In the "White Mirror" series I talk about positive ideas for using digital technologies in a way that can improve our lives. The title is a reaction to the popular "Black Mirror" series of often dystopic visions of our digital future. While highlighting potential dangers is important, shining a light on the positive potential of digital technologies seems to me at least as important.

Although we use it everyday for countless hours, the "web" has faded into the background. Much like other infrastructure, we only talk about it, when it is not working. The rest of the time, we just assume that it is there. While AI, agents or the latest social media trend dominate the headlines, let's not forget that our digital live today still rests on the implicit foundation of the "web". And while talk about a "web 3.0" has also faded from the headlines, the current state - "web 2.0" - is increasingly being challenged, raising the question: what's next for the Internet? Maybe in the past...

The issue

After the DotCom Bubble in the nascent days of the Internet, Silicon Valley reinvented it with the term "web 2.0" that took hold in the early 2000s. This new version of the Internet was supposed to be more interactive and "social". We moved away from one-way communication to two-way communication, a focus on community created content and platforms. "Web 2.0" gave us social media and platforms. From an adoption perspective, it certainly helped bring more people into the ecosystem. Even the most popular websites could only dream of the usage rates of "web 2.0" platforms like social media giants Meta.

But with the success of the platforms came the problems. After years of disinterest, politics is now fighting back hard about perceived and real drawbacks of the platforms that encapsulate "web 2.0". From anti-trust enforcement regarding market domination in search to questions about content moderation or access to platforms. The same vision of the Internet that was marketed as empowering the individual person mostly helped build the few giants of the digital economy today.

And these giants in turn are facing more and more scrutiny, not just in Europe but around the world. The platform-Internet raises problems from a competition perspective, from a digital sovereignty perspective and also for the individual as decentralized technologies that empowered the individual and allowed for experimentation - think of the personal computing revolution - are increasingly centralized and driven by network effects - think of the increasingly tough choice to close or transfer your account from one social network to the other. Where do we go next?

The solution

Ironically, the solution might be in the past. I'd argue that is is time to bring back "web 1.0". Not all of it, of course. No one needs another DotCom bubble - some are already seeing this given the hype around AI. But I'm not buying the next "logical" step of "web 3.0" with a focus on tokenization given the lack of adoption and the continued scandals surrounding this vision.

Instead, let's focus on what made the Internet originally great: standards and protocols! Many of the thorny governance issues described above can be effectively addressed by focusing again on standards and protocols. Those building blocks like SMTP or the Internet Protocol enabled services like e-Mail and web-hosting, be it on the individual level or as a corporate service. Importantly, those building blocks addressed the governance questions directly that are now creeping to the surface of platforms and have become impossible to ignore even for the most analogue politicians.

Take the example of competition and anti-trust: not an issue if competitors can build rival services based on standards and protocols as users can seamlessly switch providers (the "dreaded" portability). Take the issue of algorithmic content filtering, the way of designing your "feed". Not an issue if the standards and protocols foresee control for the individual how to structure a feed.

This is not to say, that this world comes without problems. What we need is robust multi-stakeholder governance for standards and protocols, a clear way of working on solid foundations for the Internet - e.g. addressing the systemic issue of cybersecurity addressed in previous issues of this newsletter (here and here).

But instead of fighting to safeguard a dying "web 2.0" or rushing into an even worse version of it with "web 3.0" providers, let's get back to basics and bring back the "good old days" of the Internet, this time just outside of the nerd-niche (have you ever heard of ICANN?). Yes, this might seem at first glance to be less convenient. But this convenience has too often come at the cost of delegating power. A broader public needs to take an active stake in shaping the Internet instead of merely using it. They need to understand it, build it. There's a reason we called it surfing the Internet while today we are "doom scrolling". We've traded away the agency of paddling on your own surfboard on the open ocean for the children area in a swimming pool. Time to head for the open waters again!

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