My grandfather, Nels Roseland, played a crucial role in mankind’s greatest leap. He was a part of the Apollo 11 and Apollo 14 launch teams and one of the rocket scientists who worked to achieve mankind’s greatest leap.
I wouldn’t infringe on the great accomplishment (arguably the greatest accomplishment) that my grandfather contributed to by writing about the decentralized internet with the same reverence unless I wasn’t certain that a decentralized internet is the future we need to have a future. In this article, I’ll explain why in rather grandiose terms and then get more specific.
A decentralized Internet gives humanity a fighting chance at becoming a Kardeshevian type-1 civilization. The free flow of speech, ideas, criticism, and commerce gives our species a fighting chance of punching through the Great Filter and not annihilating itself as Fermi, in his famous paradox, speculated billions of the other intelligent species have in the history of our galaxy.
The alternative is 7-8 billion slaves on this planet. The centralized internet threatens to lure us all into dystopia that George Orwell – chainsmoking, on LSD, and his fourth cup of coffee at 3 AM – could scarcely imagine. The centralized internet is not evil but very useful to evil people. It will empower a phenotypic revolution, wherein our species – mainlined a seductive stream of digital distraction, porn, and propaganda – will be sublimated by general artificial intelligence as malevolent as the most tyrannical of transhumanist elites who have calculated and concluded that they no longer need the human herd.
The Centralized Internet
The internet can currently be imagined as a street in Manhattan – busy, very busy – with commerce, people, news, information, and ideas flowing around you with dizzying energy and speed. You cast your eyes up and, blocking out the sky itself, monoliths loom over you…
- Google handles over 90% of search traffic, effectively controlling how information is found online.
- A handful of companies (Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure) host the majority of websites, apps, and digital services.
- A few social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter (X), and TikTok – dominate online communication, controlling what content gets promoted or censored.
- Do you miss forums? I do! Now, Reddit is where the vast majority of forum discussions occur. Independent forums, which are often better moderated, are in decline.
- What’s in your pocket? If you’re like 98% of people, it’s either an iPhone or an Android.
- Even Bitcoin itself has become somewhat centralized: with mining dominated by a few major mining pools (e.g., Foundry USA, Antpool, F2Pool), and over 50% of Bitcoin’s hash rate is controlled by just 2-3 mining pools (making transaction censorship or even a 51% attack possible).
Is the centralized internet bad?
The centralized internet is fast and convenient. Remember waiting for webpages to load? Don’t miss that!
Centralization presents a paradox to innovation: massive amounts of money can be invested, driving innovation. But, when tech companies hit a certain inflection point of success, they get stupid and greedy: they implement planned obsolescence in their products instead of winning customers’ business anew with innovative offers, they start taking the end customer or user for granted, they raise their prices unreasonably high, and they introduce predatory, anti-ownership, subscription services.
But centralization itself is not bad – centralization got us to the moon and back (if you don’t believe we went to the moon, I’ll ask you to be a more curious conspiracy theorist). It’s been a birth canal that humanity needs to get through to become an interplanetary species. The time of its usefulness is drawing to a close.
Why Decentralization?
This is the natural state of humanity and that in which we will most thrive…
The airplane was not invented by a giant corporation but by two bicycle mechanics tinkering.
The printing press, invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1440s, galvanized an incredible wave of information decentralization. Kings and popes would learn that the pen was mightier than the sword. Downstream from this was the scientific revolution of the 1600s, introducing peer review, open publication, and decentralized collaboration.
Have you ever been to Switzerland? Nassim Taleb describes what many would regard as “the best country” in Antfragile…
…the most stable country in the world does not have a government. And it is not stable in spite of not having a government; it is stable because it does not have one.
It is not quite true that the Swiss do not have a government. What they do not have is a large central government , or what the common discourse describes as “the” government—what governs them is entirely bottom-up, municipal of sorts, regional entities called cantons, near-sovereign mini-states united in a confederation. There is plenty of volatility…
The TCP/IP protocol, underlying the internet itself, has been decentralized since its inception – allowing computers to communicate without an authority controlling the entire network.
Are you one of those people who got rich just because you had the good sense to HODL Bitcoin through a few halvenings (I would have been if I hadn’t once spent two Bitcoins – yeah, two – in two weeks partying in Barcelona)? You can thank decentralization.
Philosophically, decentralization is the acknowledgment of human agency. Decentralization puts more power back in the hands of the individual. Decentralization is a leap of faith in the goodness of humanity: assuming that people will, on balance, make good choices even when they’re not told what to do or believe.
