As I look toward the future, weaning myself from Meta and crafting the most decentralized usage of the internet I think about how much online life has changed for me in nearly three decades of logging on. The world wide web’s exponential growth is remarkable to say the least and it often takes a conversation with a friend or two who’ve never left the more hands on less centralized aspects of it to remind me of how locked in to non mainstream usage of the net I engaged in the past. 

We’re living in an era where a decentralized internet is essential if we desire any type of collective control of information and connection to one another at this point. We’ve relinquished the majority of this power to corporations which ironically weren’t vested in the internet at its inception. Remember net neutrality? We seemingly all were talking about it, until we weren’t. People also think that VPN they started using after seeing an advertisement for it in public is actually doing something. Needless to say it is extremely challenging to get people onboard with changing any type of habit, especially those which matter the most and will fully affect their lives. 

I don’t have answers to all we should and can do but I know enough to reacclimate myself with the path I’ve always been on but of course tend to veer away from as time elapses. My usage of the internet should match my irl offline autonomy. We can’t Monday morning quarterback the revolution folks. We’ve gotta get in the game because if we don’t, we’re going to get what we’re given or have literally everything taken from us. 

I leave you with the video not as an answer or even a solution, but a start of the conversation you should be having with yourself as I am having with mine and others. 

Lastly, many of the solutions to our issues on this planet readily exist. You'd be surprised how many are being implemented. Action though is necessary for changes if you or I want to see any of it, whether it be for matters within our literal individual bodies or societal shit that affects the collective. 

You can go to https://freenet.org/ to try Freenet out yourself.

To learn more about FUTO and what they do, visit https://futo.tech/