by imichael on 9/20/22, 3:53 AM with 69 comments
by keiferski on 9/20/22, 9:02 AM
Culture has been very online for the last decade and extremely online for the last 3 years. We are just witnessing a cultural shift away from this and toward ideas like real, physical, human, touch, outside, present, etc. being trendy. The Internet isn't "over", it's just adapting to a new cultural fashion. The technological immaturity of stuff like VR is also a factor.
By 2040, we'll all be extremely online again.
by v4dok on 9/20/22, 8:05 AM
On one hand you could say he is bored, bitter, "old" dude who is tired from keeping up with the advancements and declares the end of progress.
On the other hand, you could argue that there is some genuine insight there. Internet is not an internal part of being a human. I even subscribe to the idea that it many ways it goes against being a human (social and physical detachment, desensitized emotions). And in the end of the day, no matter what is said and done on the internet, our existence is primarily physical.
Maybe the internet will not die, but maybe there is a regression to the mean. It feels like the excitement of the "digital self" is past its peak and people are slowly re-discovering that offline life is "cool again". Or if not "cool" a necessary plane to exist in order to effect changes. I think the Floyd example was on point; change happens on the street, not online. The stakes are simply not high enough there.
by marcus_holmes on 9/20/22, 11:14 AM
This isn't true. There is lots of fascinating stuff out there (including this article, which is well-written and enjoyable).
The problem is that it's hard to find, because it's covered over with a layer of SEO-optimised crap churned out by an entire industry of professionals who spend all day, every day, trying to smother anything good or interesting online with their bland, outsourced, uninteresting, joyless, "content". I don't think that's what they actually want to achieve, but that's the net effect, and they know it, so it might as well be.
by aeonque on 9/20/22, 10:44 AM
All things arise and pass away. This is truth.
If you believe it to be terrible then you are blind to half your life.
Once a man, twice a child. This is not sad, it is nature. The end gives VALUE to what existed.
The author criticizes the downfall of the techno-optimist, pretending to be one amidst his sad broken romance of limited perception and judgement of the state of world.
The internet is a tool that humans created. It’s going to stick around just like fire did for us, which is now a convenient plastic container in your pocket btw. Because it isn’t bad or good (believe or burn - goodness, learn to think and stop feeling), it just is.
There is nothing wrong with the world. It is as it always has been and it always will be., arising and passing away. The only problem is that your eyes are closed.
Rather than contemplate the horror of the internet, why not contemplate what it could become next? How do we turn the camp fire into a lighter? Wouldn’t that be interesting?
by richardatlarge on 9/20/22, 10:01 AM
Many even here on HN frame things in a divisive way.
The article asks us to imagine the future. That is an interesting place to begin…
by helf on 9/20/22, 11:05 AM
by subjectsigma on 9/20/22, 9:09 AM
People are withdrawing from public Internet forums like Twitter. Twitter is so obscenely devoid of value that your average person has caught on and stays away.
But think about this - if you could plot the number of hours I spent on video chat (Zoom, Discord, Snapchat, Facetime, WebEx, etc.) over the years, starting circa 2018, it would be a near linear increase. Since there are only 24 hours in a day it has to hit a limit eventually, but when? All that time is the "private" Internet, 1-to-1 or very small groups. Meanwhile I'm using Instagram primarily for DMs and ignoring most of the main features of the app.
by zimpenfish on 9/20/22, 11:52 AM
a) Ken Olsen, b) 1977.
by sweetbitter on 9/20/22, 11:02 AM
U wot m8?
by raydiatian on 9/20/22, 8:08 AM
by motohagiography on 9/20/22, 11:55 AM
While I wasn't interested in following the writer down his garden path, this stood out and made me wonder whether over a large enough portfolio, later stage investments that increase the velocity of money can be recouped by investing in the emergent earlier stages of the growth they create. It's a bit of an inflationary and trickle-bubble argument, but from a tech venture perspective, even if Uber and WeWork were subsidized, they changed how a generation moved and worked and created knock on growth.
