"Never in all their history have men been able truly to conceive of the world as one: a single sphere, a globe ... a round earth in which all the directions eventually meet, in which there is no center because every point, or none, is center — an equal earth which all men occupy as equals."
That statement was made by lawyer, poet and librarian of the US Congress, Archibald MacLeish in 1942, over 60 years ago; but it has remained evocative with the passage of time. With the world enmeshed in a great war, MacLeish described his "image of victory" based on the perspective of what he called "the airman's earth", that is, the earth as seen from the air.
Twenty five years later, Macleish's description was profoundly viewed by all of humanity when the pictures of our planet, our earth, taken from the unique perspective of space, were first published.
Now more than 60 years later, his compelling image of an equal earth where every point or none is center can very well describe the world created by information and communication technology - cyberspace, the world wide web, the Internet.
The question before us today is this: will our laws help us create such an equal world, or with they hinder us.
In A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace written in 1996, John Perry Barlow famously declared that the "governments of the industrial world... Weary giants of flesh and steel... have no sovereignty" in cyberspace. That extremist view has since been rejected but several of its underlying principles cannot and should not be ignored, and I paraphrase Barlow:
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. (It is) a world that is both everywhere and nowhere... (will it be a) world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth... (will it be a) world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity...
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct privilege to welcome you to this luncheon fellowship on the Philippine legislative agenda for information and communication technology and to welcome you to a new frontier for the Philippine Bar Association as we seek to become partners in creating, through information and communication technology, MacLeish's "equal earth which all men occupy as equals."
