Nomads, squatters and settlers: August 28, 1996 issue of New Thinking

August 26, 1996 New Thinking:
Nomads, squatters and settlers

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August 26, 1996

Nomads, squatters and settlers

By Gerry McGovern

The world was once open. Nobody owned it. Nomads moved to where the food and shelter was, and then moved on. There were no laws, no property or other rights. The best things in life were free.

Then agriculture came. People began to cultivate the earth and demanded property rights. The more land you had the richer you were.

Then industrialization and cities came. It was no longer the quantity of land you had that gave it value, but rather what was built on it and its proximity within the urban environment.

Cyber nomads roamed the early Internet. ‘Information wants to be free’ was their motto. But what they really meant was that they wanted to be free. That they felt free on that early Internet. No laws, no property or other rights. The best things on the Internet were free.

The first Internet nomads were really squatters, setting their tents on telephone wires. Squatters didn’t build cities. Yet they did contribute greatly to the building of the Internet. We owe these nomads a lot for the present Internet, and who’s to know what we will owe their untamed creativity for the future Internet.

Nobody owns the Internet. Really? There are landlords for every yard of wire and cable. Every single router and computer has an owner. Yes, the Internet is owned more than the earth ever was. When in history have landlords got such a return from their squatters?

The Internet is rapidly moving from a seemingly worthless, vast space, to a commercial marketplace where things have value and money can be made.

The open standards, the communal creativity and sharing that contributed so much to the massive growth and evolution of the Internet, now face up against the business imperative to make profit.

This time, there doesn’t have to be conflict, like the farmers of old fought the nomads. In fact, on the Internet, the settler and the nomad need each other.

Physical land was finite; there was only so much of it. Hard disk space is cheap and essentially infinite. So, the rights of the cyber nomad to wander do not necessarily impinge of the rights of those who want to own and develop cyber property.

Certainly, the road (wires) into the cyber-wilderness will be slow to travel, but the unusual spaces and lifestyles which grow out there should pose no real threat to the growth of commerce, but rather will provide imaginative material for its creative evolution.

When Europe wanted to expand, it headed for the Americas and wiped out the Native Americans. Below the soil of cyberspace are no digital oil, iron or coal resources, which demand that a piece of land be invaded. Sound, images, text and programming are all refined from the rootless imagination.

In previous history, we saw linear development; from nomadic, to agricultural, to industrial. In the digital age, we can see the parallel coexistence of very different ways of life.

Are you nomadic, agricultural, industrial or digital? Or maybe a mixture of them all?

Gerry McGovern

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The Internet is rapidly moving from a seemingly worthless, vast space, to a commercial marketplace where things have value and money can be made.