Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

Thanks, Chutney!  In a previous blog I suggested that there is a fourth level in cyberspace, above the infrastructure, service (”constitutional”), and application levels. Chutney suggests calling the top level the “civic” rather than my more prosaic “institutional”.  I think he is right–”civic” has all the right connotations of community, civility, public service, and so on. So the four levels are the infrastructure (e.g. telcos), the service (ISPs, services, operating systems), the application (browsers, blogs, RSS and other standards) and the civic level (online communities, networks of bloggers, wired enterprises, etc.).

Here is my own previous post, amended:  I think cyberspace has four big levels, not just three, where the fight to keep cyberspace open and free is being joined.  At the infrastructure level we fight monopoly telcos and software companies and we strive for open networks and spectrum.  At the “constitutional” level friends like Larry Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain hammer away at maintaining basic freedoms.  And at the application level you and others create blogging sotware and the whole meta-domain of community formation tools, as well as the standards to allow this rich ecosystem of technology to continue to co-evolve.  These tools and standards provide a dramatically effective environment for individual and community empowerment.  And finally, the action is really heating up at the – what shall we call it? – the level of establishing new social inventions and societies that challenge the old order institutions of the meat world.  Perhaps we could call this the “civic level” as suggested by Chutney.