“It was clear that we were not in control,” Morningstar and Farmer concluded. Their Habitat was a wild-land. It was lawless. It was completely free. In other words, it was, on some level, the last frontier.
For us, the Internet is the last frontier. It represents opportunity. Nobody really knows what’s out there, or what to do about it. It’s an uncharted exploration, and because of that, no one can tell you what to do, because nobody knows. And because nobody knows, everyone is exploring in the same moment. This exploration is both an independent and interdependent journey. You must rely on yourselves to be intuitive, smart, brave, and confident, while relying on others to trust you as much as you choose to trust them. Exploring a frontier is an incredibly empowering experience. We desire that. We need that.
The Internet’s incredible expansion and adoption, I think, reflects a deep desire for this frontier, for personal autonomy and freedom. We feel stifled and oppressed by work, school, society/ culture, family, etc… and the Internet, in its unending freedom, gives us our escape. When we explore that frontier, we embody a similar spirit that drove people to take boats across oceans and hike west towards the sunset. Uncharted cyberspace- boundless, with infinite possibilities, is too tempting to resist.
It’s all so fascinating.
But… will it be won? Can it be won? Time will tell.