Introduction — At Agwé, we are speculating on new forms of application protocols, which can scale to the internet and can restore user agency in digital spaces. We think this is best achieved by focusing on the economics which drive the erosion of users’ freedoms today.

The nature of our contemporary hypermedia is the reason the quality of the open web has so drastically diminished. The web’s protocols, browsers, and programming languages have been contorted to serve as a distributed general application platform, driving complexity that can only be tamed by masses of highly-trained technicians.

Developers deploy sophisticated and costly front– and backend systems to bridge the gap between what a website naturally expresses and the application’s needs. At each step, they are given the opportunity to guide the user a bit more tightly through the technician’s preferred funnel.

This, for instance, results in social media applications that revoke your ability to directly message your friends, if you are unhappy with being served short-form video content on the phone you own.

Because of the stark complexity of these applications and the compounding network effects, it is not possible for a small group of trained technicians to disrupt the giant, even if the small group acts altruistically, wishing to simply improve the experience for everyone.

Our goal is to develop an application protocol which treats digital spaces as public goods: A small number of smart developers can implement the ideas which they find interesting, without having to compete against everyone else for users’ time.

The removal of such competition loosens the muzzle on creativity, allowing for a much more vibrant web that is more harmonious with human nature. All the while empowering the end-user to choose how they want to interact with their devices, without any of the smart developers being able to penalise them for not picking the “right” applications.

This will allow us to move away from corporations forcing people into harmful user experiences.