Frank McCourt is Chairman of McCourt Global, a privately held family investment company. He is also the founder and executive chair of Project Liberty, a broad effort to build a better web for a better world. The project involves the development of an open internet protocol (a decentralized social networking protocol) that moves data rights from platforms to people.
Michael Casey is chief content officer at media company CoinDesk, host of the podcast Money Reimagined, and chair of the Consensus conference. He has worked as a journalist, including his 18 years at the Dow Jones Company. wall street journalwas a founding staff member of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative.
Below, Frank shares five key insights from his new book with Michael. Our Biggest Battle: Reclaiming Freedom, Humanity and Dignity in the Digital Age. Listen to the audio version read by Frank himself on the Next Big Idea app.
1. The internet is broken.
Despite the connectivity and convenience that today’s internet provides, the current user experience is broken. The technology that powers our daily lives is taking a toll. It fuels a mental health crisis among young people, encourages the spread of misinformation and inflammatory content, destroys civil debate, and undermines democratic institutions. All of these destructive trends lead to corrupted and dysfunctional information systems.
From my perspective as a 5th generation builder, the problem starts with the basic architecture of the web. For more than 130 years, my family has developed America’s infrastructure. Its development began with roads in the late 19th century and eventually led to the fiber optic systems that made the Internet possible in the 1990s. There are infrastructure and engineering issues. Design flaw. The flawed design of the Internet is the root cause of incredible harm.
The problems we face today are no coincidence. That’s what happens when technology is used and corrupted in a way that favors a few platforms over the people who use it.
2. It doesn’t have to be this way.
We can change the way the internet works. To achieve this, we need to shift the power from platforms to people, return control of data to individuals, give us a say in how platforms and applications are built, and control the data and content we are creating. Ensuring economic benefits are available to everyone.
This is no pipe dream. It’s a natural next step. The first generation of the Internet was made possible by a protocol called TCP/IP. The second generation, or World Wide Web, was made possible by HTTP, which we use every day. Why not create a new protocol with a new set of operating rules?
“This protocol was designed to return ownership and control of data to individuals.”
Project Liberty has developed and released an open decentralized social networking protocol called DSNP. This protocol was designed to return ownership and control of data to individuals. At the same time, this protocol gives developers the opportunity to use that data to build amazing new apps, with our permission and on our terms. DSNP is available to everyone and is managed by the nonprofit Project Liberty Foundation. This provides the foundation for a new, healthier digital ecosystem. Apps on this new protocol will be interoperable. Our data and social graph will be portable. Future platforms will be required to agree to our Terms of Use in order to use your data. Not the other way around.
If we can treat the Internet’s flaws as engineering problems and fix them, we can begin to solve some of the social problems the Internet creates and exacerbates. Most importantly, internet upgrades will help us leverage technology to benefit humanity.
3. Your data is personal.
When you hear the word “data,” think “individuals.” We now live in a digital age and everything we do is influenced by technology. We all search the internet. We all shop online. We all have smart devices in our pockets, cars, and homes. All the tools and devices we use collect information and pass it to some huge platform that decides what to do with that information. What they are doing is not optimal for society or humanity. These are optimized to keep us online, show more ads, and generate more revenue. We tend to think of data scraping as just a part of everyday life. Even though we can break out of this dynamic and have access to better technology that doesn’t exploit us for profit, infuriate us, or poison us, we accept that “we are the product.” There are too many people who do.
We need to mentally merge the concepts of our biological self and our digital self. Big Tech uses authoritarian centralized surveillance technology to suck the soul out of each of us. These platforms are dehumanizing us. The Internet, if redesigned, can do great, amazing, amazing things for humanity. We need to put humans at the center and allow technology to embrace and embed the values that we hold dear as individuals and as a society.
4. A decentralized web helps you thrive.
The Big 5 tech companies are already worth trillions of dollars. The amount of wealth is unprecedented in human history. In the next generation of the Internet, that number will definitely increase. We know that data is valuable.
“A new set of digital property rights will spark massive economic innovation.”
Imagine a world where the value we create online is shared with individuals rather than hoarded by platforms. A place where you can decide what to do with your data. And a place where we can participate in the value we create. A new set of digital property rights will unleash massive economic innovation and growth, generating new ideas, new wealth, and new opportunities at a speed and scale never seen before. This is not a question of stripping wealth from a few companies. It is about fostering incredible growth and progress, not just socially but economically. This allows everyone who uses the Internet to participate and benefit in new ways.
5. Time is of the essence.
Look what’s happening. The Big 5 technology companies are all elbowing each other out of the way to become dominant players in the next phase of this next big thing. This is especially clear now that we have entered the age of AI. If they had their way, we could all further enhance the existing model of the internet and use generative AI to give these centralized platforms more control, more data, and more power. will give. We will be further exploited and excluded.
We need to make a different choice, and we need to choose it soon. If you ask someone today, “Do you think your children will have a better life than you?”, polls show that most people will say no. If you ask children, they never expect their lives to be better than their parents’. We are dangerously off course. If we don’t seize this moment, we will be dragged into a future that none of us want.
Sometimes it takes a crisis for people to focus on and solve problems. A crisis can be an opportunity, and that is the situation we are in now. I’m very optimistic that if we seize this moment and redesign the Internet, if we put people first, if we redesign the Internet. Give individuals power and control over their data. And give people back their personalities. Our best days are ahead of us.
Indeed, getting there is our biggest battle.
To hear the audio version read by author Frank McCourt, download the Next Big Idea app now.
