Only We can Create a More Human Internet

Many of the institutions that are destined to enjoy greatness for a season begin in the same way. A charismatic leader arises and draws a band of followers. He (or she) is a leader in the truest sense of the word. He has a grand vision for a better world that is based on principles that are easily understood. These principles resonate within his followers, filling them with hope for a better, more equitable, more just world. His followers are strengthened by his words. They internalised them. They write them down in books for posterity to read centuries later. They go into the world and spread his vision. This process forms new religions. It forms new governments. It often forms charitable institutions and institutions of learning. Sometimes, it even forms companies.

But, circumstances inevitably change. The charismatic leader leaves. Often he is pushed out when his promises fail to materialise. Others rush in to try to fill his shoes. They usually fail miserably. They fail because not everything can be transmitted by mere words. They lack understanding and vision. As the years, decades, or centuries pass, the arteries of the institution gradually harden. Rules become rigid. Principles transform into dogmas. Eventually, the new leaders are replaced by others devoid of any shred of the original leader's charisma, vision, or conviction. These men care about nothing more than money and power. They are empty suits--businessmen, politicians, and lawyers--whose only goal is to keep the institution alive a little longer so they can cash in on the dregs of hope possessed by the naïve followers who still remain.

At this point, the institution for which the original leader may have fought and died, has become a dead husk of its former self. Sooner or later, its leadership slip up, unwittingly pulling back the cloak to reveal the meatless ribs of the now lifeless corpse. When this happens, the last followers desert, the institution collapses, and it is entombed in the graveyard among the bodies of the institutions which came before. There, it is forgotten, except by scholars who are paid to remember esoteric history.

In some ways, the Internet is following a similar trajectory. Its birth began with a vision of a better world where everyone could be heard, where people on opposite sides of the planet could communicate inexpensively in near real time through the marvellous power of modern technology. The face of this technology took the form of the personal computer, which nerds across the globe discovered and embraced with delight. Individuals with vision and a desire for better software and communication set up BBS's in the 1980's. They assembled the first hardware, designed the first protocols, and wrote the first software that linked BBS's together. These were everyday people, if a bit nerdy and better educated than most, who dreamed of a better, more connected world. Businesses also participated in smaller networks of their own.

BBS's were soon replaced by servers that became the electronic hearts of the first small Internet service providers. "The World" became the first commercial Internet service provider in the US. US government agencies and Universities fought to have The World shut down, but they failed. Computer industry giants like Bill Gates ignored the Internet in the early years. At first, most businessmen and politicians were not even aware of its existence. Individuals like Tim Berners-Lee first envisioned open communications networks and then designed the protocols needed to bring them to fruition. They set up the first web servers and connected them in networks that overlay existing networks which would thereby expand to encompass the planet. Hundreds and then thousands of small personal websites appeared. These were created mostly by technical professionals who had the knowledge to assemble server software and hardware and write HTML code. They brought sites on line that were largely about computer hardware and software, games, and other hobbies. Most of these early personal websites contained only a handful of pages of HTML text and ASCII graphics.

By the mid 90's, millions of Internet users were experiencing the thrill of logging on to early online service providers like Prodigy and America On Line. College professor's wives learned to email and then to video chat with relatives they had not seen in years. The Internet experienced triple-digit growth every year through most of the 1990's. It was a resounding success.

More small Internet service providers sprang up and gradually began to be absorbed into larger providers.

In the second half of the 1990's, ordinary people with no technical training to speak of--friends, relatives, parents, and neighbours--began to sign up for Internet accounts and pay monthly connection fees, purchase software, and buy millions of home computers. They paid their money to keep in touch with friends and relatives, express their ideas and insights on line, make more friends, and find the information they needed to make their lives fuller and better. The money they paid ultimately built the Internet we have today.

They--we--created a human-centric Internet to serve the needs of human beings. Without human beings, without people, without us, the Internet would have remained in the hands of the military, defence contractors, colleges, and universities. It would never have grown to be what it is today. It would never have been used for educating school children during a frightening pandemic, serving as a tool for each of us to gather information about our ailments that healthcare professionals often refuse to provide, learning which doctors and dentists to choose and which to avoid, discussing politics with strangers, viewing the latest Star Wars movies, dating on line, or even entertaining us with online games.

The Internet of the late 1990's to mid 2000's afforded many opportunities for friendship and growth. Six years ago, Rachael White wrote of her early Internet experiences, "Other than now, as a 31 year old woman, I don’t think I’ve ever had as many friendships with women as I did when I was a teenager spending all my free time on the Internet. Not only were other teen girls super into self-expression via blogging in a pre-WordPress era, they really wanted to help each other out!" Winnie Lim wrote, "I would have probably never learnt to love myself if not for online spaces. I wouldn’t have known the variety of love I knew in the physical world was toxic, that it was okay to love someone of the same sex, that I wasn’t the only person in this world doubting the value of existence, that there were others like me who could only express ourselves through online mediums."

Participation in the Internet grew and grew and grew for three decades. But as the Internet grew to the point where even truck drivers, grocery store checkers, and plumbers were on line, things began to change. Companies gradually took control of content where mostly individuals had once enjoyed free reign. The friendship, uplift, and comradery of geeky introverted nerds was gradually mixed with hostility and bigotry. The Internet began to turn dark and soul-sucking for some. To be perfectly fair, wherever human beings gather, we find good and evil shoulder to shoulder. The negative side of the Internet was always there, but early social sites were much smaller and better controlled. And, on an Internet with many small social networks, individuals who were dissatisfied with one could always move to another.

