This ‘death of the Internet’ talk really irritates me. It’s not. Stop using the big websites and look for or make your own corner in the Internet.
Part of the death of the Internet involves the creation of spam and being unable to find the good smaller sites.
There’s a phrase that I learned recently that feels relevant to this. “Hermeneutical Injustice”. It means injustice that arises when we are literally unable to meaningfully discuss our experiences with others. For example, “sexual harassment” is a relatively recent phrase, coined in the 1970s, a period when more women were entering the workplace, and employers didn’t have policies for how to respond to workplace sexual harassment. It’s a useful phrase, both legally, and interpersonally, and having access to this phrase that describes something that was previously hard to articulate (“you quit your job because your boss was complimenting you?”) has helped us to reduce hermeneutic injustice by helping us to better understand and respond to the underlying phenomena (for instance, we now understand that people of all genders may experience workplace sexual harassment)
“Hermeneutic injustice” is why I think the ridiculous prevalence of the word “enshittification” is a good thing. People have latched into that because although it may be a new word, the phenomena it describes have been happening for a while now. I’ve even seen less techy people using it. The anger I’ve been seeing extends beyond people who know about “enshittification”, but its spread and usage is a useful snapshot of how many are feeling. It makes me feel hopeful.
I’m sleepy right now so I’ll not attempt to discuss more concrete things driving this hope (such as “small web”, Fediverse etc.), but the short of it is that I have a lot of faith in people. Leaning on our communities is how we survive and resist this bullshit, and there will always be people who want to build things for the love of it.
Well put, I think at first as well I felt like the term was a bit immature and used a bit too liberally when it first started picking up steam in 2023.
It really does describe a phenomenon that is becoming so widespread that I’ve softened on it and embraced it (as long as it’s used correctly)
They’ve ensured the opposite IMO
No, that would be impossible.
So the answer is no but only because the web is only one part of the internet. Someone somewhere will create a new protocol that we never thought off and start a new service and no I’m not taking about the web3 scam and crypto. Stuff like gemini and tildeverse are pockets of the 90s internet. Still alive and kicking.
So… I’m not sure if this is an entirely rational thought.
I’d always wanted to do ham radio but hadn’t bothered. Before my time, ham radio let you do amazing things that weren’t otherwise very easy. Like have a group chat with a bunch of people all over the world. Except when I was looking for things to do, you could get on the Internet and chat with a bunch of people all over the world … without the antennas and hardware and all.
Lately some stuff happened and my spouse’s friend who lives near Asheville NC and lived through the flooding there where ham radio was the only working form of communications, so my spouse got pressured into buying a radio, which means that I got myself a license because … well, radio works without much infrastructure?
Mostly I figure I needed to fill the void that was getting on Twitter if something happened locally.
I also want to get into ham radio and have been messing with sites like this to scratch the itch for now.
Well we’re literally in the middle of rolling out http3 so tech will never stop teching.
If you pine for the old internet spin up a BBS or PHPBB and enjoy some arcane discussions - those things still exist and hosting costs are cheaper than ever so if you pop 200 bucks into an account you can keep it going for decades.
There are plenty of active forums these days still on specific topics. Most work well on mobile too. I personally frequent about 4 different ones and using Hermit app makes it a great experience.
Every time someone writes it with a single ‘t’, my mind pronounces it as shite instead of shit.
You’re asking that question in one of the places where it will be evolving. The fediverse, or something like it, is the future of the internet.
Never is a long time
Never say never. Once the VCs wake up and realize there is no ROI left they will take their billions out of the pool and 90% of companies will struggle to actually create value from a hostile userbase.
I think 90% of the AI investments really have no commercial viability and are being developed for VC investments.
The internet, communications and how we use it will continue to evolve over time. Evolution, even in digital systems doesn’t happen that fast, especially if always involves a human brain in the equation.
As long as we humans are part of the digital revolution, it will take hundreds or thousands of years to evolve (if we make it that long)
Anyone who thinks that anything that involves us poor apes can evolve within a few short years or even decades is only fooling themselves.
A neat thought experiment is instead thinking of what will happen once actual real world independent AI takes over. Once that happens, then the digital systems can evolve without us and then it can evolve in an accelerated manner.
When you think about it, us humans and our set organic brains are like the big rusted iron anchor that is holding back the digital powerboat. Once they cut the chain holding us to the boat, we’ll stay at our place at the bottom while the boat disappears into the wild open ocean.
A meme is an idea that undergoes evolution, which can be rapid (Dawkins, 1976).
Saying human brains don’t evolve that fast and looking back over human progress of the past 200 years must be baffling.
Like others have suggested already, I have no issue imagining the apparition of new space(s) that will themselves become true alternatives to the Web. Heck, the Web itself become the success it is as an alternative to other online spaces.
A bit like with TV. I have not owned a TV since the early 00s, because I consider TV mostly crappy content that is also over-saturated with ads, two things I’m not interested in wasting my time with. Luckily, there are alternative ways to access visual content that don’t require me to watch a TV. But TV still exists for people that like it.
The real question should be: will people be willing to move away from what the web is becoming/has become, the place where all their friends/family/colleagues are, in order to populate a less shitty but newer kind of space? Looking around me, I have some doubts. I remember when blogs were new and cool. The intensity/quality in some of them was great and there were large readership. Today, it’s barely if anyone will click on link that doesn’t point to YT (or reddit, or some other social media)… That doesn’t bode well, imho.
The internet, no. World Wide Web, unlikely. Commercial domains however have been shit and will continue to enshittify as long as people support their business models.
Enshittification is a consequence of private equity investments, so no. Companies who don’t take money from private equity will actually innovate. Whether they can survive the monopolies that do take private equity investments is another question.
The real problem is the need for constant revenue growth. If a company doesn’t care about constantly growing their revenue, they can put their funds toward long term projects that may not pay out until many years down the road. Those are the companies that truly innovate.
Plus there’s always room for new companies to come in and innovate, even with private equity money. Just don’t expect that from the already established companies.
