Of Internets, Past and Future
Where we came from, where we are, and where we're going.
In the Beginning
The Internet of the 90s was a place of tremendous idealism. Marvelous new technology would enable people to communicate freely with anyone else online. The Internet held out the promise of unstoppable Free Speech.
It became possible for digital services to carry messages between individuals and small groups, and to eventually replace large-scale broadcast systems. From the outset, protocols were distributed so failures or censorship had limited impact.
Asymmetric key cryptography could make communication secure and verifiable.
The future was very, very bright.
Good Times
A lot of the promise of the Internet has been realized. We have many communications options, including encrypted messaging, and digital entertainment is ubiquitous. Social media has empowered individuals to participate in public conversations with ease and search makes information available.
Asymmetric key cryptography is everywhere. SSL protects websites, and DKIM protects email. The early vision of the web of trust faded away, but most Americans now use cryptography every day without even realizing it.
Crisis
The major players in search and social media have become absolutely dominant. Google controls most referral traffic, and Facebook controls most of the rest. The technology that should have enabled massive and widespread civic participation now puts control of important narratives in very few hands.
It comes as no surprise that autocratic governments globally have embraced this top-down paradigm to exert control over digital communication. In an unfortunate and largely unexpected turn of events, the government of the United States has chosen to join in, calling for censorship driven by the Executive branch.
Choice
We're launching Ology Newswire, Inc. to implement Public Square Networks. A Public Square Network distributes and indexes content contributed by Publishers, making that material available as search results, feeds, and user-curated lists.
All content broadcast on a Public Square Network is explicitly public. Participation as a Publisher is driven by cryptographically verifiable identities that may be hosted by the publisher directly, or on any third party domain. These identities are addressed by URL and may be used on any instance of a Public Square Network. Global Publisher identity and content addressing enables replication of content from network to network.
The components of a Public Square Network, including broadcast systems, search indexes, API servers, torrent seeders, and clients will be made available on an open source basis so that anyone is free to operate their own Public Square Network. The CLI client supports republishing of RSS and Twitter feeds into a Public Square Network and may be executed from linux shell scripts to automate republishing.
Vision
We'll operate a Public Square Network at ology.com to carry content of scientific, educational, and political value. Public domain statements from United States officials will be automatically republished on this network, and we'll recruit digital publishers and influencers to publish on the network.
We'll also build out widgets to place on web pages to facilitate traffic exchange between participating Publishers. Each Publisher will have the ability to directly control widget contents if desired, including setting specific items in the top spots on that widget.
Our short term target is 100 million monthly widget views, and we will facilitate communication and collaboration between participating Publishers to make the Ology Newswire network the best option for gaining referral traffic to content that is not favored by the dominant platforms.