Some savvy folks are donning mourning clothes as they proclaim the death of the Internet, while simultaneously getting all dolled up, hoping for something new to rise from its digital ashes. And some wish it would just go away. I’d argue that whatever phase of life the Internet is in it is certainly safe to say it is a sickly one.
I’ve seen what I’m linking to here pass through my feeds this week and last, some via RSS, some via social media, some via an email subscription. All while I’m online fighting Medicare with the assistance of one of my doctors over some changes to prescription drug charges. No one takes a phone call these days. It’s online or bust. So I think that while the Internet might need some intervention or reinvention, I doubt seriously most of the real world is ready for that. But then again, the real world wasn’t ready for the Internet in the first place.
In my opinion, how you view the possible end of the Internet largely depends on what you put in and what you take out. Strangely enough, just like life.
I think Dave Winer is more accurate in calling it the web rather than the Internet. I mean we fight shooting wars using “the Internet” these days. Winer points to a fascinating article from Ben Thompson called The End of The Internet, that provides not only Thompson’s thesis but also excellent context on the entire discussion. Winer also points to Marco Arment’s search for Community that I referenced earlier in a previous post. I encourage you to read all mentioned above.
Communication, Connection, and Commerce
The three “C’s” in that subhead are, to me, what the Internet boils down to. They coexist, they collide, they sometimes cradle each other and can also cause each other to crash and burn. The Internet is like any other human invention or innovation. Once whatever is created becomes about the cost of sustaining that creation, conflicting tensions boil up. Just ask any major church or organized religion, local farming co-op, computer company, or small local chorale. Capitalism takes over and history proves nothing ever created by humankind is immune to the compromises that come with it.
Winer, Thompson, and Arment haven’t quite given up the ghost just yet. All three see potential for something new. That’s not quite the case with Miles Klee, whose piece also caught my eye this morning. In Please Let The Internet Die. Klee highlights a book by John West called The Internet Will Die, and So Will You: On Learning To Live In Our Digital Age. This quote caught my eye:
If the internet is much smaller and less solid than imagined, West’s book suggests, then it’s crucial to recognize the forces that determine how those deaths unfold, or which pieces are preserved while others crumble. Because the market has falsely sold us the web as a comprehensive library of accumulated wisdom, each transient phase of this global network comes to define the present, for better and worse.
And this:
These shifting sands are a far cry from the flawless, collective, permanent memory that internet users originally believed they were building. “‘Forever’ is such a strong word, and it’s the wrong word,” West says. Online spaces are memento mori, the same as individuals who self-promote across them.
I was also intrigued by this quote from Thompson:
This is where I come back to de Tocqueville: the Internet is an American invention, and has long been defined by American mores; the individuals who thrive on the Internet, no matter their nationality, come across as very American in their iconoclasm and cringe.
I think Thompson’s thought is not only accurate but also uncannily diagnostic. It is timely context coming at a time America itself, with the rest of the world looking and moving on, is questioning its own existence 250 years in.
Omnia praetereunt.
(Image from AnnaStills on Shutterstock)
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