ABSTRACT
In February 1996, John Perry Barlow, lyricist of the rock band Grateful Dead, wrote the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. In a flaming email directed to the US government, John Perry Barlow condemned the new Telecommunications Act which sanctioned the circulation of indecent and obscene material on the internet. This chapter focuses on several key texts, including Barlow's Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace and Critical Art Ensemble's (CAE) The Electronic Disturbance, and examines their performative ability to lay the grounds of digital direct action. The chapter examines the narratives that construct cyberspace as the new stage of social and political action. It then focuses on the various cyber-imaginaires that place digital technology at the centre of society. In The Internet Imaginaire, Flichy (2007) introduces the concept of digital imaginaire, explaining that many stories about technology emerged from scientific discoveries, before becoming trendy topics for literature, counterculture movements and mass media publications.
