The Internet is Dead, Long Live the Internet?!

“The internet is dead,” many are saying. The arguments are persuasive: search engine results aren’t very useful anymore, ads are constant, and corporate social networks seem to be mostly bots sharing AI slop.

But the internet has died before. I spent my youth on Usenet groups, chatting on IRC channels and downloading games from FTP sites. Now those spaces are ghost towns—if they exist at all.

Today’s internet is heading in a similar direction and I think it’s fine. Maybe even better than fine, if the next iteration is less corporate and more human. Maybe the scale will be different (millions instead of billions of people), but the internet of the 80s and 90s was much smaller and it was still fun and useful.

The internet continues to have promise and potential. The decentralized social network knows as the fediverse (from federated universe) is an example of what’s possible. Real communications with real people. Great stuff.

Maybe it is a “long live the internet” moment as well.