By R. S. Doiel, 2026-02-21
Tenant and product or co-owner and participant?
Today the Web and Internet is owned and controlled by large for profit corporations and a few governments1. Corporate ownership combined with government policies has left us as tenant and product. It has given us a surveillance economy and enshittification2.
Those two questions lead me to a bigger question.
I think the answer is suggested by a corollary found in the history of labor movements. When a significant percentage of industries were unionized the unions exerted a strong influence across the political economy. I think ownership of the hardware and software can mirror that impact on the Web and Internet. I think when a significant number of individuals and cooperatives own the hardware and uses simpler software we can impact the Web and Internet in a positive way. That's my hypothesis.
An observations and assumptions.
The assumption that only Big Co can provide easy Web publication is just flat out wrong. These systems don't last for than a decade before they decay. Each of the origin stories of the current crop of Big Co are similar. They start small, they get to scale where investors are pushing expansion. Innovation slows so they buy up any potential rivals. Either they shut them down or fold them into their product lines. The last real innovation these companies introduced was decades ago. It is one of the factors that drive the Big Co, Big Tech hype cycle. The must drag out a new shiny thing that claims to solve some problem in order to maintain the circus that accumulates more money. It was they insist on tax breaks and zero regulation. It is why they insist they must market all our personal information and why they exploit the content we contribute to the Web. They need the hype cycle to keep the money rolling in.
Folks there is an alternative. In 1992 authoring for the Web did require significant technical knowledge. HTML itself was very challenging to teach people. It was challenging to teach computer enthusiasts! But a funny thing happened on the way to 2026. A tech writer, John Grubber, and friends came up with a simpler expression of hypertext called Markdown. You don't need to know HTML to create a web page or blog post today. You can write it or read it using Markdown. You can write it using the simple text editor that came with your operating system on the computer you own.
In the past many of our efforts to break free of Big Co have met with limited success. Usually the energy and effort has been spent re-creating the centralized systems as distributed systems. There was a sense we needed to offer the same experience as Big Co. While ideally individuals and groups could easily run these distributed version the reality is that it remains challenging. I'm really happy to see some of them have some degree of success3. It is an impressive effort. They have broken new ground and importantly they are playing an important role in the world today. I don't think they alone will get us to where we need to go. Even Cory Doctorow uses a system administrator to setup his system. Cory Doctorow is a smart technical guy. It should be easier to do.
I think there is a simpler path. The Web itself is a decentralized system. What is needed is an easier way for individuals to create content for it. Markdown I believe is a significant piece of the solution. There is lots of software that can convert Markdown into an HTML page. Pandoc is a brilliant example of that. A website is more than a single Web page otherwise we'd be done. This is why content management systems were adopted on the web. What you need is a way of getting to the HTML page by easily typing something up and a simple way to manage the website structure.
The most popular content system on the web today is WordPress. It integrates with the social web systems like Mastodon. It is open source software and you can run it on a small computer. The problem is WordPress is complex to maintain. WordPress is really a bundle of software. It requires running Apache or NginX Web Server, it requires running a database like MySQL or MariaDB, it is built from a bunch of PHP, JavaScript, CSS and templates. WordPress out of the box does some really nice things. You get RSS feeds, it can handle things like sitemaps. But running and maintaining it amounts to running and maintaining a whole bundle of interconnected software. That takes up resources which is problematic. This is especially true if you only want to run it when you are authoring Web content.
Complex content management systems was what lead to a renaissance of popularity in what are static websites. Static websites are simple to host but can be surprisingly interactive. You can built a static website page by page using Markdown and Pandoc. It did that for years. What Pandoc doesn't do easily for you is provide the trimmings like RSS feeds and sitemaps. Many people build websites with more elaborate systems like Jekyll, Ghost and Hugo. There are literally thousands of static website generators out there. But the ones I've tried have been too complex or didn't run on the machines I wanted to write on. I think this is because most were created by developers like me who were used to large complex systems. So we built systems like we used at work. What is needed is an easy way to go from Markdown documents to websites without extra knowledge. Ideally you'd only need to know Markdown to build a nice rich website.
