I recently finished reading a book published one year ago, written by Vittorio Bertola and Stefano Quintarelli. Unfortunately, it is only available in Italian, but its title perfectly encloses all the topics it covers: The shattered Internet: digital sovereignty, nationalisms, and big techs. Like me, Vittorio and Stefano are among the relatively few early users and participants of the primeval internet network of the 90s, even before the World Wide Web was conceived. This book is a disenchanted and realistic travel in the story of the Big Network and how it has become a broken dream today in many respects.
Thinking about it, it also shares some of the reasons why I started this self-hosted blog recently. At the end of this post, one could also consider that this site and the whole indie web movement make little sense altogether. Simply, they represent another unrealistic attempt to return to the origin. In short, it's just a daydream. Maybe, or maybe not.
The Internet has been conceived from the beginning as a great, unified, worldwide and resilient web of neutral connections based on open technical standards and cooperation among developers and participants to allow end-to-end communications all over the world, without discrimination. At its very beginning, in the middle of the 90s, it appeared to be a realized dream to the most tech-savvy people.
Unfortunately, reality later started to appear in all its hard truth. The world is not neutral and equal for all human beings, and there are multiple drivers of inequality and diversity. Moreover, human groups tend to create private walled gardens with deep moats among themselves, often for the mere interests of the few.
Nowadays, there are at least two great sources of fragmentation for the Internet, because of its own worldwide success. Nationalisms (and let me also say different ways of seeing life, values, and our society itself) and the creation of an oligopoly of a few big companies that dominate the network. Companies are interested in making a profit and maintaining their walled gardens with millions of users-customers locked in there. This is not something new, but it is a big problem when companies have balances that are more outstanding than those of many countries.
These centrifugal thrusts are shattering every day more the dream of the big, unique and pacific network. Internet users are more and more closed in limited bubbles, because of their nationalities and cultures or the profit plans of the big corps.
Note that - as the book's authors - I don't think that the occidental US-centric world has the correct/absolute answers for that. In many cases, I cannot share some ideas and values considered standard thinking overseas. I don't even know if the tentative regulation policies here in Europe will succeed in creating a better and respectful network.
Moreover, in many countries the Internet is limited and under the control/monitoring of central authorities, and I'm not talking only about North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, or other nations with some known issues in accessing the network. As we all discovered in the immediate past, even the so-called free democracies show their fallacies from time to time.
Anyway, as tech-savvy individuals, we have the right and duty to escape as much as possible from the mainstream short-field vision of the network, by diversifying and avoiding the walled gardens, as well as the unique thought for the evolution of the society.
It is a matter of freedom and equality for all of us, even if it is wishful thinking. And above all, even if many people out there do not care and are willing to give up their privacy and freedom, too.
Wake up, Neo...
The Matrix has you...
Follow the white rabbit...
Knock, knock, Neo.