It’s not Cyberspace anymore.

[Commentary] It’s been 20 years — 20 years!? — since John Perry Barlow handed out paper copies of his “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” to the government and corporate leaders at the World Economic Forum (WEF): “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone.” Twenty years later, at Davos, what I struggled with the most wasn’t the sheer excess of Silicon Valley in showcasing its value but the narrative that underpinned it all. I’m quite used to entrepreneurs talking hype in tech venues, but what happened at Davos was beyond the typical hype, in part because most of the non-tech people couldn’t do a reality check. They could only respond with fear. As a result, unrealistic conversations about artificial intelligence led many non-technical attendees to believe that the biggest threat to national security is humanoid killer robots, or that AI that can do everything humans can is just around the corner, threatening all but the most elite technical jobs.

In other words, as I talked to attendees, I kept bumping into a 1970s science fiction narrative. Conversations around tech were strangely juxtaposed with the broader social and fiscal concerns that rattled through the halls. Faced with a humanitarian crises and widespread anxieties about inequality, much of civil society responded to tech enthusiasm by asking if technology will destabilize labor and economic well-being. A fair question. The only problem is that no one knows.

[boyd is a social media scholar, youth researcher, and advocate working at Microsoft Research]