lostweb

The Web We Lost, and The Web We Must Rebuild

This site is a reflection on how the web (and really, how the internet as a whole) has failed. This serves as background reading and context for my interest in the emerging initiatives around "decentralizing the Internet", or the "peer-to-peer web".

I'm writing this for a technically sophisticated reader. I'm also writing this for myself, to help organize my thoughts on this topic, and to provide an intellectual breadcrumb trail; that's why I provide a "Further Reading & Sources" at the end of each section. I don't expect anyone to read every link, every piece of background material, but I have tried my best to cull & curate so as to present only the best of what I've read so far.

If you are already convinced that the current Internet/web is broken, you can skip ahead to section 3, "The Root Problems", to see if my formulation of what's broken and what's at stake aligns with your thinking.