I find this amusing as when I look at the internet I don't see libertarians, I see socialists (anonymous flame-baiters aside)
Just as a counter example, the author points out:
"The internet, seen through this cultural lens, is very libertarian. CJ demonstrates this in their video by showing an ad from the 90s for a computer with internet capability that appeals to individuality. It paints the city as something dark, inhuman and monstrous; endless queues through dark corridors; store clerks are living corpses that represent authoritarian bureaucracies."
Rather than this, what I see is a socialist internet that demonizes city sprawl and champions YIMBY movements. Talk about your suburban house or rural homestead or your car or your preference not to live next to a half way house and you will be vilified. Yet these lifestyle preferences are exactly the kind of things that make libertarians well libertarians. Can a libertarian support living next to a half way house? Sure, but these kinds of property rights and assertion of preferences are what libertarians are typically all about.
The internet is a product of state-funded military research and public university collaboration. The software that keeps the internet and well life as we know it running is open-source, relying on developers donating their labor to a digital commons. The internet is not a libertarian triumph (or dark dystopia) of private property; it is a socialist triumph of public funding and global collective sharing.
If what the author actually means is that the internet is libertarian because the pseudo-anonymous Eric Cartmans asserting "I do what I want" in online forums then sure. That is a long way off from actual libertarianism though. Free speech is championed in many corners of the internet and is not the purview of the libertarian.
uberman•15m ago
Just as a counter example, the author points out:
"The internet, seen through this cultural lens, is very libertarian. CJ demonstrates this in their video by showing an ad from the 90s for a computer with internet capability that appeals to individuality. It paints the city as something dark, inhuman and monstrous; endless queues through dark corridors; store clerks are living corpses that represent authoritarian bureaucracies."
Rather than this, what I see is a socialist internet that demonizes city sprawl and champions YIMBY movements. Talk about your suburban house or rural homestead or your car or your preference not to live next to a half way house and you will be vilified. Yet these lifestyle preferences are exactly the kind of things that make libertarians well libertarians. Can a libertarian support living next to a half way house? Sure, but these kinds of property rights and assertion of preferences are what libertarians are typically all about.
The internet is a product of state-funded military research and public university collaboration. The software that keeps the internet and well life as we know it running is open-source, relying on developers donating their labor to a digital commons. The internet is not a libertarian triumph (or dark dystopia) of private property; it is a socialist triumph of public funding and global collective sharing.
If what the author actually means is that the internet is libertarian because the pseudo-anonymous Eric Cartmans asserting "I do what I want" in online forums then sure. That is a long way off from actual libertarianism though. Free speech is championed in many corners of the internet and is not the purview of the libertarian.