Technologies of participation: a history of the symbolic framework for networked computers as a speech system

In Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), the Supreme Court encountered the internet and defined it as a speech system protected by the First Amendment. Nearly 30 years later, this view is ubiquitous. Where did this vision of the internet come from? This article tells that story. Contrary to an academic consensus that this idea resulted from the Californian Ideology, this article shows the origin of the ideological and legal recipe for how the US internet should work was written in the 1940s by a network of liberal, cybernetic Cold Warriors who believed democracy could be safeguarded from authoritarianism through participation, which provided for individual liberty and democratic stability. These themes culminated in Ithiel de Sola Pool’s book Technologies of Freedom, which articulated a symbolic framework for understanding networked computers, the forerunner of the internet, as a speech system. He sought to protect their participatory affordances through absolute First Amendment coverage, which influenced key legal internet architects at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who would successfully bring his ideas to the Reno Court. This story explains where one of the core American ideas of what the internet is for comes from and teaches where US internet law comes from.