For a time, futurists dreamed, optimistically, that cyberspace might exist as a place where humankind could hit reset on society. The idea was that the arrival of networked computers would create an imaginary space where bodily markers of difference would be masked by a Utopian fog. In 1996, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, John Perry Barlow issued a manifesto titled A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, which stated, We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force or station of birth. Barlow continued that the civilization he and others hoped to create would be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

By now we know that those dreams were a fantasy, informed by the same imperialistic and colonial urges that underpinned the creation of the internet itself. No dream internet Utopia ever emerged. Instead, societal woes have been compounded by the rise of technology. The internet has been oriented around an axis of maximizing profits, almost since its inception. In The Know-It-Alls, the journalist (and my former colleague) Noam Cohen documents the emergence of Stanford University (nicknamed Get Rich U.) as the birthplace of Silicon Valley, a place where a hackers arrogance and an entrepreneurs greed has turned a collective enterprise like the web into something proprietary, where our online profiles, our online relationships, our online posts and web pages and photographs are routinely exploited for business reasons. Today, it feels almost impossible to imagine another way of thinking about the internet.

And yet, in the aftermath of the arrival of the novel coronavirus, one has emerged that feels, at least for the moment, closer to John Perry Barlows embarrassingly earnest speech. Its worth noting that he also said that cyberspace was an act of nature, and it grows itself through our collective actions.

Historically speaking, new infrastructures tend to emerge as a response to disasters and the negligence of governments in their wake. In the 1970s, for example, an activist group called the Young Lords seized an X-ray truck that was administering tuberculosis tests in East Harlem, where the disease was prevalent, and extended the operating hours to make it more readily available to working residents. In the days since the crisis began, Ive been turning to Adrienne Maree Browns 2017 book, Emergent Strategy, which offers strategies for reimagining ways to organize powerful movements for social justice and mutual aid with a humanist, collective, anticapitalist framework. She describes the concept as how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for. Her book asks us not to resist change. That would be as futile as resisting the deeply embedded influence technology has on our lives. Its the same as resisting ourselves. But rather, it asks that we adapt, in real time, taking what we know and understand and applying it toward the future that we want. The internet will never exist without complications already, many of the tools that are helping acclimate to this new cyberreality have been called out for surveillance but perhaps people are learning how to work the tools to their advantage now.

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Has Coronavirus Made the Internet Better? - The New York Times