# Decentralization Across the Lineage

How one move — removing the central intermediary — recurs from Licklider's network through the Web and Bitcoin to the Independent Internet.

Read end to end, the [source library](/docs.md) tells one story told four times: each era of computing pushes authority further from a center.

## The recurring move

- **Cooperating machines, no owner.** [Licklider](/wiki/licklider.md)'s "Intergalactic Computer Network" imagined autonomous systems sharing programs and data without a central authority — networking as a federation, not a hub.
- **Permissionless publishing.** [Berners-Lee](/wiki/berners-lee.md)'s [1989 proposal](/docs/information-management-proposal.md) made the Web decentralized by default: anyone could add a page or a link without asking. No registry, no gatekeeper.
- **Trust without an intermediary.** [Nakamoto](/wiki/nakamoto.md)'s [Bitcoin whitepaper](/docs/bitcoin-whitepaper.md) replaced the trusted middleman with cryptographic proof, proving a globally shared ledger can run with no owner at all.
- **Control of the substrate.** The Independent Internet adds the axis the others left open — control of the compute and data themselves, through self-hosting, mesh networking, and on-premises storage.

## Why it matters

[Decentralization](/wiki/decentralization.md) is not a single invention but a direction the lineage keeps travelling, each step removing a different central point of control. [Surveillance capitalism](/wiki/surveillance-capitalism.md) is what the story looks like when that direction reverses — when value extraction re-centralizes around intermediaries holding everyone's data. The Independent Internet's wager is that the structural cure is the same move, applied once more: take out the choke point.

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## Backlinks

Pages that link here:

- [Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System](/wiki/bitcoin-whitepaper.md) — Nakamoto's nine-page design for electronic cash without a trusted third party — the strongest practical proof that a global system can run with no central owner.
- [Information Management: A Proposal](/wiki/information-management-proposal.md) — Berners-Lee's CERN memo proposing a decentralized web of typed nodes and links — the document the World Wide Web grew from.