For the youngest members of the workforce, the idea that the internet could 'end' is an impossible consideration - like trying to imagine the life your family might be living if you'd never come along.
For the oldest members of the workforce, there may be a bit of nostalgia for "the way things used to be", tempered with an acknowledgement, perhaps grudging, that the internet has made possible things that couldn't even be imagined when they first started their careers.
For the mid-career Millennials, the idea that the internet might stop existing is an intriguing proposition, which comes presented with all sides of the possibility clearly visible. The good, the bad, the ugly and sublime.
So, what suggests we might be entering 'The End of the Internet'?
For the oldest members of the workforce, there may be a bit of nostalgia for "the way things used to be", tempered with an acknowledgement, perhaps grudging, that the internet has made possible things that couldn't even be imagined when they first started their careers.
For the mid-career Millennials, the idea that the internet might stop existing is an intriguing proposition, which comes presented with all sides of the possibility clearly visible. The good, the bad, the ugly and sublime.
So, what suggests we might be entering 'The End of the Internet'?
Firstly, simple timing. It's been over 40yrs since the internet was first developed, in its first iteration (January 1st 1983). It's been just over 25yrs since the first social media platform launched (Six Degrees, in 1997). Facebook has been with us for 20yrs.
When we look back over the course of history, paradigm shifts - of which the internet most definitely is one - tend to come along on a 20-40yr schedule.
For example, in 1918, (white, middle-class) women won the right to vote, a prospect which had thrown society into disarray from the first murmurings of discontent about women's disenfranchisement. This, however, did not radically shake up the position of women in society.
That duty fell to the Second World War, which began in 1939, and necessitated a broad swathe of women taking up jobs previously held by men - men who were now committed to a conflict which would cause multiple, rapid, paradigm shifts across the Western world, and send ripples of change throughout the wider world.
World War II ended in 1945. Almost immediately afterwards, in 1947 and 1948 respectively, the Cold War between the United States of America and the Soviet Union began, and, in the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS) was established - making public health a responsibility of government, rather than a matter best addressed by private philanthropists, and a need individuals were responsible for meeting; a paradigm shift whose impacts travelled far beyond health, and which took the greater control the emergency of two World Wars within 25yrs had given the UK government over its citizens, and significantly extended its remit - a reality we're still living under today (2024.)
When we look back over the course of history, paradigm shifts - of which the internet most definitely is one - tend to come along on a 20-40yr schedule.
For example, in 1918, (white, middle-class) women won the right to vote, a prospect which had thrown society into disarray from the first murmurings of discontent about women's disenfranchisement. This, however, did not radically shake up the position of women in society.
That duty fell to the Second World War, which began in 1939, and necessitated a broad swathe of women taking up jobs previously held by men - men who were now committed to a conflict which would cause multiple, rapid, paradigm shifts across the Western world, and send ripples of change throughout the wider world.
World War II ended in 1945. Almost immediately afterwards, in 1947 and 1948 respectively, the Cold War between the United States of America and the Soviet Union began, and, in the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS) was established - making public health a responsibility of government, rather than a matter best addressed by private philanthropists, and a need individuals were responsible for meeting; a paradigm shift whose impacts travelled far beyond health, and which took the greater control the emergency of two World Wars within 25yrs had given the UK government over its citizens, and significantly extended its remit - a reality we're still living under today (2024.)
It took 23yrs (from 1948-1971) for dentistry to stop being a fully or mostly funded NHS service - in 1951, a capped fee of £1 was introduced for dentistry, a fact which caused the 'father of the NHS', Nye Bevan, to resign from government in protest; in 1971, the cap was removed, and dentists were able to charge in line with rising costs for their services, even when their patients were considered to be "under the NHS".
The NHS has been observably in trouble since 2010-2011, with many rapid changes since that time to try and "rescue" the service; within 40yrs of a move away from the NHS being the government, through taxes and National Insurance contributions, fully funding healthcare for all, the NHS was observably entering what, in 2024, appears to be a potentially terminal decline - and a time for a new paradigm shift, even more radical than the paradigm shift which gave the UK the NHS in 1948.
The internet, in the form we're most familiar with, has been with us for a little over 30yrs, and in totality for just over 40yrs. The development of the internet was definitely a paradigm shift in computer sciences, and for society - but its time frame is closing in. The time has come for a new paradigm shift.
What's your evidence?!
When the internet first became a mainstream element of ordinary peoples' lives, its promise was that people would be more easily able to connect with each other, the financial and logistic barriers to starting businesses and sourcing goods, staff, and customers for those businesses would be removed, and prices of everyday items would fall to almost literal pence, because suppliers wouldn't have to keep physical shops open and staffed for 40+ hours a week; even for things that couldn't be sold on line, consumers would be easily able to find the cheapest price, and, even if that physical item were located many miles from the purchaser, they could easily arrange timely delivery to their home.
