The Internet Superpower

The 3 Most Important Concepts About The Network

Even today, 30 years after the birth of the commercial Internet, most people don’t really understand why it has become the economy’s infrastructure of the entire world.

And the answer is:

because, for the first time ever, we’ve created an Open, Neutral, and Permissionless platform for media and value distribution.

But what does this really mean?

Imagine you are watching the TV news and realize some information is not totally accurate. There are missing data and a lack of nuances, and also it could have a better explanation of underlying concepts.

So, you decide to just send your point of view with all missing information to the channel asking them to publish it. You attach the content with official data and a lot of references. Why wouldn’t they publish it, right?

But, how many times did you see this happening? How many people do you know who’ve appeared on TV? Virtually zero.

Another example. You are passionate about plants and have spent the last few months writing a really detailed piece about several rare species. Wouldn’t it be nice to send it to other plant hobbyists or scientists? But, how to do it? Asking for publishing it on a TV channel? Writing a book? Trying to publish it at university? In a magazine? 

The problem is that all these channels have a massive barrier to entry, becoming virtually impossible for regular people to access them.

And that’s because Mainstream Media and other 20th-century Institutions all run on Closed Permissioned Platforms. 

To be able to broadcast any content, you either need to buy a TV channel license from the government or convince/pay a TV owner to publish your content or have a good contact in a big magazine or newspaper. 

And just a very select group of powerful people has this privilege. 

At least until the birth of the Internet.

The Internet ushered in a completely new paradigm. An Open, Neutral, and Permissionless communication infrastructure where anyone can freely publish their content.

If the Internet had been born as a closed project, with CEO and shareholders, very few companies would want to build projects over it. What would happen if overnight the board’s company decided to change the rules? Or kick the company out of the platform?

But with Open, Permissionless, and Neutral protocols like SMTP (email), HTTP (web browsers), and many others, every company (like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc) knows with certainty that the infrastructure will not change.

And these 3 simple properties, almost unintentionally, changed the world forever.

Right now you can contract an internet service provider, buy a domain name, set up a web server on your personal computer (or rent a computer, aka hosting), and publish any website with the content you want. There is no need of asking permission from anyone or being afraid that your website will be turned off by the Internet CEO.

The Internet is not about apps, bytes, or memes. It is about the decentralization of power and freedom of speech.

The Internet has broken the Mainstream Media monopoly, allowing the flourishing of unprecedented high-speed and high-abundance innovation. Forever.