Apps and online services like Facebook take control over our data. This allows them to control what we can do within their "walled garden" worlds: Apps and online services enable mass surveillance and arbitrary censorship, both by them and by their governments. They can sell our data to advertisers and drop adverts or propaganda in our path. On top of that, a hack can reveal everyone's data, all in one go.

You could switch to alternative services that promise to behave, such as Telegram, Gab, Gettr, etc., but you only have trust to protect you and the bigger they get, the harder it will be for them to keep their promises. And you're still stuck with their user interfaces and lack of mutual interoperability over your content.

The Object Network has no app or service traps! Just our stuff, controlled by us. The Object Network builds freedom and empowerment for ordinary people right into its design. It could be called the "Freedom Web" - a re-imagining of the old web that has served us so well. However, it can sit on top of the old web and allow access to it.

In the Object Network, our data and our identities are under our full control. Everything is hosted by us on our own devices or by a choice of hosting services run by people we trust. We alone decide who can see, change and delete our data. We are in complete control of the shape and behaviour of our live data and of our identity and profiles. Data and their updates go the shortest route between us, avoiding surveillance and censorship.

Our data is divided into chunks called "objects". The Object Network gives us "handles" or unique IDs for each object, in the form of links that allow us to grasp them, embed them and share them. We can share any object we see using those IDs as links. Even people are objects that can be linked to.

We can use these links to wire all our objects together into a global network; simply by dropping IDs or links into our own objects. The Object Network can thereby form a seamless, linked cyberspace of all our interactive, interlinked data, private and shared. A space owned by no-one and by everyone, spanning the globe.

This space can be explored in the manner of a virtual world, in 3D, where people objects are avatars and each object has a type that is rendered in a natural way. Two-dimensional items such as documents, photos, calendars, contact cards, to-do lists, etc., are rendered as flat objects with some thickness. You can quickly set the view to see these two-dimensional objects square-on. Obviously things that have a natural 3D shape, like clocks, compasses, spirit levels, etc., are simply shown as that shape.

Objects can be organised within simple rooms or galleries at a base level. We can link our rooms, regions and worlds together into an infinitely-expansive universe.

You download the Object Network app (called Onex) and run it up. You realise you're in a 3D space like a game - which requires you to turn your device to landscape. It says "Home" at the top and it's basically showing a bright but empty room with simple doors and windows showing that it sits alone within a large plain. There's a text prompt asking you to enter your name, so you enter "Sam". The room name changes to "Sam's Home".

There's some buttons - you recognise the one showing a capital "T" - which must be for adding text, so you press it. Sure enough, up comes a text entry box. You type "Hello Room". When done, a canvas-like object appears on the opposite wall, showing that text.

Another button looks like it's for images. Pressing it, you get to choose some photos from your device. Soon your wall is decorated with a handful of excellent photos, again as if printed onto canvases. In the process, you've worked out how to place things where you want them.

Now, your friend Charlie sees what you're up to and, intrigued, also downloads and runs Onex. Soon she also has a room with messages and photos.

Since you're both on the same wifi, each Onex discovers the other and another button appears. Pressing it, you see "Charlie's Home", so you select that. Charlie gets a prompt asking if she'll permit you to drop in, so she approves that. Now you can see Charlie's room and its decorations. And you can see a simple avatar which, of course, is Charlie.

Seeing a great photo you'd like in your own room, you try tapping at it. Up comes a panel with buttons, and one of them looks promising - it has one of those chain links - so you hit that. A mini version of the photo appears along the bottom of the screen - that seems to be an inventory of links to things that you can carry with you.

Hitting the back button, you end up back in your own room, and find you can drag the photo you've carried right onto your own wall! With your approval, Charlie arrives in your room to see the effect.

She says "if only we could just walk directly between our rooms!" You have an inspiration that links may help, so try tapping the room floor, and the panel comes up. You grab a link to your room into your inventory, then go to Charlie's Home via the menus. You try placing your home from its little inventory picture on the ground outside, and it appears right there!

You go back inside your room to tell Charlie, but when you take her back outside to show her - her home has vanished! Between you, you conjecture that links only work one way. So you grab a link to Charlie's Home and put that on the ground outside yours. As you hoped, you can now walk in both directions. You share a few more photos and text objects.

In summary: you've created a shared space within which to share items including photos between your devices, directly and instantly updating. There are no registrations or log ins, no adverts or anything else stopping you simply doing what you want with your stuff.

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Duncan Cragg, 2021. Contact me