Comment by xpe
One thought -- more of a question -- and I'm not the first person to ask it -- How can we design a 'smaller' kind of internet? One that is less data hungry, less commercial, but still sustainable (how?), more of a community vibe, with distributed governance, less enshittification. Think of it like a maintainable garden. One that still works without a lot of extra effort, such as constant browser 'innovations' or bandwidth upgrades. Something more like a hardscaped garden instead of a typical American-style monoculture grass lawn requiring nonstop interventions to make it look pristine. This would have many benefits, including resilience, redundancy, and archival. Yes, I realize I'm conflating layers and maybe even asking too much. But sometimes it feels good to dream. At the very least, it is a genuine question I can use to evaluate various proposals and ideas in this general area.
The Gopher and (more recently) Gemini protocols are something like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) https://geminiprotocol.net/