The internet we navigate today looks markedly different from the open, decentralized vision many technologists fostered in its early days. For someone like Jon Brookes, a technical lead and startup co-founder, this isn't just an academic observation; it’s a lived experience that’s shaped a deep conviction: true digital empowerment now means actively reclaiming sovereignty from the 'splinter web' of corporate-controlled platforms.
Brookes, whose journey spans from tinkering with a ZX Spectrum to playing a role in the first white-label Internet Service Provider (ISP) with ICL, has witnessed firsthand the internet’s evolution. He saw the transition from coaxial bus networks to early e-commerce and Web 2.0, building large systems from the hardware up. That long view has cemented his perspective that the current status quo, dominated by a few major players, represents a departure from the internet's core promise.
The Internet's Shifting Sands: From Openness to 'Walled Gardens'
For years now, we’ve seen the internet morph from a vast, interconnected commons into a collection of increasingly proprietary ecosystems. Brookes speaks plainly about how search engines, social media applications, and entire digital empires, owned from hardware to apps and services, have engineered this change. What was once heralded as a new frontier of freedom has largely become a landscape of "walled gardens," as he puts it, a "splinter web" where access and visibility are tightly controlled.
The problem, as Brookes highlights, is that getting heard, read, or seen online now often means "borrowing other people’s bandwidth" – leveraging the online authority of these gatekeepers. Independent voices and content creators are forced to rely on platforms that dictate reach, making merit secondary to influencer status. It’s why platforms offering a space to publish based on merit, like HackerNoon, are so valuable to him. He wants to see that ability to rise above the algorithmic "clatter" persist, giving "nobodies" a genuine chance to be heard.
Reclaiming the Digital Frontier: The Urgency of Sovereign Infrastructure
This isn't just about fairness; it's about control and resilience. Brookes is deeply committed to what he calls "digital sovereignty," which means owning your presence online. It’s a practical counter-narrative to the dominant model where big tech convinces us that services we once managed ourselves are now beyond our capabilities, or that everything must scale to 'Google' levels to be functional. This push for perpetual growth, often at the expense of genuine value, creates a system where users become the product, their actions monetized through corporate surveillance.
Brookes's own work exemplifies this philosophy. He's building headshed.dev, a personal "shed" or "shelter" where he can construct and store his digital assets. Central to this is MVK, which he describes as a "reduction of the 'train track'" for infrastructure – essentially, a foundational system upon which solutions, his "trains," can run. This approach speaks to modularity, ownership, and control, allowing developers and businesses to dictate their terms, rather than being beholden to external platforms.
Building the 'Train Tracks': An Architect's Blueprint for Independence
His projects are concrete examples of how one can foster digital sovereignty. Share-LT, for instance, is the first "train" application developed on the MVK infrastructure, publicly available and open source. It’s already delivering content for headshed.dev, his partner Anne's business (https://www.canalsidecoach.app), and a growing list of clients. This isn't theoretical; it's operational.
Future plans include Sched-LT for calendar booking, Shop-LT for integrating Stripe products into an online shop, and Filter-LT, a personal cloud-based DNS filtering appliance. These tools aren't just utilities; they are components of a larger vision to empower individuals and small businesses to manage their online presence, secure their data, and maintain focus, free from the pervasive influence of corporate algorithms.
Here's the thing about cloud infrastructure costs: while the underlying hardware has become cheaper and more powerful – Brookes notes you can cram what once took half a rack into a 1U server today – hyperscale providers haven't always passed those savings to end users. Many find their cloud bills increasing, sometimes inexorably. Brookes’s vision for sovereign infrastructure isn't just an ethical stand; it can be a smart economic play too, allowing better cost control and a greater degree of operational independence.
AI: A Double-Edged Sword for Digital Sovereignty
Brookes has been contemplating AI since the '90s, when "expert systems" were the cutting edge. Today, he's embracing prompt engineering in his coding workflows, finding it dramatically increases his productivity, turning years-long goals into months or weeks. He pushes back on the notion that using AI leads to a loss of independent thought, observing the opposite: it energizes him to relearn skills and tackle new languages and disciplines he wouldn't have had the bandwidth for otherwise.
And yet, this powerful technology is also deeply intertwined with the very forces that diminish digital sovereignty. Google Search, he suggests, was a precursor to much of today's AI, with the company quietly building advanced internal systems for years. While AI’s ability to assess content directly has made old-school SEO tactics like "keyword packing" thankfully irrelevant, it’s also become a tool for the dominant platforms – Google, Meta, X, Apple, Microsoft – to consolidate power. Websites that once thrived on organic traffic have seen their numbers tank, businesses collapsing as AI-driven algorithms re-plumb the internet to send user traffic directly to the gatekeepers' platforms.
This dynamic creates a situation where search engines effectively own the content, traffic, and attention of users, often encouraging addictive behaviors amplified by AI. Which raises the question: can AI truly serve individual sovereignty if its primary architects are the very entities centralizing internet control? This tension is real, and it’s something individuals and businesses need to grapple with, especially as governmental bodies like the EU step in with initiatives like age verification apps to reassert some level of control.
The Path Forward: A Call for Deliberate Digital Ownership
Brookes's perspective isn't just a critique; it's a blueprint for action. His call to build and teach others how to create sovereign infrastructure is, in essence, a move to democratize the internet. It's about moving away from an unsustainable "obsession with growth" and the illusion that everything should be "free" – a lie, he argues, programmed into us by big tech to commodify our very existence.
The vast repository of knowledge and learning available on the internet, fueled by open-source projects, is a profound achievement, unparalleled in human history. We can now interact with data in ways unimaginable just a few decades ago, even if our conversations with large language models can sometimes be with "unreliable, sometimes hallucinating witness[es]." The challenge is to preserve and enhance this open access, preventing it from being fully enclosed by corporate interests.
If you're an industry professional, the thing worth watching here isn't just Brookes's specific projects, but the underlying philosophy. It prompts us to reconsider our reliance on hyperscale providers, to investigate open-source alternatives, and to invest in our own capabilities for managing digital infrastructure. It’s a pragmatic approach to fostering resilience, control, and ethical engagement in an internet that increasingly demands a conscious choice between convenience and true digital independence. Ultimately, Brookes believes that the survival of our species hinges on a shift from endless competition to cooperation, looking beyond short-term profit to the benefit of future generations.
Check out Jon Brookes’ HackerNoon profile here, and read more of his amazing stories!