Redesigning the Internet 

Handbook


an organization or individual
an initialtive, protocol or tool


  1. Decolonising the internet: Whose knowledge is it?
  2. Whose Knowledge? 
  3. Decolonizing Data: Unsettling Conversations about Social Research Methods

  4. Decolonizing Digital: Empowering Indigeneity Through Data Sovereignty
  5. Decolonizing the digital landscape: the role of technology in Indigenous language revitalization

  6. Prolegomenon to the Decolonization of Internet Governance

  7. Beatrice Martini
  8. Tabita Rezaire
  9. SaveTheInternet.
  10. Beyond Net Neutrality:
    Free Basics and the Internet’s Political Battles

  11. Miao Ying
  12. WIKIPEDIA COMPETITION: EDITING & TRANSLATING
  13. DECOLONISING INTERNET GOVERNANCE
  14. Center for the Cultivation of Technology
  15. Open Knowledge Foundation 
  16. Open Archive
  17. Secure UX Curriculum
  18. Caroline Sinders
  19. INTERNET FREEDOM FUND
  20. A plan to redesign the internet could make apps that no one controls
  21. Finding ctrl: visions for the future internet
  22. What is Decentralized Storytelling?
  23. Co-Creation Studio
  24. Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media for Equity and Justice
  25. World-Wide Wandering Web
  26. Project Liberty
  27. Gitcoin
  28. Welcome to Web3
  29. Stuck on the Platform
  30. Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future
  31. tiny internets
  32. Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud
  33. Noosphere
  34. IPFS
  35. COMPOST
  36. Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web
  37. Starling Lab
  38. Hypha Woker Co-operative
  39. Olia Lialina
  40. Turing Complete User – Resisting Alienation in Human Computer Interaction
  41. The Weizenbaum Institute for Networked Society 
  42. A modern wiki for a modern internet: the Smallest Federated Wiki on The GovLab’s Demos for Democracy
  43. The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral
  44. Open Educational Resources (OER)
  45. Internet Dream, 1994, Nam June Paik
  46. After the Internet

Redesigning the Internet

Handbook


an organization or individual
an initialtive, protocol or tool


  1. The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral
  2. Decolonising the internet: Whose knowledge is it?
  3. Whose Knowledge?
  4. Decolonizing Data: Unsettling Conversations about Social Research Methods

  5. Decolonizing Digital: Empowering Indigeneity Through Data Sovereignty
  6. Decolonizing the digital landscape: the role of technology in Indigenous language revitalization
  7. Prolegomenon to the Decolonization of Internet Governance

  8. Beatrice Martini
  9. Tabita Rezaire
  10. SaveTheInternet.
  11. Beyond Net Neutrality:
    Free Basics and the Internet’s Political Battles

  12. Miao Ying
  13. WIKIPEDIA COMPETITION: EDITING & TRANSLATING
  14. DECOLONISING INTERNET GOVERNANCE
  15. Center for the Cultivation of Technology
  16. Open Knowledge Foundation
  17. Open Archive
  18. Secure UX Curriculum
  19. Caroline Sinders
  20. INTERNET FREEDOM FUND
  21. A plan to redesign the internet could make apps that no one controls
  22. Finding ctrl: visions for the future internet
  23. What is Decentralized Storytelling?
  24. Co-Creation Studio
  25. Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media for Equity and Justice
  26. World-Wide Wandering Web
  27. Project Liberty
  28. Gitcoin
  29. Welcome to Web3
  30. Stuck on the Platform
  31. Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future
  32. tiny internets
  33. Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud
  34. Noosphere
  35. IPFS
  36. COMPOST
  37. Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web
  38. Starling Lab
  39. Hypha Woker Co-operative
  40. Olia Lialina
  41. Turing Complete User – Resisting Alienation in Human Computer Interaction
  42. The Weizenbaum Institute for Networked Society
  43. A modern wiki for a modern internet: the Smallest Federated Wiki on The GovLab’s Demos for Democracy


decentralized knowledge, open source, and internet decolonization


Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg, and Mark McGranaghan

Cloud apps like Google Docs and Trello are popular because they enable real-time collaboration with colleagues, and they make it easy for us to access our work from all of our devices. However, by centralizing data storage on servers, cloud apps also take away ownership and agency from users. If a service shuts down, the software stops functioning, and data created with that software is lost.

In this article we propose “local-first software”: a set of principles for software that enables both collaboration and ownership for users. Local-first ideals include the ability to work offline and collaborate across multiple devices, while also improving the security, privacy, long-term preservation, and user control of data.

We survey existing approaches to data storage and sharing, ranging from email attachments to web apps to Firebase-backed mobile apps, and we examine the trade-offs of each. We look at Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs): data structures that are multi-user from the ground up while also being fundamentally local and private. CRDTs have the potential to be a foundational technology for realizing local-first software.

We share some of our findings from developing local-first software prototypes at Ink & Switch over the course of several years. These experiments test the viability of CRDTs in practice, and explore the user interface challenges for this new data model. Lastly, we suggest some next steps for moving towards local-first software: for researchers, for app developers, and a startup opportunity for entrepreneurs.

Martin Kleppmann, Adam Wiggins, Peter van Hardenberg, and Mark McGranaghan. Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud. 2019 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software (Onward!), October 2019, pages 154–178. doi:10.1145/3359591.3359737