In the early days, BBS communities were governed by system administrators who actually cared about them. They cared partly because they also joined in the fun and comradery. But some time over the course of three decades, the small social networks found on BBS's and their early Internet successors largely gave way to giants like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter, whose owners' goal was not to have fun and enjoy their communities but to make great piles of money. As this happened, people slowly began to be disillusioned with these giant platforms. Eventually, they began abandoning them one by one in search of something better. As a result, Prodigy, America Online, Myspace, Friendster, Google+, and many others disappeared or migrated to fill other roles. As Wil Wheaton wrote five years ago after leaving Twitter for the Fediverse, "I thought that if I left Twitter, I could find a new social network that would give it some competition... I thought I’d find something different. I thought I’d find a smaller community that was more like Twitter was way back in 2008 or 2009. Cat pictures! Jokes! Links to interesting things that we found in the backwaters of the internet! Interaction with friends we just haven’t met, yet!" But Wil soon discovered that even the Fediverse had grown too large and unruly, so he chose to leave social media completely for a time.

The giant companies that took over the Internet could not have cared less about the original vision that created it. Tim Berners-Lee and the others began to be largely ignored, except perhaps by a few who understood what was happening. Corporations cared only about making money with the network that others had created. As Keanu Reeves recently stated succinctly, "Corporations don't give a f**k." These companies gradually transformed the Internet into the largest sales tool the world has ever know. It became bigger than radio and television. It put newspapers and magazines that had been around for a hundred years out of business. It transformed the way business was conducted.

In the process of transforming the Internet into a bland lifeless reflection of themselves, these companies all but removed every trace of humanity they could from the Internet. They hid the human face of the personal website. They began replacing the personal computer with the cell-phone and other appliances running software they controlled. Their search engines pushed quirky websites filled with funny animations like unicorns spewing rainbows into the dark recesses of the Internet where few would ever see them again. They refused to hire employees based on their "online profiles", a phrase they invented to hide what they were really talking about, any shred of individuality that anyone still dared to display on the public Internet. Those who had once revelled in the freedom the early Internet had afforded gradually learned the importance of online anonymity. But companies also began to take that away by forcing individuals to identify themselves before they would be given the "privilege" of opening an account on a corporate-controlled site where their data would be mined and sold to the highest bidder. Despite the great odds against them, a few individuals fought back by refusing to hide their individuality. They fought back by creating their own tiny blogs and social media sites like yesterweb.org, MayVaneDay.org, forum.melonking.net, winnielim.com, and various imaginative sites on neocities.

Governments were now fully engaged with the public Internet. But they were not so much interested in enabling inexpensive communication between people on opposite sides of the planet. In some ways, their approach mirrored Microsoft's strategy of embrace, extend, extinguish. They wanted to control communication and block any they could not control. Lawyers began drafting laws to stifle online communication. In some countries, they put in place Internet licensing laws, so anyone who wanted to create a website had to ask their permission. In Europe they began proposing laws that threatened to utterly destroy the ability of common people to voice their thoughts on the Internet. Politicians in many countries began passing laws requiring the installation of Internet cut-off switches, so they could silence their political opponents whenever they deemed necessary.

Today, the soul of the once young and vibrant Internet is dying a slow painful death. Can it be saved? I don't know. But I do know one thing. Companies and governments did not create the Internet. Companies and in rare cases governments may have commissioned transmission lines and assembled network hardware. They may have strung wire between telephone poles and later dug trenches and lined them with fibre-optic cable. But they did not create the Internet. We did.

If the Internet can be saved, we must save it. We must save it by not being mere consumers of inane corporate-created content which often says little more than, "buy my product". We must save the Internet by being producers of our own online content that we control. We must write our own software. We must resist being corralled into giant social media networks and instead support alternatives to the social media they control by spending more of our time on small social media networks like ramble.pw, freepo.st, wolfballs.com (now defunct), sqwok.im, and my own, bluedwarf.top. We must put our own web servers on line and fill them with web pages containing our own perspectives and insights. We must create and support our own networks like Gemini, ZeroNet, and Secure Scuttlebutt that we control. We must support efforts like the Tor network that provide us with much needed anonymity in a world run by lawyers, politicians, and other miscreants who would persecute us for what we say on line. We must stand up to politicians and refuse to let them silence us with unjust and unconstitutional laws. We must protect this grand vision for a better world and the principles upon which the Internet was founded from those who wish to destroy it.

I believe we are slowly beginning to understand the need for changing our approach to the Internet, but perhaps not fast enough. Some are now doing the things I have outlined above, but I think more need to involve themselves. Unless they do, the Internet may shrivel and die, and historians a hundred years from now may write about it in whatever ways they are allowed by the organisations that control them and the governments that control those organisations. The Internet could become nothing but a footnote in history. If this occurs, far fewer will understand its relevance than the few who truly understand its value today. The great opportunity that humanity has been given by men like Tim Berners-Lee will be dead and buried, perhaps never to be reborn.