This lack of simplicity for the user has disappointed me. The Web is over thirty years old. It is reasonable to expect a simpler system. Mostly these systems are stuck with complexity because they are solving the problem faced by professional Web developers decades ago. They are formula one race cars when what we need is a single speed bicycle. How do we get to a simple web?
The answer is in 2026 the technology is already built-in to the Web. It already can interconnect us. I think we need to break the assumptions of complexity and centralized models. The core software requirements include an easy way to express hypertext (Markdown) and an easy means of syndicating your content (generated RSS feeds and sitemaps). At the level of website browser this is expressed as HTML and RSS. I have used Markdown and some software I wrote to express both. It needs to be trivially easy to go from Markdown to complete website. My hope with this post and using my own software contribution as an example that this can become collectively understood.
A simple web of our own has three core characteristics.
The Web and Internet we have today isn't required by the technologies that created it. Human choices and human organizations combined with past scarcity of knowledge and resources is what lead us to this point. That's good news moving forward. Between 1992 and 2026 resource scarcity has changed. Spreading knowledge through communication is the strength and purpose of the Web. They are solid foundations to build on if we choose.
Let me illustrate. In 1926 we didn't have a global e-waste problem. In 2026 it is a huge problem. In 1950 a computer filled a room and could only be afforded by governments and the largest corporations5. They required special power high capacity power connections. In 2026 a single computer like the Raspberry Pi 400 runs $60.00 in the United States. It can run off a USB battery or wall socket. Throw in a monitor, power supply and cables and you're at about $200.00. That is with the crazy United States tariffs built-in. It includes the crazy AI hype inflated memory pricing6. A good desktop computer capable of producing Web content and hosting it is far less than the price of a smart phone which you don't control.
Let's explore the Internet and Web not as proper nouns but as common nouns. The underlying technology is a distributed system. We happen to use it like a monolithic system. You see a similar pattern in computer operating systems. Windows is based on NT, it was based on VMS. VMS was a mini computer based multi user operating system. Linux and macOS are modeled on Unix. Unix was originally a mini computer based multi user systems. Similarly the two popular phone operating systems, Android and iOS are on Linux and iOS. They are multi user systems used as single user machines. We choose to use them as single systems to avoid thinking about their complexity. Similarly we assume the Web must be run by Big Co because we avoid thinking about the complexity underlying it. Abstraction and re-purposing is a common theme in software systems. Abstraction and re-purposing allows us to move where the complexity is based. It allows us to experience it as a simple system. What's changed is we don't require Big Co to do so any more. I am arguing for managing that complexity through simple to use software on a computer we control and own.
The Internet is a network of network. An internet as a common noun is also a network of networks. Specifically it is a network of one or more computers connected using Internet Protocols. The Internet Protocols provides for public facing networks and private ones. One that runs on your computer and is only available to your computer is called localhost. You can author a website and view it on your own computer using localhost. Localhost is a private network. If you are running macOS, Linux, Windows or Raspberry Pi OS it's already available to you. You only need to choose to use it. You have a private network the minute you turn on your computer. You can have a private piece of the Web if you choose.
If you are lucky enough to have Internet access at home that network is probably setup as a private network. Your private network is then connected to your Internet Provider via a switch or cable modem. The Internet Provider connects our private network to the public Internet on our behalf7. Both the public and private systems run using the same set of technologies and protocols. This is something we can leverage to our own ends.
There are two versions of Internet Protocols running in parallel today, IPv4 and IPv6 (IP stands for Internet Protocol and "v" is followed by the version number). IPv6 provides a larger possible number of uniquely identifiable connections on the network. Each network connection can provide a Web destination. Much of the globe has already shifted to IPv6. The United States lingers with quite a bit of IPv4. We stopped innovating a long long time ago. I slow WiFi and copper wire networks reflect that.
