It were modest but promising beginnings. We built the WWW and were free and it had so much potential. The traditional advertising of the first internet providers sounded like that too. “Aunt Emma now sells her rolls on the WWW,” “Antique clocks and furniture? Sell them worldwide!” and so on.
But then, not even 10 years later, everything changed. The first major commercial providers and mega-corporations discovered the web for themselves, after they had proclaimed just a few years earlier that “the internet is a nice toy and has no future.” And the rules changed.
Google, the famous search engine provider, changed its rules (“Don’t be evil”) after it had grown on the backs of many independent technology and content providers. The fact that a company’s main website could be found more easily became more important than legitimate criticism of its products. Everything that had size and capital became more important, and no longer opinions, concepts, and groundbreaking ideas.
Central social media platforms attracted the masses, who were too comfortable to acquire the 2-3 necessary skills to publish online, and bound them to their centralist rules. Later, the exclusion of unwanted, mainstream-deviating opinions took place, and censorship was (and still is) exercised.
With the companies, the state also intervened massively and brought countless regulations, some of which were good (such as consumer and privacy protection), but most pointed in the wrong direction (protection of capital and the fiat system).
Advertising as a business model became incredibly dominant and enjoys preferential protection over all other interests, even at the expense of privacy. Today, we face an unbridled, advertising and consumption-based Matrix monster, which even made the inventor of the WWW, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, throw in the towel.
Is everything dark? No! New horizons are opening up.
For the same spirit that built the internet back then is today seeking alternatives. And it is working just as hard as the first generation did 30 years ago.
Free internet money, sound and strong, is available. It breaks the chains of the existing banking system and already offers its users a wide range of applications, extending into the real world, and a steadily growing ecosystem. Save, earn, and consume without banks. When was the last time that was possible? In the face of Bitcoin, our inflationary monetary era appears as a brief anomaly in human history. Just as it was before in the end times of ancient Rome or other cultures. Humanity may sometimes go astray, but it instinctively seeks the healthy path again and again.
We are also freeing ourselves from the chains of centralist, opinion-dominating social media platforms. We are fed up with shadow bans or deplatforming that nullify years of valuable content and community-building work in 2 minutes and for which those who run the platforms have no accountability. We do not want to read the same opinions dictated by politics and media. We value, under the principle of freedom of expression, also divergent, a bit rougher opinions, even if they sometimes go beyond the allowed limits. The old principle applies again:
“I may not like what you have to say, but I would fight for your right to say it.”
And of course, this development, this renewed blossoming, is taking place beyond media and public attention. Just like in the times of the birth of the internet, when from the masses, a few who somehow caught wind of it said, “it’s just a toy.”
Let it be said by someone who was already there 30 years ago: No, it is not.
It is just as serious and potentially growing as the internet itself. A renaissance, so to speak. And again you have a choice: Do you want to be at the forefront of it? Be a pioneer? Or do you wait until the usual dark elements have joined in and possibly dragged everything into the dirt?
Because everything goes in life cycles. A good thing is born, gains youth and strength, matures, weakens, and dies. The web 1.0 that you most likely know as Google, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and the like is dead. We’re gaining our sovereignty back again. Long live the new web 2.0!
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