Abstract

This article deals with the transformations that cyberspace underwent between the end of the 1990's and the beginning of the new century. In particular, after summarizing the main contours of the political and cultural confl ict on the nature of digital networks, the article highlights the increasing importance of regulation and mechanisms of control through which states and hardware and software corporations shape the Internet's architecture. As it has become a battlefi eld for political and economic power on a worldwide scale, cyberspace has lost its original libertarian and egalitarian spirit. Despite these transformations, and indeed partially thanks to them, the Internet and digital media are, and will increasingly be in the future, fundamental technologies for the renewal of politics.