A cynic might say that we have the internet we deserve. We were promised a democratic platform for change, for equality, for collaboration, yet are faced with a reality of weary cynicism, as author Charles Leadbeater wrote last summer, and an assumption that we cannot trust any organisation with our personal data.

We were told of flourishing startups and opportunities for all, yet the internet has amplified global inequalities, says Andrew Keen, a writer on the internet revolution, using the parlance of openness and opportunity to create an industry of disproportionately wealthy entrepreneurs.

And as the meaningful engagement of governments in the lives of citizens diminishes, we stare into a dystopian future described by Evgeny Morozov: Silicon Valley is heading towards a “digital socialism”, where benevolent corporations provide all the health, education, travel and housing employees could ever desire, negating the need for state provision. Ice that cake with the unpalatable truth about the reach of our government’s surveillance services and we might think our internet is already beyond help.

Commercial interests have shaped the internet, and have created such powerful organisations that governments now struggle to keep up – out-funded, out-lobbied and outwitted. Rather than reflecting the real world, the internet absorbs and amplifies it, re-presenting a version of our lives, our work and our culture, from the gross disproportion of privilege and access afforded to those even able to access the internet to the misogyny that cripples meaningful debate. Even acknowledging its infancy, the internet does not represent a version of ourselves of which we can be proud. From privacy and surveillance to our collective cultural record, where is the internet we are truly capable of? Quietly, excitedly, and in a modestly British way, there is an alternative emerging. Rather than the internet as shopping mall – defined and dominated by commercial interests – how could we build the public park of the internet?

Many of the concerns I have raised in this column – that we are primarily now consumers before citizens, that the ferocious disruption of technology is not being tempered with ethical oversight, about the failure of the BBC to embrace a digital future – all point in the same direction. We have a missing national institution.

The idea of a Digital Public Space was discreetly mooted by some of the BBC’s most overlooked and visionary staff as far back at 2010. February’s Warwick Commission report, a barometer for the UK’s cultural and creative health, picked out the project as one of six key goals, a digital cultural library of artistic and cultural assets.

What will be the digital legacy of the V&A, the British Library, the British Film Institute? These organisations at best are under represented in the digital world, at worst absent, outdated and woefully underfunded. The relentless, superficial, commercially motivated hyperspeed internet is built for the new, the now, the sellable – which is of course why these organisations need a digital manifestation more than ever. And that doesn’t mean being digitised by Google Books.

The internet is dominated by the US, and noisy voices of extreme libertarianism; witness Jimmy Wales on the Right to be Forgotten, who believes any accommodation of humanity by a search engine is censorship. Tell that to the wife of a murder victim, who asked that prominent mentions of her in outdated and disturbing articles about her husband’s death be de-indexed.

The Digital Public Space would be, in principle, equally accessible to anyone regardless of status or income, safe and private, and operating in the interests of users and not of the ecosystem itself. Creative assets – artworks, archives, films, books, photographs – could be reused and redistributed within the space, an antechamber to the main internet, but only for non-commercial use.

This is not a vision of the technological future imagined and engineered by the dominant young, white, male west coast developer who asks “can I build it”, rather than “should I build it”. There, the rule is build it first – ask questions about the social, cultural and ethical impact later. But this is public space by design, public by default, the internet at the service of the public.

With an intense and probably bruising runup to BBC charter renewal, the amorphous digital public space project still requires a leap of imagination. Given the mundanity of BBC priorities, it is unlikely to feature prominently in any negotiations and would not be BBC funded. But the BBC is only the shepherd of this project; this is a coalition of the willing, a call to action for the UK’s most powerful public institutions who can and will have a say in the future of the public internet. A more dynamic BBC might have already rebuilt itself as this kind of organisation, but it has fallen behind. Its digital executives wearily mourn the opportunity. “It hasn’t developed or kept pace with technology,” one says. “The UK deserves a world class digital technology brand without dominance of the US and with a crucial ethical underpinning. It’s our missing public institution.”

Leave aside our collective hangover about the power and impact of Britain’s voice, politically and economically, from a Victorian mindset about our rightful place in the world. Culturally, the UK is a powerhouse, and the best place in the world to start a meaningful discussion about the truly public, truly digital space that we deserve. It is the right time for that battle. Who is on board?