|  Journalists
and technology pundits all agree that Esther Dyson is a visionary, a
big thinker, a one-woman think tank, and a technology guru. But they
don't agree about exactly what kind of libertarian she is.
Wired magazine described her as an "economic libertarian."
The Warton School of Business said she's a "moderate libertarian."
San Jose's Metro newspaper called her an "unapologetic
libertarian."
Whatever the precise status of her libertarianism, there is no argument
that her influential 1997 book, Release 2.0: A Design for Living
in the Digital Age, offered an explicit vision of how technology
-- specifically, the Internet -- could bring about a more libertarian
future. In it, Dyson predicted that cyberspace would foster "virtual
communities" that exist through the mutual consent of participants.
Such communities, she theorized, would evolve cultures, technological
requirements, and rules -- based on the voluntary agreement of its residents,
not the coercive force of government. According to SunWorld
(January 1998), Release 2.0 "offers a free-market, libertarian
prescription for a set of communities that will, as she sees it, inevitably
take over some of the functions of government in the real world."
When not predicting the future, Dyson is editor of the pricey and influential
newsletter, Release 1.0, which covers the technology industry.
She also contributes a regular column on technology for The New
York Times, where she writes about artificial intelligence, intellectual
property, the Internet, emerging markets, wireless applications, and
social software. She is the chairman of EDventure Holdings, which publishes
Release 1.0, sponsors two annual technology conferences, and
invests in software start-up companies. Fortune magazine once
ranked her one of the 50 most powerful women in American business, and
in 1996 she won Hungary's von Neumann Medal for "distinction in
the dissemination of computer culture."
A Communist at age 10, Dyson gradually became a vocal free-market advocate
-- especially in later years when she visited Eastern Europe and saw
"how debilitating a government can be." However, she cautions
that "you have to be a grownup" about the proper role of government.
"The more you think about these things, the more you realize there
is no simple answer like, 'Government is bad' or, 'Government should
do everything,' " she told Reason (October 1996). "You
have to decide what government should do and not do." That said,
Dyson sounds very libertarian on most issues. Some examples:
* On Washington, DC: "All the things my father had told me about
how disgusting Washington is are true. There are lots of nice, well-meaning
people there. But it's a sleazy place." -- Reason (October
1996)
* On encryption: "[It] is a powerful defensive weapon for free
people. It offers a technical guarantee of privacy, regardless of who
is running the government. It's hard to think of a more powerful, less
dangerous tool for liberty." -- www.WorldofQuotes.com
* On the Soviet Union: "A worker's paradise is a consumer's hell.
People were beaten down. Everything was hostile and dysfunctional."
-- Reason (October 1996)
Dyson is the daughter of English physicist Freeman Dyson and Swiss mathematician
Verena Huber-Dyson. She has a degree in economics from Harvard University,
and worked as a journalist for Forbes magazine, and as a securities
analyst on Wall Street. She has served as chair of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, was a trustee for the National Endowment for Democracy,
and was chair of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN), an international organization that sets Internet infrastructure
policy.
-- Bill Winter |
