Utopian Vision of Cyberspace

While reading Nakamura’s “Race In/For Cyberspace: Identity Tourism and Racial Passing on the Internet,” I began questioning the so-called “utopian” nature of cyberspace. The piece clearly pointed out the racism of the internet, more specifically the racist undertones of the role-playing site LambdaMOO. However, I also began to question the internet’s “utopian vision” as a “promoter of a radically democratic form of discourse.”

Nakamura describes the dog cartoon as portraying the internet as a “social leveler which permits even dogs to express freely themselves in discourse to their masters, who are deceived into thinking that they are their peers, rather than their property.” This may seem true in a general sense, but I don’t see it as entirely accurate. As pointed out in Snow Crash (with some exception to the ‘phone booth’ avatars) and in LambdaMOO, peoples’ “real” identities cannot be revealed. However, Nakamura mentions that there are people who can find out the real identities of those at the website…crackers and hackers. How can the internet be considered “radically democratic” or “utopian” when there are people who invade the privacy and personal freedom of users?

I do not view cyberspace as utopian and see it as paralleling our (America’s) present “democracy.” We are told of our many freedoms in the Constitution, but we are constantly watched and denied unanimity by those who rule. Do the hackers mirror the government in that respect on the internet?