#1: Original Sins of The Original Internet
The internet is a global computer network using standardized communication protocols providing information and communication services.
By this definition, the internet is quite an abstract concept rather than the concrete current implementation of the internet that we use today. What we commonly understand as the internet today is only one version of the internet. There can be many internets just as there can be many computer networks or many information service providers.
These different internets can differ based on: 1) The participants in the network, 2) The protocols used by the network, 3) The information and communication services they provide.
There are already two big internets that the world uses today: the Global internet and the Chinese internet. These two internets have similar services and protocols but differ on the network participants.
But we are starting to see the emergence of many new internets that actually differ on all the dimensions: participants, protocols and services.
To understand this concept better, we need to specifically discuss 1) what are the protocols of the current internet and 2) what services they provide. These can be summarized below:
No.
Protocol
Service Provided
1
TCP/IP
Reliably sending data from one IP address to another
2
HTTP
Communicate hypertext (or linked pieces of content)
3
SMTP
Send and receive messages between two addresses
4
DNS
Give human readable names to IP addresses
The common service that these foundational internet protocols provide is sending information from one address to another.
However the internet that we use today has many more services than simply sending and receiving information. This means that there were many gaps between the foundational internet protocols and how people ultimately used them.
Startups and companies grew to fill in these gaps of the internet protocols and each big gap created a big company. We can roughly map out gaps in the protocols with the company that arose to fill them as below:
No.
Gap in Internet Protocols
Company that filled that gap
1
Indexing and Search
2
Identity and Network
3
Broadcast and Followers
4
Image Storage and Sharing
5
Video Storage and Sharing
Youtube
6
Recommendations
TikTok
7
Messaging
8
Transactions
Stripe
9
Paywalling Content
Substack
10
Investing and Trading
Robinhood
The original internet protocols were meant to be open and decentralized.
But overtime because of these gaps between the protocols and how people ultimately used them, the original internet has been completely centralized into the hands of these few companies.
In the next essay, we will discuss why this centralized state of the current internet is deeply problematic and why we need a new internet to solve these problems.
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