English

This internet, on the ground

Networking and Internet Architecture 2021-12-16 v1

Abstract

The internet's key points of global control lie in the hands of a few people, primarily private organizations based in the United States. These control points, as they exist today, raise structural risks to the global internet's long-term stability. I argue: the problem isn't that these control points exist, it's that there is no popular governance over them. I advocate for a localist approach to internet governance: small internets deployed on municipal scales, interoperating selectively, carefully, with this internet and one another.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2112.05199,
  title  = {This internet, on the ground},
  author = {Nick Merrill},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2112.05199},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:11:28.917Z