The end of the internet

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses the potential changes and challenges facing the internet as we know it. It suggests that the internet is undergoing a significant transformation, moving away from the open and free model of the past towards a more divided and controlled landscape.

🙋 Q&A

[01] The Changing Internet Landscape

1. What are the key changes the author has witnessed in the evolution of the internet?

• The internet has gone from a "wild west" era in the 1990s with no censorship and open access, to a more controlled and tracked environment with the rise of search engines, social media, and targeted advertising.
• The introduction of Google's search engine in the late 1990s and Facebook in the early 2000s marked a turning point in the internet's development, leading to increased tracking and monetization of user data.
• The emergence of SEO (search engine optimization) techniques, such as keyword-stuffed content, has led to the proliferation of low-quality, robot-generated content on the web.

2. How does the author see the future of the internet unfolding?

• The internet is expected to divide into two main parts:
  • A free, AI-generated content section with the primary purpose of driving engagement, similar to the SEO-focused content of the past.
  • A paywalled, higher-quality, mostly human-generated content section, with some AI assistance but with transparency about its use.
• There will be a push to remove robot scraping of content, which could lead to less quality content appearing in search engines, further disadvantaging those who cannot afford to pay for access to higher-quality content.
• The free internet will lose the benefits it once provided, particularly for underprivileged people, as they will be stuck learning from low-quality, AI-generated content, widening the knowledge gap.

3. What are the potential implications of these changes for the future of the internet?

• The author sees this as an unsustainable model in the long run, one that could be detrimental to humanity as a whole.
• The convenience of AI-generated content may come at the cost of quality and accessibility, particularly for those who cannot afford to pay for higher-quality content.
• The division of the internet into free, low-quality and paywalled, high-quality content could exacerbate existing inequalities and make it harder for underprivileged people to improve their lives.

[02] The Shift Towards Paywalled and AI-Generated Content

1. How is the author's own work incorporating AI technology?

• The author is using AI to generate images for their educational posts, but they are transparent about the use of AI and ensure that the text content is still human-generated.
• This approach of using AI selectively and with transparency is presented as an example of how the higher-quality, paywalled section of the internet could function.

2. What are the potential challenges with the shift towards AI-generated content?

• As websites lose traffic and ad revenue due to the rise of AI-generated content, the bots will have less new content to parse and process, leading to a decline in the quality of their outputs.
• This creates a self-perpetuating cycle that could further degrade the quality of the free, AI-generated content section of the internet.

3. How does the author view the future of traditional search engine optimization (SEO)?

• The author suggests that by 2024, people will care less about being found through traditional search engines, and will instead rely more on direct marketing techniques.
• This shift away from the importance of SEO is seen as an acceleration of the changes happening in the internet landscape.