The Internet of the Future
In contrast to a Manhattan street, the decentralized internet is more like a Turkish Bazaar, vibrant with commerce and raucous (sometimes revolutionary) talk. No institution looms above you. You get easily and joyfully lost in its winding, narrow streets, stumbling upon delightful sights, sounds, and scents. You find yourself enticed by weird and wonderful things you didn’t know you wanted until you laid eyes on them. And kitties stroll boldly wherever they please.
How would it be different?
The fundamental technical difference is that the artifice of the internet would not be siloed in massive server farms next to hydroelectric plants but distributed widely on many millions of computers and servers – some in surprisingly exotic places, like satellites (more on that later). Think: giant industrial farm vs a rolling countryside full of small family farms.
Free speech would be recognized as sacrosanct – The fundamental human right on which all others stand must be broadly recognized on public square platforms. Platforms and communities that want to institute “hate speech” rules will need to do so, recognizing that this is an exclusionary, NOT inclusive, policy.
The architects of the decentralized web will have to take a hard look at John Milton’s Areopagitica, along with the works of Voltaire, John Locke, Thomas Aquinas, and John Stuart Mill, to answer some tough questions. Like, is porn free speech? I argue porn is not speech (And I just pissed off half the people reading this).
Censorship Resistance is key as governments, rapacious corporations, and the easily offended (and organized) are threatened by free speech. Networks like IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) or Arweave would be used to host content, preventing digital book burnings. Blockchain-based domains (which you buy once and own for life) would be used to secure digital territory.
Unlike YouTube’s algorithm (that really, really wants you to watch MrBeast) or Google’s search (with Wikipedia as its favorite place to send traffic), the decentralized internet would be more of a pure content meritocracy. If some random blog had the best article on the internet about a topic, you would be a lot more likely to end up there than on one of Big Tech’s advertising partners’ platforms.
What does the decentralized internet need…
- Human Verification – As AI encroaches further and further into everything we do, it’s important that decentralized verification systems validate and identify human users, content, and artwork.
- Privacy – Keeps us free and safe. It’s crucial to draw a privacy line when it comes to your friends, neighbors, coworkers, boss, the government, corporations, and, of course, your online presence. On the decentralized internet, this line would be drawn by the user, not corporate policy.
- Encryption – This is a cornerstone as it plays an absolutely crucial role in ensuring the security, privacy, and trustworthiness of digital interactions in a world where no central authority controls the flow of information. The aim would be to make every private communication end-to-end encrypted.
- Pay-To-Play – Don’t you wish it cost a cent for someone to send you an email? Annoying email spam would be reduced by 90%. The decentralized internet would have pay-for-play mechanisms that would reduce spam, fraud, and abuse. On many blockchain-based Web3 platforms, user activity – like uploading a video – is powered by vanishingly small crypto microtransactions.
The decentralized internet would require maturity and some common sense on behalf of the user.
A free internet would be more like a sidewalk in Eastern Europe, where workers sometimes open manholes in the street and just leave them open without a bright orange cone to alert absentminded pedestrians. You need to watch where you’re going!
There would need to be educational onboarding of users…
- On the decentralized internet, we would all have to accept the “right to be offended” occasionally.
- A critical thinking education would be encouraged. Wild conspiracy theories would be met with: “What is your evidence for your claim?”
- The culture creators of the decentralized internet would need to lead with civility. The flip side of free speech is that we all need to practice a little more empathy and kindness in dealing with people we disagree with.
- The centralized internet offers certain safeguards that sometimes help. The decentralized internet might be a more dangerous place for hopelessly naive users. We’d need to meme into the mainstream things like better awareness of romance scams, for example. Don’t send your life savings to that (20-years-younger-THAN-YOU) Ukrainian beauty queen or Argentinian stud-muffin you’re online dating but have never met in person.
The Decentralized Internet: A More Human Place
I’m old enough to remember a more decentralized Internet. I’ll share a story…
I was an awkward dweeby teenager, desperate for a girlfriend. Hopelessly clueless and misinformed in the picking-up-chicks department (if you’re old enough, perhaps you’ll vaguely recall how awfully bad mainstream dating advice was back in the 90s!)
On HotBot, I searched for Dating Techniques; I found the clunky 90s website of what we would now call a Men’s Dating Guru. Of course, he sold an ebook about how to get a girlfriend – that looked like exactly what I needed. But I didn’t even have a bank account. So, I emailed the guru asking…
I’m just a teenager. I don’t have a credit card. How can I pay for your ebook?
And you know what, he responded by just sending me the ebook for free! I read that ebook (now a paper book – my dad caught me printing it out, but let me keep it), riveted, my mind blown by its combination of mindset advice and practical tips and techniques for getting a girlfriend.
I got a girlfriend, but more importantly, that ebook ignited in me at a relatively young age a passion and curiosity for all things personal development-related. I didn’t have to wait around to get lucky; I could lifehack my way toward whatever I wanted. This has culminated in my rewarding 14-year career as a professional Biohacker and Applied Neuroscience Strategist.
