Echoes of 1989 - The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Embryo of Cyberspace 1989

Echoes of 1989 - The Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Embryo of Cyberspace 1989

The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, was not only a historic event that marked the end of the Cold War, but it also changed the political meaning of information technology. Thanks to advances in satellite communications and television coverage, the moment the Wall fell was instantly transmitted to the world, making visible the power of information to transcend authoritarian control. Citizens shared contemporaneous events across borders, and a strong awareness of networks as a symbol of freedom emerged. At that time, international data networks such as PC communications, BBS, and X.25 began to spread, and the exchange of information via modems connected citizens in Western and Eastern Europe, encouraging democratic movements. The spread of these technologies shook the rigidity of the Soviet system, and in China, they provided the impetus for the tightening of thorough information control after the Tiananmen Square protests. The introduction of control technologies
such as encrypted communications and access restrictions subsequently led to the "firewall. The events of 1989 marked a turning point in the positioning of cyberspace from a mere tool for researchers to a practical force for social change, and was a watershed in defining the information order that followed.