Softbank's moneybomb investments created a lot of wealth for people who worked for them, but also launched hundreds if not thousands of more companies. The loss of tens of millions here or there also goes on to produce new seed and A round opportunities within a 5-7 year horizon. It suggests that large later stage rounds from giant funds should index on whether the company is increasing the velocity of money enough that it is likely to yield a certain number of new companies, and its talent is risk taking enough to join more startups, and then find a way to get exposure and participation in those through the earlier stage VCs that focus on them as a hedge. Like a $150m investment in a D round for some tech company whose massive growth is behind it should be hedged with $10m+ of participation in VC funds doing seed and A rounds in that company's market where all their talent is going to leave for now that the $150m company has gone corporate.
by barrysteve on 9/20/22, 8:30 AM
The internet is the khala from starcraft, it connects our thoughts and emotions to our internet brothers and sisters. An interconnected web of points.
We don't need a gustav dore inspired horror cluttering up the place. Subtract out the froth at the bottom of a crashed beach wave, and you'll have the best internet there's ever been.
by jaqalopes on 9/20/22, 12:39 PM
It’s easy to be a solo dropout and turn your back on the world. The problem comes when no one goes with you, and now you’re just an old man yelling at a cloud. I yearn desperately for a life where my connections to everyone I know aren’t mediated by the internet. But as long as everyone else is still on the internet, I’m pretty much SOL.
by larsnystrom on 9/20/22, 11:55 AM
by mrkramer on 9/20/22, 10:36 AM
If engagement and revenue is in decline for internet businesses that means nothing. There are always business cycles of expansion and retraction.
The only thing that can kill internet is something better than the internet.
by hoseja on 9/20/22, 7:39 AM
There's more deep, weird, genuinely interesting stuff than ever, just usually not on twitter. Actually, yeah, the author is conflating Web 2.0 with the internet.
by camillomiller on 9/20/22, 9:18 AM
by smitty1e on 9/20/22, 9:59 AM
Are but Towers of Babel
Growing to collapse
by askhan on 9/20/22, 10:45 AM
by bullen on 9/21/22, 8:55 AM
But energy is finite.
So he's both right and wrong at the same time.
Eventually he will be right when we reach Mad Max without cars.
by taylodl on 9/20/22, 1:44 PM
by jl6 on 9/20/22, 11:23 AM
by boxmonster on 9/20/22, 7:58 AM
- An ex President may be indicted soon, the first time in US history
- The ex President threatens the nation with the wrath of his supporters
- How much danger are Americans in from domestic terrorism? Not sure, but could be substantial
- The American West is drying up. Europe and China are running out of water too
- Russia is losing the war. No one knows what to expect when Putin is backed into a corner
- An election is 7 weeks away. No one knows what will happen. Will there be revolt by the losers?
- The pandemic may be declared over but is still killing people. Long Covid is a problem
- Gender and sex cultural wars are raging in the Anglo sphere
- Inflation is slowly eating into the savings of Americans
- Supply chain and workforce turmoil are still a problem from the pandemic
- The Greenland ice sheet is melting at a faster rate than expected. The Gulf Stream may shut down
- Climate change is disrupting agriculture and there are dangers of famines and climate refugees
It's all happening at once in real time.
by throwaway787544 on 9/20/22, 10:16 AM
And after that, when we return to the primordial ooze of AOLs and Prodigys and CompuServes, and even before that to UseNet and BBSes, when there is barely a commercial entity left, but there is still a wire to shove weird binary non-euclydian poetry into, there will be internet.
And even after, when illicit shortwave modems screech their crude 300 baud message across the planet, and very slowly a fat gray cat, Cheshire-grinning a question about a sandwich, progressively renders into a cracked and crudely lit LCD, an old meme will take form, and there, in the gray matter, there will be internet.
Nobody really knows when the body dies. After brain death, and then organ failure, and all the electricity's gone, a rotting corpse still feeds the world, mother's diesel for the biological engine of life. Who knows where the internet will go, or for how long, or in what strange aeons it will return? Who can say if ours was even the first?