A Raspberry Pi computer running the Raspberry Pi Operating System supports both IPv4 and IPv6. As a Raspberry Pi computer owner you don't really need to worry about the distinction. If you are connecting to more than one computer you'll need a device called a switch or router. There are cheap hardware switches used to connect computers via Ethernet (faster) or WiFi (more convenient). They usually support both protocols. This means individuals can create a local internet (a network compatible with the Internet). When I checked the prices at my local appliance store a four port network switch start at under $50.00. Some were under $20.00. By comparison when the Arpanet (the original Internet) started it required a DEC PDP-1 mini computer to interconnect networks with the Arpanet. A DEC PDP-1 cost approximately $120,000.00 (1960s United States dollars). There was a huge change in cost from then to now. Raspberry Pi and inexpensive network switches are way more available than all the DEC PDP-1 ever made. They consume far less electrical power too. You can spend less than $500.00 to create a nicely little Internet compatible network with a couple computers.
Why do I keep pointing out prices? Back in the late 1980s when I was a student and first encountered the Internet the hardware and software used to connect to it cost a small fortune. The price of an Internet connected Workstation I used at University was more than the value of my parents suburban home! Creating an Internet compatible network at my home was not possible do to coast. I actually talked to the people who setup the University's network about doing this (I commuted from a long distance).
Fast forward to 2026. Prices have changed. Computer availability has changed. In 1969 computers were still rare devices. Today there is one built into your TV and probably your toaster. The cost and availability has radically changed since the creation of the Web too. That should inform our expectation of how things can work. Sometime I couldn't so in 1989 is very doable in 2026. In 2026 rural communities in the United States are forming their own Internet Provider cooperatives8. These cooperatives are connecting homes using fiber optic cables. This transforms their access from none or slow to really fast and very reliable. It also can be done for a lower cost than relying on Big Co Internet Providers if they even service the area.
In 2026 my city of 200,000 plus people we don't have fiber optic connections to homes. In my case one Big Co paid the another Big Co to stop expanding home fiber access anywhere in the county of Los Angeles. That includes my city. They've been paying the other Big Off for more than a decade. The Big Co created scarcity ensures their profit margins. They are like the rail road companies in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Not about public service, not even about being effective transport corporations. It's all about profit at the expense of the public.
Let's focus on the Web running on top of the Internet. What is it? The Web is a hypertext system built on top of the Internet. hypertext is the key take away. It's the Web's origin killer feature. The Web's hypertext system is built from a set of core technologies. These technologies are now mature. That collection includes things like HTTP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and RSS. The two that go back to the beginning are HTTP and HTML. Let's take a look at where these started and where we are today.
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transport Protocol. It is a way of using the Internet protocol and text to reliability transfer hypertext from one computer to another. The interaction model is a client (requester, web browser) and server (responder, web server). It is a call and response system. In 1992 this required specialized software. It required one or more skilled specialist to run it. Most websites ran on expensive multi user mini computers that cost the price of suburban single family home. The computers required specialists to run and maintain them too. In short it was an expensive luxury affordable only by large institutions with significant government funding7.
In 2026 most programming languages ship with a standard library that allows creating a web server in a few lines of code. You do not need to be a network systems programmer to create one. No networking engineer required either. Ethernet and WiFi are available as commodity hardware components that largely work plug and play. Today web servers run inside appliances. This allows them to be labeled as "smart" and to fetch a higher price. You can do the same thing these embedded devices do using a $15.00 Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, power supply and SD Card for storage. A Raspberry Pi Zero 2W can even be configured to be a public WiFi access point8. That's the impact of an abundance of computers and resources. Creating Web services is a solved problem.
The technology that originated back in 1990s is still largely the same. It has just been updated slowly over time. That slowness has lead many people to not notice the changes. They haven't fully revise their assumptions they made back in 1990, 2000, 2010 or 2020. None of what I discussed here is rocket science. It is clearly visible in computing history. Through an understanding of the historical view that you can see how things were and how they can be. I'm making the point that things have change even when the collective wisdom the Tech Bros and Big Co hasn't.
The Internet is a next neighbor connection proposition. If I have a home internet owned by me and my neighbor has their own little home internet we can connect them. It forms a slightly larger network. If we choose we could split the costs of connecting to the public Internet assuming we had a provider willing to connect us in their terms of service. Internet cooperatives take advantage of this simple relationship. The recurring bills are electricity and the common connection to a larger publicly connected Internet. The way the Internet evolved is that each organization (university or research institution) payed to connect to their neighbor and agreed to carry their neighbor's traffic as well as their own. Larger organizations wound up having multiple connections to other institutions. They operated like hubs. Multiple connections enhanced reliability. Smaller institutions might connect only to one other Internet site. That was called a leaf connection on the network. Importantly whether you were a hub or leaf you could reach any other available site in the network just by knowing it's address.
The old metaphor, Internet Super Highway, was based on the corollary that each town paid for its road and they paid for a road connecting to next ones. Roads interconnect. Traffic, in the form of cars, trucks and motorcycles, can follow the roads from one town to another. The road system can be expanded to include new towns, home, cities or other destinations. Like the road system the Internet is extensible. It can be expanded as needed just by adding connections.
A home might be a computer, a town might a local network with a small collection of computers and cities might be large hubs with large data centers owned by Big Co. In the real world most roads are owned collectively by the public. Some roads are private. Some are private roads allow access for a toll. All are still just roads. The Internet today is built as a series of toll roads. There are few public roads. We all pay for access in cash, in loss of privacy and loss of autonomy. Many commercial Internet Providers prohibit direct sharing of the your network with your neighbors in their terms of service. These are human organizational choices. They are not technical choices or constraints. On the Internet today most people might own the device (example phone) but they're still rent access where the payments are in the form currency, loss privacy and loss autonomy. When the companies wish they can force the purchase of a new devise by using the Internet to delivery software to disable them. This is the big reason I think we need to change our relationship. The country prospered when the public freeway system was created in the 1950s. The country could prosper if we had a real option of public Internet access mirroring our public roads. In the mean time we can take maters into our own hands. Own and control our computers and local networks. Form cooperatives for connecting to the Internet where appropriate.
It feels like a paradox. Ownership and control of our hardware gives us agency to function better collectively. It reminds me of the adage, "you reach the global by first focusing on the local". What an interesting human concept. If we own our hardware and control it we can choose to band together in cooperatives. We can change the equation and get out from under the thumb of Big Co and their toll system.
Many of us carry a smartphone in our pockets. These are computers but most are not suited to creating a Web of our own. Why? If you are using an iPhone running iOS or an Android phone provisioned with Google's software then Apple, Google or another Big Co controls your device. This is true even through you may have thought you purchased the phone. Case in point I used to carry a Samsung phone. I really enjoyed it. It ran a version of Android controlled by Samsung. Samsung sent an update that bricked (disabled) the phone. When I reached out to them the automated email reply indicated since my device was over 3 years old I would have to buy a new one. My phone was five years old. It worked really well and I liked it. Samsung had made the decision that they would update the software on my phone knowing that it would make it inoperable. Needless to say I haven't owned a Samsung phone since. I haven't trusted any Android device since. My Apple iPod mini faced a similar situation. My point is I owned the hardware but didn't control the software. It was really convenient that updates were pushed out. I really liked not paying attention to the detail. My life is busy. That arrange worked well right up until it didn't. If a corporation or government controls the software then they also control the hardware. It doesn't matter how much you payed to purchase it. You don't really own it. Good to know.
So this is what I propose. We individually obtain computers where we control the software on it. The computers don't have to be powerful. I've done real computing (writing software) using Raspberry Pi 400 and Raspberry Pi 500. I have chosen to go with new computers because I own them a really long time. I still have a Raspberry Pi 2 that works. Skipping Starbucks and some Pizzas allowed me to save for these relatively inexpensive new computers. I understand that I'm privileged that I can afford these.
You don't have to go with new machines. There are less expensive options. I have a ten and another fifteen year old Mac Mini. I still can use them. I got them used. I think I paid five dollars for one and the other was given to me. Since they know IPv4 I can run them on my private network. I wouldn't run them on the public Internet. Apple stopped updating their OS for these machines decades ago. They can be run safely on a private network. They don't run the latest web browser but my website doesn't use the latest bells and whistles either. My point is they still work and can be used to curate or produce web content even if another machine is used to make it available on the public Internet.
There is a thriving market in refurbished and used machines. Companies and governments often lease hardware. When the lease is up after two or three years all that equipment goes either to e-waste or is resold. Going refurbish and used has the advantage of not adding to the e-waste problem. There are also civic groups that get refurbished equipment to people that need it low or no cost. Getting a computer to write web content can be challenging but it is possible even when you have limited means. You don't need a powerful machine, you don't need the latest fastest one either. You need one that has a text editor and can run software to turn Markdown into HTML.