Reliable information, on anything you could possibly want to know, would be available at the click of a button, and it would be easier for emerging authorities to get noticed. Academia, and education itself, would be completely democratised, and all barriers to success removed.
Initially, this actually was how the internet worked. However, nobody would try to claim it still works like this, or at least that it still smoothly works in that way.
In recent years, the internet's greatest vulnerability has been revealed - the need for a sophisticated, extensively educated user base. People who can recognise low-quality sources, people who can apply rigorous analysis and critical thinking, people who can differentiate between verified facts and passionate opinions.
But, in a twist of irony, the internet's democratisation of education resulted in a substantially de-educated population. Because accessing information was so easy, the process of education was devalued. Teachers responded to the shift in attitudes against them with a resentment which further entrenched the idea that "education doesn't matter", and began acting in accordance with their devalued status - they either didn't punish any bad behaviour, or they inflicted disproportionate, and actually harmful, punishments against things which weren't even remotely "bad behaviour" in the first place, grasping at the possibility that, if they returned to the "strict" schools the adults in the room remembered, they would get back the respect for education that had been lost. They were legally prevented from physically beating children - but they could humiliate them. They could criticise them so sharply that children and young people decided the safest option was to stop trying - after all, if you never do anything, you can't get it wrong.
At the same time, the internet was allowing unchecked dis-information; whereas mis-information is simply someone unintentionally making a genuine mistake in the information they provide, dis-information is more deliberate and targeted; incorrect 'information' is knowingly provided to cause a particular, intended, desired result. In the case of the dis-information around the value of education, global 'bad actors' have a very strong investment in reducing the working intelligence of global populations, particularly Western populations, because this allows them to sow division between ethnic, racial, or gender groups, to ferment dissent not against governments, but against fellow individuals, to mislead people into what particular tyrannical forms of government are like for those who live under them - usually presenting them in a more positive light than they were ever experienced - and thereby creating an unaware 'sleeper' community of people who can be very easily mobilised against systems which are in need of change, and, instead of beginning the process of sustainable and necessary change, encouraged to reject and destroy those systems, in favour of the tyranny of whichever regime the bad actors are employed by.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the rise of social media content; join any site offering to "provide acting opportunities", especially if they don't ask for showreels, performance background, or union registration, and you will very quickly realise that none of the prominent TikTok or Instagram "influencers" are actually 'ordinary people with insights or skills' - they're employed by multi-national brands. They're told what to say, how to dress, even how to identify in terms of gender, sexuality, and, sometimes, ethnicity. (Calls for the de-medicalisation of transgender experiences, for example, are being very much led by those who are under the influence of bad actors who have very vested interests in people being able to "identify as" whatever they like, with no gateways to proving and living that experience; while there are people who support de-medicalisation on genuine, informed personal positions, they are in the minority. The calls seem to be being made by passionate individuals, but are actually being led by highly organised, completely disinterested third parties of bad actors - who aren't transgender, but who have seen a very vulnerable, and thus very easy to manipulate, community in the transgender cohort.)
The NHS has been observably in trouble since 2010-2011, with many rapid changes since that time to try and "rescue" the service; within 40yrs of a move away from the NHS being the government, through taxes and National Insurance contributions, fully funding healthcare for all, the NHS was observably entering what, in 2024, appears to be a potentially terminal decline - and a time for a new paradigm shift, even more radical than the paradigm shift which gave the UK the NHS in 1948.
The internet, in the form we're most familiar with, has been with us for a little over 30yrs, and in totality for just over 40yrs. The development of the internet was definitely a paradigm shift in computer sciences, and for society - but its time frame is closing in. The time has come for a new paradigm shift.
What's your evidence?!
When the internet first became a mainstream element of ordinary peoples' lives, its promise was that people would be more easily able to connect with each other, the financial and logistic barriers to starting businesses and sourcing goods, staff, and customers for those businesses would be removed, and prices of everyday items would fall to almost literal pence, because suppliers wouldn't have to keep physical shops open and staffed for 40+ hours a week; even for things that couldn't be sold on line, consumers would be easily able to find the cheapest price, and, even if that physical item were located many miles from the purchaser, they could easily arrange timely delivery to their home.
Reliable information, on anything you could possibly want to know, would be available at the click of a button, and it would be easier for emerging authorities to get noticed. Academia, and education itself, would be completely democratised, and all barriers to success removed.
Initially, this actually was how the internet worked. However, nobody would try to claim it still works like this, or at least that it still smoothly works in that way.
In recent years, the internet's greatest vulnerability has been revealed - the need for a sophisticated, extensively educated user base. People who can recognise low-quality sources, people who can apply rigorous analysis and critical thinking, people who can differentiate between verified facts and passionate opinions.
