Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era

My journey to the heart of the forgotten internet

Slowly but surely, huge swaths of the internet are vanishing. But the artefacts of the early web are still out there, and they have lessons for the future.

Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality

The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity—and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending

AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web

I remember, pretty clearly, my excitement over the early World Wide Web. I had been on the internet for a year or two at that point, mostly using IRC, Usenet, and Gopher (along with email, naturall…

Reclaim the internet: Mozilla’s rebrand for the next era of tech | The Mozilla Blog

Mozilla isn’t just another tech company — we’re a global crew of activists, technologists and builders, all working to keep the internet free, op

Towards the Post-Naive Internet

let's. get. into it.

The AI browser wars are about to begin

Artificial intelligence is already writing an obituary for the internet as we know it. So why is everyone building new web browsers?

The Oxymoron of “Data-Driven Innovation”

Once upon a time, in the dawn of the internet era, web products came from college dudes. The dudes were almost always wealthy and well-connected, but they weren’t usually market-savvy. These …

Break up the Browsers.  A Proposal to Save the Open Web. - Movement For An Open Web

The Open Web is one of the world’s modern wonders.  Based on core, universally recognised technical standards and owned and controlled by no one body, it is a unique structureRead More

We can have a different web

Many yearn for the “good old days” of the web. We could have those good old days back — or something even better — and if anything, it would be easier now than it ever was.

The future of the internet is likely smaller communities, with a focus on curated experiences

As brands look to hold onto the internet of the past, the term “community” will become a loaded word.

The Internet Transition

The Internet is allowing us to build a richer, more complex society but the way in which we Internet today is failing to support the governance systems that a more complex world requires. I take a look at why these issues are related, try to develop an intuition for a way forward, and point at the emerging field that is coming together to build that future.

The Web Can Thrive Without Google’s Search Monopoly

Viable browsers and meaningful contributions to web standards can be sustained with more modest revenue streams, writes Alissa Cooper.

The Zero Click Internet

The internet is undergoing the biggest change since its inception. It's huge. And there is no going back. The web is changing into the Zero Click Internet,...

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future

"For all the informational convenience the internet offers, it is deeply flawed. How can it be improved? Writer Ben Tarnoff proposes one possibility in this intriguing book, which urges the development of 'a public lane on the information superhighway.' It's worth checking out for yourself." – Seth MacFarlane Why is the internet so broken, and what could ever possibly fix it? In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.