The Forgotten Preconditions for a Well-Functioning Internet

For decades, proponents of the Internet have promised that it would one day provide a seamless way for everyone in the world to communicate with each other, without introducing new boundaries, gatekeepers, or power structures. What happened? This article explores the system-level characteristics of the Internet that helped it to succeed as well as it has, including trade-offs intrinsic to its design as well as the system-level implications of certain patterns of use that have emerged over the years that undermine those characteristics or limit their effectiveness. We compile some key observations about such patterns, toward the development of a general theory of why they emerged despite our best efforts, and we conclude with some suggestions on how we might mitigate the worst outcomes and avoid similar experiences in the future.