The internet is decentralised, open and free for all to use. These features have made the internet what it is today; a global communication platform, marketplace and content library that has created immeasurable wealth for the entire world. Yet these very features are under attack from outside and inside, possibly leading to the end of the internet as we know it.
The internet was deliberately designed to be a decentralised network. The predecessor of the modern internet, ARPANET, was developed during the Cold War by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later renamed DARPA) as a robust and decentralised alternative to existing communication platforms like the telephone system; one that would be less vulnerable to nuclear war. Unlike the telephone system, the internet cannot be shut down by destroying a few communication centrals. Any two surviving internet nodes can in theory communicate with each other if there is an unbroken line of cable or wireless hotspots between them. This decentralised nature is the very soul of the internet.
There is no centre or periphery to the internet, which has become a global network where anyone can connect with anyone else without restriction, and where everybody is free to upload or download content and to build a business out of doing so. It is difficult to assess how much the internet has contributed to global wealth, but a 2011 McKinsey study estimated that the internet at the time was responsible for 3.4 percent of the GDP in the major economies. This only includes the measurable, monetary wealth generated by the internet; if we add the experienced value of having free or inexpensive access to data, information, communication, software, cultural content, entertainment, education, networking, and more, the actual generated wealth is staggering. We owe all this wealth, measurable and experienced, to the free and open structure of the internet. Yet this free and open structure is increasingly under attack from outside and inside.