Year: 2023
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Originally designed as a decentralized ecosystem, the Web has undergone a significant centralization in recent years.In order to regain control over our digital self, over the digital aspects of our lives, we need to understand how we arrived at this point and how we can get back on track.This chapter explains the history of decentralization in a Web context, and details Tim Berners-Lee's role in the continued battle for a free and open Web.The challenges and solutions are not purely technical in nature, but rather fit into a larger socio-economic puzzle, to which all of us are invited to contribute.Let us take back the Web for good, and leverage its full potential as envisioned by its creator.As an inventor, you might envision a purpose and destiny for your creation-yet its ultimate place in history is determined by how other people use it.John Pemberton aimed to cure morphine addicts when he started brewing the potion now known as Coca-Cola, Noah McVicker's Play-Doh originally served as a wall-cleaner before it became a children's toy, and Alfred Nobel had to establish a prestigious prize to save his name from perpetual association with the military purposes of dynamite.Admirably, Tim Berners-Lee never even intended to control his own invention: his former employer cern released the World Wide Web software openly in 1993, and he gave the Web a decentralized design so that no one can limit what others can say.This unprecedented openness has inspired large-scale permissionless innovation and unbounded creativity, provided a voice to more than half of the world's population, and revolutionized communication, education, and business.However, a consequence of this unrestricted ability is that anyone can even create things that go against the spirit of the Web, such as illegal materials andironically-platforms whose primary goal is centralization.In and of itself, the concept of centralization does not pose a problem: there are good reasons for bringing people and things together.The situation becomes problematic when we are robbed of our choices, deceived into thinking there would be just one access gate to a space that we in fact collectively own.Some time ago, it seemed unimaginable that a fundamentally open platform like the Web would become the foundation for closed spaces, where we trade our personal data for a fraction of the freedoms that are actually already ours.A majority of Web users today find themselves confined to the boundaries of a handful of influential social networks for their daily interactions.Such networks gather opinions from all over the world, only to condense that richness into one space, where they simultaneously act as the director and the judge of the resulting stream that scrolls across our screens.Because this change happened so suddenly, we might need a reminder that the Web landscape looked quite different not even that long ago.In 2008, Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan was sentenced to 20 years of jail, primarily because of blog posts he had written.He and many others were able to state their critical Ruben Verborgh Re-Decentralizing the Web, For Good This TimePower to the people ■ ■ ■ ■ ■
Source: ACM eBooks
Author: Ruben Verborgh
Institution: Ghent University
Language: English
Topic: Social Media and Politics
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4386450909