Customer Reviews

Crypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias

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As a media activist, I'm constantly confronted by people who don't understand that the real revolution in media is not the commercial internet, but the "undernet" of hidden economies and private interchanges. Ludlow's book gets it right, avoiding the common misconceptions about the Internet to show why it's not just the battleground for big companies, but the playground for a real revolutionary force. What I really like in this book is the way he collects some of the classic (but under-read) articles on the possibilities of the new media and adds in some intense new stuff. It's like a one-stop shop for the coming age of controlled digital chaos. You NEED to read this book if you want to understand what the future of activism is going to be.

By bringing together a seemingly disparate group of essays Ludlow has discovered a hidden theme in contemporary writings about cyber-space, alt-culture and techno-politics. The strain of dissident utopianism that Ludlow brings forth in this arrangement of short pieces is clearly an important trend, and it's incredibly useful to have all these writings (some classics, like Hakim Bey's "Temporary Autonomous Zones" and some excellent new material, including a great intro by Ludlow) together in one volume. This is really a must-read for anyone interested in what's happening with radical thought right now. Sets out the blueprint for a post-Marxist/post-Capitalist culture that is developing itself outside and within the existing social, economic and political structures. These are texts that academic thinkers will be catching up with in another ten or twenty years...Ludlow transcends his academic background (he's a philosopher, sadly) by seeing their value today.

With all the B.S. about cyberspace showing up in the newspapers and dopey newsmagazines its about "Time" somebody got it right. This is what makes the whole internet/underground culture thing interesting. Lots of great essays on how the new way is actually changing the way people live and interact. If your take on electronic culture comes from reading the kiddie-porn articles and "death of the internet" stuff in the mainstream media, you're missing the big picture. thank you, peter ludlow!!!!!

Ludlow has done it again. His justifiably esteemed High Noon zapped those of us who anachronistically still read ink smudges on paper with a set of electronically vibrant cybermessages from the Electronic Frontier. In Cypto Anarchy, Cyberstates, and Pirate Utopias he delivers a second installment. Here the messages are cyberpolitical: describing, analyzing, imagining, and revelling in the new forms of social, intellectual, and political organization that the net already does, definitely will, maybe could, or just conceivably might make a reality. Half serious argument, half bonzo manifesto, and in both halves some of the sharpest political thinking now in process.

Need to know where the Internet society came from? Where it thinks it is? When it can be regulated? What the future plans of political bodies and their legal policies may be?

Want it all in one book? Well, this is as close as it comes today (2002) and it is an exceptional piece of editorial work selecting the material and organizing it so well.

In the age of "homeland security" policy butting heads with the EU privacy laws...this is a fine balance of views.

I used to think the internet was just for shopping, but I started flipping through this collection of seminal papers on cyberspace ethics at the beach one day, and I realized that the true significance of the internet lies in its ability to reshape our received notions of personal identity and the economy of information. No one could read this volume without experiencing a major case of mind expansion.

Crypto Anarchy is an interesting read, unfortunately, the vast majority (in fact, almost all of them) of the writings years old or available free on-line.

While many of the articles are about the eclectic nature of the net, the reality is that the net has simply turned into another business tool and the utopia that the net was supposed to create never materialized.

As an example, Ludlow devotes a number of pages to Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". Both the declaration and the retort to it are well over five years old and have been already been written about in myriad times.

While many of the articles are dated and obsolete, the single timely and well-written article is by Nathan Newman on the issue of taxes for e-commerce transactions.

Overall, Crypto Anarchy is an interesting reading of old articles.