Narrative Provenance
In The Three Pillars of Digital Sovereignty, Ground is described as the difference between a homeowner and a tenant. Without Ground, users are "digital sharecroppers"—working on land that can be sold or bulldozed out from under them.
"You cannot build a legacy on rented land."
Field Notes
The Cautionary Tale: The GeoCities shutdown (2009) is the primary example of lost Ground. Because users did not own their hosting or domains, 38 million sites were evicted overnight.
The IndieWeb Solution: The principle of POSSE (Post On Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere) ensures Ground is maintained. Content originates on owned infrastructure and is merely shared to corporate platforms, not born there.
Praxis
Achieving Ground involves:
- Local Backups: Keeping copies of all cloud data on physical drives.
- Portable Hosting: Using platforms (like WordPress or Ghost) that allow you to export your entire site and move to a new host.
- Self-Hosting: Running one's own server (the gold standard of Ground).