Towards Democratic Computing

The Internet fosters democratic principles, bringing information, services, and social contacts to everyone’s fingertips. Conversely, rampant monopolization, exploitation, and manipulation trends cause doubts about the democratization effects of the Internet. We argue that key functionality atop the core “Transport Internet” shall be made publicly available and governed as meta-services. Thereupon, innovators shall be able to build real services easily for a competitive market, while the underlying Meta-services ensure interoperability and are publicly governed to counter undemocratic and antisocial mechanisms. The proposed meta-services represent rather well-known functionality, and the proposed list is not comprehensive. What is new is their joint consideration as pillars of “democratic computing”. We introduce our vision as a basis for discussions about the feasibility, potential benefits, and threats, and about the most pressing meta-services to start with. We propose a public ledger (largely equivalent to an existing blockchain yet publicly governed) as underlying technology along with the Web and the core Transport Internet, with the following meta-services atop: neutral edge computing for the provision of storage and computing; trust management; AI serving; persistent metaverse; and mission-critical provisioning. For each meta-service, we will discuss smaller or larger steps that were already made towards their conceptualization.