The central metaphor for the changes in society that have given rise to speculation about an epochal shift to a new age is cyberspace. Cyberspace is a bioelectronic environment of knowledge that exists everywhere there are telephone wires, coaxial cables, fiber-optic lines or electromagnetic waves. In this sense, it is both universal, stretching across the globe in every direction, and formless. Like a frontier, cyberspace is continually expanding as people create and define its limits at an increasingly accelerated pace. According to the authors of the Magna Carta, the exploration of cyberspace is the key to a future filled with individual opportunity and freedom:

The bioelectronic frontier poses some critical challenges to a society still largely enamored with the old ways. In fact, as the Magna Carta argues, the social institutions of the Second Wave must all be radically transformed before the Third Wave can fully take root. Primarily, this means that the mass mentality of centralization and standardization with which our institutions and culture have been built, must be "demassified." Consequently we must rethink some of the most basic concepts of our culture, including property, the marketplace, freedom, community, and government.

There are several forms of property that make up cyberspace: "Wires, coaxial cable, computers and other 'hardware'; the electromagnetic spectrum; and 'intellectual property' -- the knowledge that dwells in and defines cyberspace." The Magna Carta argues that intellectual "cyberproperty" is the key Third Wave property form. The most fundamental social transformation in the new civilization will be the shift from a mass-production, mass-media, mass-culture civilization to a demassified civilization, which means that knowledge must itself be demassified:

Thus, the big question as we stand at the threshold of the new civilization concerns the ownership of cyberspace property rights. Who will define the nature of these rights and how?

Actionable knowledge--a concept encompassing "data, information, images, symbols, culture, ideology, and values"--is also the key to understanding the Third Wave economy. "Customized knowledge permits 'just in time' production for an ever rising number of goods." This transforms the market, creating the potential for a dynamic competition to replace the static competition typical of the mass production mentality of the Second Wave. The downsizing and restructuring trend of recent years is an example of business using Third Wave technology to make themselves more dynamic.

Third Wave innovations demand not just a re-thinking of property and markets, but of the American concept of freedom itself. The authors of the Magna Carta understand freedom in terms of individual liberty, and argue that a reaffirmation of the basic principles of such freedom is necessary for a genuine exploration of the latest American frontier--cyberspace. In practice this means rejecting the mass institutions of the industrial age--"corporate and government bureaucracies, huge civilian and military administrations, schools of all types"--to make room for the flourishing of individual liberty and the pioneer spirit. No longer will individuals be required to give up their freedom in order for the system as a whole to work:

Given all the talk about individual liberty and the accompanying plurality of interests in the Third Wave society, what will be the nature of community? The Magna Carta argues that the freedom and diversity already emerging as mass society breaks up should not be understood in terms of the fragmentation and balkanization of society, but as an opportunity for new forms of community. Though no one knows what they will look like, "cyberspace will play an important role knitting together the diverse communities of tomorrow, facilitating the creation of 'electronic neighborhoods' bound together not by geography but by shared interests."

Finally, the Magna Carta argues that government must be reinvented for the 21st Century. Third Wave government will be vastly smaller than the current one (by 50 percent or more), though it will not necessarily be weaker. In fact, the transition from Second to Third Wave "will require a level of government activity not seen since the New Deal." The authors outline five proposals defining the role of government during this transitional period:

In order to grasp the future, the authors of the Magna Carta argue that we must understand that the most basic political question does not concern control over the last days of industrial society, but who will shape the new civilization rising to replace it: