The reaction, which ranged from bemused to angry, confirmed my impression that most people simply can't imagine a world where corporations don't dominate their digital lives.

To see why it's possible, consider the following? - ?even more unlikely? - ?scenario:

Imagine a world where a handful of people invented a technology that created trillions of dollars in economic value, but that the inventors didn't make a penny off of it. Instead, the people who used this technology to make a far less important economic contribution made a killing. It would be as if Edison and his lab made nothing from the lightbulb, but a random seller of quirky lampshades became a millionaire.

This shouldn't be hard to imagine, because that's the world we live in today. Tim Berners-Lee, the man who gifted us the World Wide Web, made less money off of his creation than Rebecca Black, the teenager who gifted us that famously awful YouTube video. Your average Instagram influencer probably makes more money off the internet than all of its founding fathers, combined.