Head in the Clouds: How Local-First Computing Could Rewire a Broken Internet

There was a dream that was the internet. A collectivised network architecture sustained by computers around the world hosting content, answering packet requests, and working as a hive to create ubiquitous communications to bind us as a global species.

It worked, kind of. It’s no hyperbole to suggest that the internet may be humanity’s greatest invention to date – or at least its most impactful. Just like the printing press before it, the internet changed the world. The printing press led to the Reformation in Europe. The internet has reformed society as we know it into something new.

There are now two selves, the physical and digital. Two realities, offline and online. There is humanity pre-internet, and post-internet, and they are radically different beasts. In the early days of the internet, innovators waxed lyrical about how this advanced communications tech would change every aspect of society. Sages like Arthur C Clarke predicted utopian futures before the first network even went online. Humanity’s conversation would be unmediated by centralized forces of control that suppress and censor.

Cloud Control

Until it was stolen from us. Until we sacrificed our liberty for efficiency. A Faustian bargain from which the internet has never recovered. A bargain that means the most powerful corporations in the world are all tech companies. Not oil, not weapons, not minerals, but computers. A bargain that has destroyed all sense of privacy and led to the rise of authoritarianism by stealth.

A bargain made with our head in the clouds. Cloud computing, where data, processes, websites, servers, and every packet of online activity is routed through centers controlled by powerful corporations who, offering their services, turned the internet from a prelapsarian Eden of free ownership, software and creativity into a walled garden where every space is rented and every step is tracked.

Our computers, once powerful networked agents in the internet ecosystem, have been reduced to dumb hardware clients, pack mules that are only capable of delivering services whose entire function is dependent on servers in foreign lands. The servers can be censored, restricted, attacked, or otherwise rendered useless by the police and the state. You don’t own anything digital anywhere, not even your work.

This article was drafted in a Google Doc. Once the Panoptic Super AI goes live and begins scanning every word processed through the platform, maybe it decides it doesn’t like this criticism I’m making – and my access to my own creations is restricted, my work deleted, my account banned. As the warring ’20s have so far proved, the impossible can become unstoppable in an instant. The imperative need to secure the freedom of the internet has never been more important.

It’s not just about principles either, but about performance. How often has a server request timed out on you, an app goes down, a video collection vanishes without a trace, Cloudflare blocks your access…. everything now feels slow, squeezed through servers overloaded by requests. Why now does a single cloud provider being hacked lead to a global outage of key services across multiple sectors?

Local-First Computing – the Antidote to a Poisoned Internet

Enter Local-First computing, a new paradigm for internet architecture that promises to restore privacy, ownership, sovereignty and control to our digital landscapes. Local-first computing wants to give the end-user back authority over their actions in cyberspace, and forge resilient systems that are not at the mercy of a single DDoS attack or plug-pull.

The principle is simple, even if the technology is complex. Turn computers back into data processors, and make all machines contributors once again to the internet that we access. It’s not just about storing data in distributed databases, but making that data processable by the network of local edge devices.

A fleet of industrial devices on the factory floor wouldn’t send their data to distant servers to be processed and resupplied, but simply connect to another and operate on data in real time. Smart cars on the road link to others for local traffic updates and emergency warnings. Satellites in the sky process their data on-device (above the clouds), rather than expensively relaying every data packet to Earth and back. In the era of AI, where control of data is a key battleground, and relentless data-harvesting to improve models is a massive social threat, ownership of our data stops the potential overreach of corporate AIs.

The tech is new, but the possibilities are endless. Removing our reliance on the cloud returns us to the creative commons with true privacy and ownership. It’s what the internet used to be, and it breaks the monopoly that tech infrastructure giants hold over all of us. A new open internet where we can run free, and where your participation isn’t determined by central forces.

#CloudControl

#DataControl

#DistributedComputing

#FreeAccess

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#LocalComputing

#UnrestrictedAccess

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