During the first era of the internet — from the 1980s through the early 2000s — internet services were built on open protocols that were controlled by the internet community.


During the second era of the internet, from the mid 2000s to the present, for-profit tech companies — most notably Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon (GAFA) — built software

Technology started enabling decentralization with the personal computer in the late ’70s, then with the internet in 1991, and now with Bitcoin. The twenty-first century may be in many ways opposite of the twentieth.

DigiCash, more than a simple electronic-payments solution, was cutting-edge in its cryptographic features. It protected user privacy; it removed payment-processing intermediaries and the costs that went with them; it even promised to upend power structures and end corruption.