The internet as we know it is now over 30 years old, and author John Battelle says we must get over the “extraordinary inertia” of the system we’ve built. He would know: As a founder of WIRED Magazine and as an entrepreneur himself, John’s been tracking and writing about the evolution of technology and its impact on society for a long time.

In addition to co-founding WIRED, Battelle launched Web 2.0 Summit conferences, Federated Media Publishing, The Industry Standard, and The Recount. He’s written a book called “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules” and is now working on a new book about a better Internet.

What exactly is the difference between what he calls “the internet that we have and the one that we deserve”? Why are we now at an inflection point? Can we still fix the system? How would monetization work in this world?

These are the questions tackled in today’s episode of Dot Social, the first podcast to explore the world of decentralized social media. Each episode, host (and Flipboard co-founder and CEO) Mike McCue talks to a leader in this movement; someone who sees the Fediverse’s tremendous potential and understands that this could be a significant shift for the internet.

1:27 The early days of WIRED magazine 3:54 Putting WIRED online and reinventing for the internet 4:44 But how are we going to pay for this? 5:55 The dawn of banner advertising 7:07 “The original sin” and first commercial ad on the internet 12:15 Is there still an opportunity to make the internet work better? 13:25 We’re at an inflection point: “the internet grew up and got a brain” 14:38 From an “unholy amalgam of steroidal capitalism and oligarchic companies” to an optimistic view of the internet 19:02 How the Fediverse enables innovation 20:23 We need an at scale generative consumer platform 21:50 “It starts with federation” and the story of Federated Media 24:50 John’s take on Threads 28:37 Rethinking the paradigm: person-to-person connection 30:10 Excitement at having an online identity independent from a site 31:59 How could monetization work for an open social web 33:31 How to solve for news’ disaggregation problem 34:22 Value accruing to creator in a world of infinite sources 35:15 The eternal problem and opportunity of open versus closed systems 36:42 Going through middlemen has created a surveillance economy 38:40 Building direct connections into internet protocol 39:50 ActivityPub as “two-way RSS” that connects person and person publishing 41:17 Legislation to keep an eye on 43:33 Preview of John’s book