Indie Web movement creates tools for a new Internet

The need to liberate the Internet from the increasingly centralized, corporate control of tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter is growing more acute, argues Dan Gillmor.

A professor of practice at ASU's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Gillmor wrote a Future Tense article for Slate magazine that discusses how a scrappy band of technologists has taken up the challenge, building a host of open-source tools to “re-decentralize” the Web.

“We’re in danger of losing what’s made the Internet the most important medium in history: a decentralized platform where people at the edges of the networks – that would be you and me – don’t need permission to communicate, create and innovate,” writes Gillmor.

Gillmor’s article focuses on the “Indie Web” movement, which works to liberate users’ content from corporate silos and give them more control over the digital things they create. The movement exists primarily online, but also hosts periodic “IndieWebCamps,” gatherings where technologists meet up to hack together new tools.

To learn more about the Indie Web movement and the suite tools Gillmor currently uses to manage his own digital content, read the full article at Future Tense.

Future Tense is a collaboration among ASU, the New America Foundation and Slate magazine that explores how emerging technologies affect policy and society.