My book project, Cyberlibertarianism, analyzes how a libertarian narrative motivated a coalition of technology groups to advocate against internet regulation in the 1990s and the 2000s. During this period, hackers, early adopters, computer professionals, technology lobbyists, and civil society advocates converged on a libertarian narrative that cast the state as a threat to the promise of the internet. These groups functioned as an anti-regulatory advocacy coalition during a critical period of internet history and crafted a dominant understanding of the internet as an extragovernmental medium. Still, in their range of anti-statist perspectives, they were prone to splinter over differences in ideology and strategy, and, in their categorical opposition to state involvement, they discouraged compromise in policy debates and nuance in regulatory conversations. Meanwhile, people of color, women, queer people, and people with disabilities developed robust regulatory frameworks and creative governance solutions in response to their online experiences.

Through technology periodicals, trade journals, mailing lists, industry reports, and organizational records, I trace the ascendance of a libertarian way of thinking about the internet, examining its roots in the anti-statist political culture of the technology community and its influence in upper echelons of state institutions. Cyberlibertarianism explains how laissez-faire became a naturalized orthodoxy of internet policy, and it lays a foundation for a new policy consensus capable of nurturing the growth of an egalitarian internet.

Header image. The Gadsden flag, reworked by the activist coalition Don’t Tread On the Net during the 2008 net neutrality debate. Created during the American Revolution but claimed by libertarians in the 1970s, the flag shows up all over computer history. As Leslie Berlin notes in Troublemakers, the Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology Institute, a research tank developed by the Semiconductor Industry Association in the 1980s, featured the Gadsden flag as its organizational house banner. Image courtesy of Don’t Tread on the Net.