Will the internet ever die? - A list of questions I have about the future of the internet

[Saklas]

If so, what will kill it?
Will that happen anytime soon?
What, if anything will replace it?
If it doesn’t die, how will the future internet look different from what we know today?
What are some potential issues facing the intenet that few people know/think about?
What would happen if the internet suddenly disappeared ?

These are questions I ask myself a lot. I’d be curious to know what your answers would be.

Edit to clarify: some people have pointed out that asking if the internet will die is a big vague, so I’ll narrow it down. When I asked if the internet will die, I meant “will it ever stop existing?” Or “will there ever be a a time where the vast majority of people mo longer use/rely on the internet?”

 

[Syaoran Li]

I think the internet is here to stay barring some freak massive cataclysm. Internet is a lot like electricity, TV, cinema, video games, or even radio in that it will always be around in some form.

The real question is whether or not social media will always be around or if that bubble will burst or not. MySpace died the moment something better came along. Facebook is still strong but they've mostly plateaued, Twitter is cancerous as ever and is probably going to hit the peak of the bubble very soon, and Tumblr is slowly dying and shrinking.

 

[The Fool]

The Internet itself will be the next victim of cancel culture.

 

[Dick Justice]

"The internet" is too vague. Depending on your definition it never will or it already has.

 

[Queen Elizabeth II]

I have suspected the internet will become more restricted, and states may attempt to create their own insular essentially intranet versions of it. If they will succeed, now that several internet companies are more powerful and wealthy than states, might be another matter.

The internet is by an large for most people the new television arm; a vehicle for exposure to what usually amounts to American culture for anglophones with some considerable influence beyond there. When foreign groups are hosting challenges to large Saudi memberships to post pictures of atheist books or NSFW selfies inside the Grand Mosque, people in Iran are using Instagram to agree that yes the Council of Guardians are cunts and the EU is nervously watching Russia repeatedly cyber attack their infrastructure it's going to become far too convenient to just cut these outside influences out entirely and create something that can be more easily regulated.

It would be terrible for the idea of freedom and free choice, but from another perspective (mostly human intelligence or rather lack of it). It might not be such a bad thing. Before the internet came to the mass market I'm sure someone on the cutting edge said that it wasn't suitable for mass consumption, and look at the degenerate airhead waste-of-oxygen generations that have been influenced by and partake with narcissism only really made possible and permissible by internet culture.

There will be a strike back against internet media at some point, I do think preventing the public from accessing the internet in favor of a sanitized internal network will be one of the more gentle attempts by a Western Government. A more repressive regime such as found in the Middle East will likely try something far more direct such as a ISIL/Khmer Rouge "turn back time to year zero" program.

 

[contradiction of terns]

If the internet suddenly disappeared it would be on par with the 20s stock market crash. You'd see people commit neckrope at unheard of levels.

We'd probably recover from it eventually even if we had to go back to hard copies for everything, but that initial hit would be severe.

Just think of all women paying rent using OnlyFans that would suddenly be faced with the prospect of having to get a real job or go all in on prostitution. Or the social media addicts suddenly cut off from their fix.

As for some of the other questions, Dick Justice is right; you need to define what you mean by 'the internet.' The mainstream internet-as-we-know-it is at or quickly becoming version 2.0 of the internet depending on who you ask and what specifics you're discussing.

 

[Sage In All Fields]

I sincerely believe the collapse of US is imminent which will start a domino effect that collapses all the countries that depend on them for protection, the internet has become extremely centralised now it would only take a few companies collapsing to take out almost all of the most used internet services and there's also the fact that countries are increasingly seeking to block websites and some countries have done test runs where they've cut off the internet completely and only allowed connections within the country. The internet as we know it will die.

 

[Never Scored]

I think the Internet will continue to exist as the underlying utility that economic services and apps operate on, but instead of having this program where you type whatever address you like to go somewhere, you'll just have a series of single purpose apps.

I think the World Wide Web will die within the next decade. I think computers and phones will eventually ship without a browser out of the box and you'll just download apps like the Twitter, Facebook, Youtube or Instagram App from the Appstore. Browsers will exist and you'll be able to explore the rotting corpse of the World Wide Web, similar to Usenet today, but no normal people will use a browser and you'll have to specifically go out of your way to get one.

I think some kind of encrypted peer-to-peer thing will replace the World Wide Web for shitheads like us as they continue to ban centralized shitposting servers from the basic infrastructure of the internet. They just need to figure a way to weed the child porn and shit out.

 

[Hux]

Sweet fucking Christ I hope so

 

[whogoesthere]

Death is simply a different state of being.

Which means the internet will never die, but it will change dramatically as time goes on. It's a very new thing, and as someone who was around and grew up before it showed up, it's a very fucking strange thing indeed.

I suspect it will continue to be a bigger part of our lives, and people will become less outward and more inward as the internet feeds that kind of mentality, which in terms accelerates its change from a sort of international information platform, to a division of a marketing system.

There will always be places like this, and the underworld of the internet, much like there is a black market. But it will remain small, and will have brief spots of power but will mostly be a refuge for the outsiders.

 

[Women should die]

Independent forums will be replaced by Corporations such as Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and so on which put rules restricting freedom of speech in favor of gaining Advertisements. Independent Forums will be impossible to actually find instead of 4chan, reddit, whatever. And, With enough Time, Will be completely replaced with Corporation-Forums. So, in a sense, Yes; Independent Communities will Die.

The Internet however will not. But it's either you succumb to whatever TOS they have, or you will be perma banned.

 

[Margo Martindale]

As long as the earth remains covered in copper and fiber wires, it will be here in one form or another.

 

[A Logging Company]

The internet is just a massive public computer network. They had cross country linked computer networks back in the 60's, (largely reserved for big business, military, and universities). You could access remote computer databases on your Commodore64 back in the 80's via a phone line and a modem. You could even dial into a BBS before Al Gore came along and created the series of tubes we all know and love today. As long as we use computers, there is going to be some kind of mass computer network you pay to use.

At most, I could see a regional fracturing, with geo-political blocks having their own fenced off network like China. But those can be easily overcome with things like VPSes. We've reached such a saturation of viable computer equipment across the globe that makes trying to destroy the Internet near neigh impossible save for an extinction level event.

Maybe in the future we get all our information from the akashic records and communicate though instantaneous telepathy and we won't need computer networks anymore.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

I think the internet is here to stay barring some freak massive cataclysm. Internet is a lot like electricity, TV, cinema, video games, or even radio in that it will always be around in some form.

The real question is whether or not social media will always be around or if that bubble will burst or not. MySpace died the moment something better came along. Facebook is still strong but they've mostly plateaued, Twitter is cancerous as ever and is probably going to hit the peak of the bubble very soon, and Tumblr is slowly dying and shrinking.

I'm hoping the bubble bursts sooner or later. Facebook is mostly populated by Boomers who have nothing better to do with their lives or Indians who have nothing better to do with their lives, Twiter is getting to the point that it's borderline internet Chernobyl with all the toxicity going on there, Reddit's basically retard central and I'm honestly still amazed Tumblr's still around after all the shit they tried to pull.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

People are too dependent on the internet , X or Y internet platform can go into the red and the demand and the audience will still be there and growing. Facebook goes under, doesn't matter, 3 new things pop up. It won't even matter if it gets dystopic and anonymity dies thanks to corporate policy and legislation, people will still login and do their things online rather than go back to not having the internet, even if a major recession happen internet industries will just adapt and keep going, some grow even more thanks to the crisis.