Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age
By Frank H. McCourt, Jr. & Michael J. Casey
(Crown, 224 pages, $18)
For many Americans, it is almost impossible to imagine a world without the internet. It’s even harder to grasp the notion that the digital world we inherited is dangerous, yet changeable. Currently, the five largest internet companies have a market valuation larger than the GDP of any country except the U.S. and China. The digital barons of Big Tech have more information and control over our lives than any other group ever has before in human history.
The question is no longer whether we can reclaim our digital sovereignty, but whether we have the courage to demand it.
In their groundbreaking book, Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age, Frank H. McCourt, Jr., and Michael J. Casey present their bold plan to recreate the internet so it reflects and upholds America’s most sacred values: dignity, property, privacy, free speech, and self-governance.
McCourt is a billionaire businessman and philanthropist who founded and contributed more than $500 million to the Project Liberty Institute, the organization seeking to implement the plan outlined in the book. His co-author, Casey, is currently a chief content officer at CoinDesk and brings 18 years of experience in journalism at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal.
The authors are inspired by historic calls to action such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Readers will find that Project Liberty presents a bold and ambitious set of ideas to fundamentally reimagine our lives in the digital age. In short, Casey and McCourt aim to overhaul the internet in order to offer an alternative rooted in the principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. (READ MORE from Colin Agostisi: Biden Proposes Reforms to Overhaul the Supreme Court)
Our personal data has become Big Tech’s most valuable asset. The authors believe Big Tech uses its monopoly over this data to dominate the market and force other businesses to fall in line, making the internet anti-competitive and ultimately anti-capitalist. In this era of “digital feudalism,” Big Tech is violating our privacy, unjustly stealing our personal data, and selling it to the highest bidder.
When exposing the injustice of the current internet, the authors articulate a compelling moral and legal argument: digital data is an extension of our personhood. They explain how the “transformative new technology has given rise to a new class of rights” that are “hidden in plain sight,” yet violated by Big Tech.
Our Digital World and DSNP
At the beginning of Project Liberty, McCourt assembled a group of software engineers, asking them to rebuild the internet from scratch to protect our digital rights. They responded by creating the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol (DSNP) in July 2021.
DSNP is an alternative form of internet that establishes a new set of rules for how social networks can work. Drawing a parallel to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which gave users ownership of their phone numbers, the authors explain that DSNP would similarly grant users exclusive ownership of their personal data.
Just as we can take our phone number with us when switching between different phone companies, DSNP would allow our data to be compatible and portable across all platforms and apps that operate on this new internet.
Private companies will govern their platforms, but users get to choose which data, if any, they share with any company on this new internet. As a result, individuals or groups of users could leverage their data as a commodity, receiving compensation from organizations for its use.
The authors believe DSNP will incentivize universally beneficial policies by ensuring companies who mismanage their platforms risk losing access to our data, their most valuable commodity. The DSNP will bring us into “a new era of self-governance for a human-centric internet,” they assert. DSNP is already in use for certain apps and websites, but it is still in early stages of development. There are ongoing efforts to refine the technology and prepare it for mainstream use.
The authors express deep skepticism about the government’s ability to dismantle Big Tech, citing corruption, division, and intellectual shortcomings. They therefore believe that private innovation will be the best avenue for transforming the internet. McCourt and Casey maintain that government involvement will also be necessary, such as for offering a legal enforcement mechanism to protect our digital property.
Reimagining Our Digital World
This book dares to radically reimagine the digital world, but its practicality and the shrinking window for change are major concerns. The last chapter underscores the urgency of Project Liberty, warning that the development of generative AI could strengthen Big Tech’s grip on big data, making it near impossible to transition to another model of the internet. The authors also admit “the value of any social network comes from the size of its user base,” yet they gloss over the challenge of convincing billions to switch to a new platform. (READ MORE: Flirting With a Foreigner)
Despite its potential shortcomings, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the future of our digital society. If Project Liberty can prepare DSNP for widespread use and convince companies and users to embrace this new internet, it will permanently reshape our world for the better. The question is no longer whether we can reclaim our digital sovereignty, but whether we have the courage to demand it. Project Liberty is not merely a plan; it is a manifesto for a digital revolution — one that challenges us to reconsider what the internet can and should be. Are we ready to seize it?