Everything digital runs on a stack.
Seven layers, from the cable in the ground to the argument in public. Each one has an owner, a governor and a price.
AlternativeInfrastructuresfor Europe
On building a European Alternative Stack instead of only regulating someone else's.
Europe owns the ground. Not what runs on it.
The models, the platforms and the public sphere built on top of them are designed, governed and priced elsewhere. The stack works. It is simply not ours.
Regulation draws lines around what is already there.
It has been the European answer, and it is a necessary one. But a line is not a layer. Nothing moves.
The other answer is building.
Not a European copy of what exists. Infrastructures that are alternative in the full sense of the word: different in who owns them, how they are governed, and what they are for.
But building is not enough.
Every layer has to be funded, designed, built, operated and maintained by someone, under some law. Who that is, and on what terms, decides whether a European layer is actually public. The stack Europe builds is the stack Europe has to govern.
One layer at a time.
This project collects texts, maps, proposals and working prototypes, each filed against the layer it belongs to. Open the stack to see what exists and what is still empty.
The stack so far
All projects →- 07Public spherewho writes the rules of the room1 projectopen call
- 06Platformssearch, stores, markets, paymentsopen call
- 05Modelstrained where, on what, whose law1 project
- 04Datawhere it sits, who can compel itopen call
- 03Cloudwhere European institutions run1 project
- 02Computechips, fabs, energy1 project
- 01Connectivitycables, spectrum, satellitesopen call