we have characterized cyberspace as a kind of gangster version of New
York — private and public actors intermixing with criminals and quasi authorities in a
myriad of overlapping rules and regulations.
16 For the next phase of its evolution, the
more appropriate image is perhaps the favela , or the shantytown — which better
describes from where the next billion cyberspace users are likely to come. The majority
of new Internet users in 2010 came from the developing world.
17 While many Western
analysts like to think of cyberspace as the realm of high-tech chrome and virtual light,
it is in the back streets of the developing world, with its intermittent power, crowded
Internet caf é s, and burgeoning wireless access points, that the future of the Internet
is now being forged.
These next-generation digital natives are very different from the ones that until
now have ruled and shaped cyberspace. These digital natives are also emerging under
much different contexts than those that applied to the Silicon Valley generation. For
this next generation, the Internet has not been a public (and often free) resource that
they have encountered in libraries, schools, offi ces, and living rooms. It is, rather, a
relatively precious resource that has to be bought, built, or stolen, and carefully
weighed against other competing expenses and needs. Whereas for the Silicon Valley
generation the dream of cyberspace had to do with access to information, freedom of
speech, social connections, and entrepreneurial fl air, for the new digital natives cyberspace may be something completely different, as well as a means for following dreams
that are otherwise thwarted in their local contexts. For these new digital natives,
cyberspace may offer the best means not only for routing around structural barriers
to socioeconomic advancement; it offers a way to gain access to global markets — and
gain economic riches far in excess of those available locally. Such access does not