Here's what I used for writing this post (it has the advantage of being portable to the nearest electrical plug).
The software I am using to write this post is as follows (all programs are open source software, free to share, free to use)
With this software and hardware setup I can published my blog (see https://rsdoiel.github.io) and I can aggregate the news (see https://rsdoiel.github.io/antenna). I run the most up to date copy of both on my private home network. I can view the home network copy on my phone as well as my computer. My family can view it too on the home network. I update the public copy periodically. That way when I am away from my home network I can still read the aggregated news.
The setup provides a little corner of the Web which I own and control. It is not hard to replicate it for yourself. I don't need to use Yahoo News, Google News, Bing, Twitter/X, Facebook, Instagram, Whats App, Spotify, YouTube to know what is happening. I just check my own aggregations. Since I didn't implement an infinite scroll and I aggregate on a slow schedule I don't get sucked doom scrolling. Slow news gives me more time for being with the humans I love and experiencing real life without distraction. When I read my aggregated site it feels much more like choosing to read a newspaper or magazine. The open source software I created to make this easy to do is called Antenna App. You can run the latest version on macOS, Windows, Linux and Raspberry Pi OS machines.
The Antenna App software is driven my Markdown files. Markdown is a really good expression of hypertext. Posts and pages are Markdown files. The list of websites I aggregate are defined by Markdown files containing a list of links to the RSS news feeds. The Antenna App takes care of harvesting content and generating the HTML files, RSS and sitemaps used by your web browser. Antenna App is written as a command line tool. It could be re-implemented as a graphical system or interactive program. My software is released under an open source license so anyone can build on what I've already provided as long as they respect the terms of the license (a GNU license). There are other software systems out there. I mention mine because it provides it is possible. You should look for one that works for you.
I use two computers (Raspberry Pi 500 and Raspberry Pi 3B+) for my home network. I could actually just use the one. That's because operating systems like Raspberry Pi OS support the concept of localhost. Localhost presents the machine as if it is a network node. If I had a Linux based phone I could run the aggregation service directly on it. Then I would have my Web right there in my pocket. I am saving my pennies for a Linux based phone.
Working with small computers is like living in a small or tiny home. It can be very cozy and comfortable. It will never be a mansion. Mansions and castles are fine for some people. While I've enjoyed visiting a few castles I would not choose to live in one. There are really expensive to own, heat/cool and maintain. I like small and simple. I choose to live in a cottage.
I accept living in a small home isn't for everyone just as running little computers isn't for everyone. That is why I don't say people should abandon the computer systems that work for them. I am pushing for people, like myself, who have a problem with the predatory Web and Internet we have today. Assert ownership (individually or collectively) to correct our relationship. Collectively we need a Web and Internet where we are co-owner and participant. I am no longer interested in being a tenant and product.
I say a few as many sub-contract to corporations giving the corporations the real control. ↩︎
Cory Doctorow both defines the term and what brought it about, see https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ ↩︎
Currently Mastodon and BlueSky seem to be the most successful with a possible for longer term persistence. ↩︎
I will talk about software I have am working on but your should not limit your choice. My hope is by showing that is possible others will step up and provide their own solutions too. Choice is necessary for a thriving ecosystem of the Web. ↩︎
Timeline of Internet history, see https://www.computerhistory.org/internethistory/ ↩︎
The price of RAM has risen dramatically since the start of the 2026, especially after Big Co and their AI corporate paramours inked circular deals to loan, purchase and sell to each other using assets that don't exist in reality. See https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/more-memory-driven-price-rises/. ↩︎
Be aware that the reason you can't share your private network with your neighbor isn't technical. Most terms of service issued by Internet Providers prohibit sharing your Internet connection with your neighbor. Remember that the next time your Internet access slows down or stops working. They are not allowing us to share. ↩︎ ↩︎
Community Networks website is a group that advocates for local network cooperatives, see https://communitynets.org/content/cooperatives-build-community-networks ↩︎ ↩︎
I can view my personal web on my home network from my phone, tablet and computers. So can the rest of my family. ↩︎