By Bradley Berman — Lead Editor

During the beginning days of the Web, America Online (AOL) and its competitors (such as Prodigy and Compuserve) operated as if they could monopolize all of our Internet experiences. Their proprietary content creators and curators organized and presented content on branded, centralized platforms that stood as stark silos within a larger Internet. Although destined to fail, it was an old-school media paradigm that comforted the long-established industry players. With crystal clear hindsight, the inevitability of decentralized web services and content should have been obvious. Today’s nascent network of autonomous vehicles feels like déjà vu, a repeat of technology whose time had come rendering old ideas obsolete.