More broadly, Barlow was arguing that nothing from the offline world—traditional rules, institutions, and codes of behavior, even history itself—carried any weight in cyberspace, which was “a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.” Having ditched America’s living history of racism in less than a sentence, and ignored the misogyny outright, Barlow was then free to demand the familiar absolutist line about online speech. “Anyone, anywhere,” he wrote, “may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.” The declaration is a political statement about as nuanced and considered as the hand-scrawled “Keep Out” sign that a teenager tapes on his door. Nonetheless, it accurately describes much of the Web today—the hostility to authority and rules or regulations of any kind; the privileging of freedom over empathy; the fantasy that the Internet is immune to the pull of history.