If he had sold that ebook on Amazon.com, I wouldn’t have had any way to ask him for it. Would a modern dating guru with 10,000 Instagram followers take the time to respond, giving his product away to some broke kid? The centralized internet would have stood in the way of his simple act of generosity that bent the trajectory of my life toward beauty, adventure, and meaning.
The Obstacle
The greatest obstacle to a decentralized internet isn’t hard to name: governments. It is to governments what the printing press was to the Pope.
- Free speech is a big problem for governments. That’s why only a few countries have something approaching true free speech enshrined in law.
- Governments can dictate policy to social media giants. Users might organize a tax protest on decentralized social media.
- Big tech pays billions in taxes and millions in lobbying dollars. Will the decentralized internet? They’ll be lucky to get a Satoshi!
However, governments are very slow in responding to threats and are short-sighted, and they have to play this virtue-signaling game where they pretend to care about our rights.
How do we address this obstacle? With style, I’d say. Make the decentralized internet look cool. Make it appealing. Bold. Unapologetic. Rule-breaking.
Some historians argue that blue jeans played a not-insignificant symbolic role in taking down the Soviet Union. Blue jeans look cool, and they became a status symbol of freedom among the youth.
If you want to blow up the Death Star, you need to be a rebel.
I won’t belabor this point because if you have to explain cool, it isn’t cool.
Decentralization Done Right
I’m a daily power user of the decentralized internet; my two favorite social media sites are…
Odysee.com
This is a Web3 blockchain-based pro-free-speech YouTube alternative (that works almost as well as YouTube). Years ago, when YouTube terminated my relatively tame 15,000-subscriber channel about Biohacking and personal growth, I started uploading on Odysee and have thrived there.
Did I mention it has no ads? No banner ads, no pre-roll ads, no midroll ads. Yeah, no ads.
Minds.com
An alternative to Facebook, with all the classic social networking features. Their website and smartphone app are WAY faster than Facebook’s. They’ve implemented decentralization in their content moderation; content policy violations are handled by a jury system where your peers judge whether you’ve broken the rules and should be shown to the door.
You might think that pro-free-speech ‘anything goes’ social media platforms would be flooded with porn and racism; well, you should go visit them. You’ll run into a few Flat Earthers, but people are surprisingly civil and moderate when given free speech. In fact, it’s censorship that drives online extremism.
HackerNoon
While it’s a centralized website, in my publishing here, I’ve found that they embrace the decentralization ethos. One of the things HackerNoon does right is making a place where smart people want to read and publish. If you culturally make a place appealing to smart people, you don’t need a million silly little rules to make people behave.
SpaceCoin
SpaceCoin is positioning itself at the stratosphere of the decentralized internet by reimagining how value, data, and infrastructure are distributed across the web. Unlike traditional cryptocurrencies that focus solely on financial transactions, SpaceCoin is building a broad ecosystem that supports decentralized web services—from content delivery to computation—on a global scale. By leveraging satellite-based infrastructure and decentralized nodes, they aim to bypass traditional terrestrial ISPs, reduce censorship vulnerabilities, and provide global internet access that’s resistant to outages or state-level control. Its emphasis on censorship resistance, encrypted communications, and open participation aligns it with the core values of Web3. In doing so, this isn’t just a currency—it’s a foundation above the firmament for a resilient, user-owned internet where freedom of information and digital sovereignty are prioritized.
They launched their first satellite in 2024 on a SpaceX Falcon 9; that’s what I call doing decentralization with style!
Check out what they have to say for themselves…
As Stuard Gardner, the CEO of SpaceCoin, explains here at the TOKEN2049 conference, 2.9 billion people have limited internet access, SpaceCoin aims to serve them the decentralized internet.
Retired 4-Star General Wesley Clark explains his involvement with SpaceCoin and makes a surprisingly libertarian case for here for the decentralized internet at Korean Blockchain Week 2024…
What we haven’t done is connected [the internet] effectively to enable people that are in “The Boondocks – totally unserved by mobile phones, by cell towers, or anything else to inexpensively access the internet to find market conditions to sell their products, to find customers for their products or to find what products they should be growing…
Blockain provides an ‘anchor point’ of trust… that cuts across the distrust of governments, communities, corruption, etc …
The Leap Into The Future
In my grandfather’s archive, there are dozens and dozens of notebooks full of handwritten equations – the math that got us to the moon and back. At the end of the final notebook, after the success of Apollo 11, my grandfather wrote one word…
Finis
But that’s a word the builders of the decentralized internet can never write as it will be an endless endeavor, as limitless as the future itself.