But, in a twist of irony, the internet's democratisation of education resulted in a substantially de-educated population. Because accessing information was so easy, the process of education was devalued. Teachers responded to the shift in attitudes against them with a resentment which further entrenched the idea that "education doesn't matter", and began acting in accordance with their devalued status - they either didn't punish any bad behaviour, or they inflicted disproportionate, and actually harmful, punishments against things which weren't even remotely "bad behaviour" in the first place, grasping at the possibility that, if they returned to the "strict" schools the adults in the room remembered, they would get back the respect for education that had been lost. They were legally prevented from physically beating children - but they could humiliate them. They could criticise them so sharply that children and young people decided the safest option was to stop trying - after all, if you never do anything, you can't get it wrong.
At the same time, the internet was allowing unchecked dis-information; whereas mis-information is simply someone unintentionally making a genuine mistake in the information they provide, dis-information is more deliberate and targeted; incorrect 'information' is knowingly provided to cause a particular, intended, desired result. In the case of the dis-information around the value of education, global 'bad actors' have a very strong investment in reducing the working intelligence of global populations, particularly Western populations, because this allows them to sow division between ethnic, racial, or gender groups, to ferment dissent not against governments, but against fellow individuals, to mislead people into what particular tyrannical forms of government are like for those who live under them - usually presenting them in a more positive light than they were ever experienced - and thereby creating an unaware 'sleeper' community of people who can be very easily mobilised against systems which are in need of change, and, instead of beginning the process of sustainable and necessary change, encouraged to reject and destroy those systems, in favour of the tyranny of whichever regime the bad actors are employed by.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the rise of social media content; join any site offering to "provide acting opportunities", especially if they don't ask for showreels, performance background, or union registration, and you will very quickly realise that none of the prominent TikTok or Instagram "influencers" are actually 'ordinary people with insights or skills' - they're employed by multi-national brands. They're told what to say, how to dress, even how to identify in terms of gender, sexuality, and, sometimes, ethnicity. (Calls for the de-medicalisation of transgender experiences, for example, are being very much led by those who are under the influence of bad actors who have very vested interests in people being able to "identify as" whatever they like, with no gateways to proving and living that experience; while there are people who support de-medicalisation on genuine, informed personal positions, they are in the minority. The calls seem to be being made by passionate individuals, but are actually being led by highly organised, completely disinterested third parties of bad actors - who aren't transgender, but who have seen a very vulnerable, and thus very easy to manipulate, community in the transgender cohort.)
Far from bringing people together, social media has created divisions where none existed, and has widened the natural, subtle rifts that exist in any large and diverse population.
De-educated people are no longer able to have debates and dialogue; they simply shout at each other and trade insults, like five year olds in the playground.
The internet, like the NHS, is entering its terminal decline circle. The NHS is still just about functional at this point (13-14yrs from the point most people began to notice it was in trouble), but is so overburdened with debt, so hogtied by unworkable contracts, so vulnerable to the normal market forces of capitalism, and also to the manipulation of public sentiment by bad actors, that it is probably not going to survive in the form Nye Bevin gifted the UK for another 14yrs.
De-educated people are no longer able to have debates and dialogue; they simply shout at each other and trade insults, like five year olds in the playground.
The internet, like the NHS, is entering its terminal decline circle. The NHS is still just about functional at this point (13-14yrs from the point most people began to notice it was in trouble), but is so overburdened with debt, so hogtied by unworkable contracts, so vulnerable to the normal market forces of capitalism, and also to the manipulation of public sentiment by bad actors, that it is probably not going to survive in the form Nye Bevin gifted the UK for another 14yrs.
2010 was about the same time as people began to notice the malign effects of social media, and the general decline of "what the internet was supposed to be". Fourteen years later, people have even stopped defending the internet - as we see from the mainstream understanding of the concept of "enshittification". That puts us in a situation where, by 2038 - 55yrs from the very first iteration of the internet - we won't have the internet to the extent, and in the form, we do now.
How will you do business without the internet?
That's obviously not a question that can be answered for you - there are so many forms of enterprise, so many ways of 'doing business' that there is no single answer.
What The Productive Pessimist Ltd can do is help you work out the answer for you and your business.
Drop us an email theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com, or call us on 0748 2017 927 to schedule an appointment - we can provide onsite support for businesses in the Norfolk and Waveney area, and online support for businesses across the UK, by email, Teams call, or telephone.
How will you do business without the internet?
That's obviously not a question that can be answered for you - there are so many forms of enterprise, so many ways of 'doing business' that there is no single answer.
What The Productive Pessimist Ltd can do is help you work out the answer for you and your business.
Drop us an email theproductivepessimist@yahoo.com, or call us on 0748 2017 927 to schedule an appointment - we can provide onsite support for businesses in the Norfolk and Waveney area, and online support for businesses across the UK, by email, Teams call, or telephone.
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