The online world was meant to be an open system but has become dominated by huge corporations. If we are to revive it, that must end

The result was an extraordinary explosion of creativity, and the emergence of what was, essentially, a kind of global commons. At that point in its history, the internet was, as one scholar later described it, “an architecture for permissionless innovation” or, more prosaically, a global machine for springing surprises. The first such surprise was the web. And because it was decided the web would grow better without profit considerations, Berners-Lee released it as a platform that would also enable permissionless innovation.