I usually write in Google's online word processor Google Docs, even when noting the company's shortcomings. This article is different: it was drafted in a similar but more private service called Graphite Docs. I discovered it while exploring a nascent and glitch-ridden online realm known as the decentralized internet.

Proponents as varied as privacy activists and marquee venture capitalists talk about the decentralized internet as a kind of digital Garden of Eden that can restore the freedom and goodwill of the internet's early days. The argument goes that big tech companies have locked up our data and minds inside stockholder-serving platforms that crush competition and privacy. Ultra-private, socially conscious decentralized apps, sometimes dubbed DApps, will give us back control of our data and let startups slay giants once more.

"The best entrepreneurs, developers, and investors have become wary of building on top of centralized platforms," Chris Dixon, a partner with investor Andreessen Horowitz, wrote last month in a kind of manifesto for a more decentralized internet. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has similar concerns. Graphite Docs and some other early DApps are far from perfect but show there's something to the hype. A life less dependent on cloud giants is possible, if not yet easy.

When you type in Google Docs, every word is sent to the ad company's servers, where you must take it on faith your data will be left alone. Despite Google's privacy policies and strong reputation for security, it has the technical ability to do whatever it wants with information you entrust to it. When I tapped these sentences into Graphite Docs they received a higher level of protection.

I could still access and edit my document from different computers, and even invite collaborators, because it was backed up online as I worked. But the data was stored in an encrypted form, on a network of computers unable to read my data. The encryption keys needed to unscramble it never left my own devices, meaning that unlike with most of the online services I use, my data was solely under my control.

All that was possible because Graphite Docs is built on top of Blockstack, a platform for decentralized internet apps developed by a startup of the same name. You access apps on the platform through a browser, but they run locally, on your computer, with help from software you install from Blockstack. That software helps you create the ID you need to log in to Blockstack apps and stores your encryption keys. And it gives you a choice of where you want to store your encrypted data: your own server or the Gaia storage network powered by Blockstack and some early adopters who have contributed their own computers to the cause. You can access your data from anywhere—as long as you remember your 12-word encryption keyphrase.

As you’ve probably gathered, getting started on the decentralized internet isn't as easy as downloading a new app from an app store. The people behind these clunky, early apps claim that it eventually will be. They argue cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, powered by many computers around the globe, and the datastores of a similar design known as blockchains, show that robust, secure infrastructure doesn’t need central authorities or servers. "We’re working to build a new internet, and the end goal is everyone you know is on it every single day," Blockstack cofounder Ryan Shea says.

For a computing platform to become that ubiquitous it must attract two kinds of people: developers to build news apps and services, and users. Decentralized apps and services are already appearing aimed at both audiences.