Permissionlessness
We take it for granted that we don’t need a “license” to use the internet - literally any human being on earth can just, like, come online. No SSN or Aadhar card or (god forbid) vaccination proof is required for you to plug in. You do need an electronic device and an internet connection, but the only bottleneck to obtain those two things is money and nothing else.
This seems obvious because it’s how the world has always worked. But it didn’t have to be this way. I can easily imagine an alternate reality where an organization with global influence (like for example the EU) controlled the world wide web, and made it mandatory for you to have government authorized credentials to access it from any device.
In such a scenario, each person on earth would have to apply for a “web_id”, a unique global authenticator like a phone number or an email. Any time you wanted to access the web you’d first have to authenticate your web_id from that device, just like you have to first connect to a WiFi network. And like visas, web_ids would be granted or denied based on criteria that didn’t have to be justified to the applicant.
You entire online history would be coupled with your id forever.
A tiny cabal of elites would be able to decide who could get an web_id and who couldn’t, based on current social and political trends. For all the inequality in the world there would be another class divide, another haves and have-nots. A black market for these credentials would emerge.
Maybe this sounds idiotic. But a system like this could’ve come in place for purchasing domain names at the very least. Having your own website, however small, is analogous to owning digital real estate on the internet. The fact that you can literally buy any available domain name you want right now - including ireallyneedtopoop.net - without having to a) explain yourself or b) submit any paperwork to an authority is quite bonkers. Again the only constraint here is money and nothing else.
It’s quite a collective win for humanity that such systems don’t exist, that we truly have a lot of freedom online. This permissionlessness isn’t something we should take for granted. (He said, before binge watching YouTube for three hours and falling asleep to a car crash compilation montage.)
Homogeneity
In theory, the internet is a clustered aggregation of millions of unique websites that all link to each other and can be discovered by typing the right keywords into a search engine.
In practice, the internet is like four big tech websites that everybody visits just to scroll through each one for “content”, i.e. an endless stream of media provided by a recommendation algorithm that wants to keep you hooked till your thumbs break off from your hands.
We don’t browse the web or surf the internet anymore. We just scroll.
Because the web is so homogenized now, most people have no idea how weird it’s always been. It’s a huge place. I’ve never been to Paris but I suspect that the internet is something like that: a city with a deep history and a million interesting places in various nooks and crannies embedded throughout if you bothered to look, but also a city where most tourists are busy ogling the Eiffel Tower or the Mona Lisa to pay attention to anything else.
There are websites on here that can tell you the live status of every airplane in the sky. There are websites that show you television from the 90’s, that you can listen to any radio channel in the world on. There are extremely dumb and extremely useful websites. And these aren’t even the tip of the iceberg.
That is why I love places like Hacker News and r/internetisbeautiful - they’re the few existing active forums on the web that can lead you to its remotest (and weirdest) corners. Yeah, The Louvre is great, but don’t you want to check out the rest of the city too?
Barrierlessness
I watched a Ted Talk by a teenage music producer who made original beats on his iPhone because his family couldn’t afford to buy him a MacBook. He was so good that his beats were eventually used by artists like Vampire Weekend and Kendrick Lamar.
I saw a tweet of someone writing code on their phone using Replit.
I read the John Carmack quote from Masters of Doom about how little barriers there are to build something in the information age, and how all you need is a PC and the dedication to do something.
And all I could think was: we owe it to ourselves to do something pretty cool with our high internet speeds and super fast laptops and latest iPhones, otherwise what’s the point?
"We don’t browse the web or surf the internet anymore. We just scroll."
this is because almost everybody WRONGLY believes that "RSS is dead", which is one of the biggest lies online: https://stop.zona-m.net/2019/09/rss-is-still-great.-and-needed.-more-now-than-ever/
and, if I may, the same lie is also one of the reasons why I was basically forced to join Substack, see https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/i-just-started-a-newsletter-and-its
‘we owe it to ourselves to do something pretty cool with our high internet speeds and super fast laptops and latest iPhones, otherwise what’s the point?’
Perfect.
It’s easy to be cynical about the deficiencies of the internet and internet culture (I am guilty as charged) and in the process lose sight of the potentials and possibilities. This piece was a timely reminder for me. Thank you.