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Which Douglas Rushkoff book is this concept again? I've lost track.
The internet keeps dying again and again. It started as a research project turned into a way to aid research. Then the sphere grew as nerds found a space to connect with other nerds. It was a community space where people knew each other. The only big source of trouble was each year, in September, when a new crop of kids gained access to the internet at their college. They had to be educated in the social structures and ethos of the culture they were stepping into.
Then, in the early nineties, the spirit of the internet died, in the Eternal September, as ISPs encouraged non-nerds to enter the cyber world. The community was flooded with more new people than could ever be trained to follow the cultural standards that had been established, and so they simply overwhelmed the capacity of the society to maintain itself.
Then those people began creating a new culture, a multiculture, with communities and sites forming around anyone with a bit of passion they wanted to share with the world wide web. People taught themselves web development just to share pictures of their families and poetry about their favorite trees.
But then, the spirit of the internet died. Advertisers wanted to take advantage of the new space to which everyone seemed to be devoting so much attention. They started monetizing sites. Creating sites became less and less about sharing your passion, and more and more about generating ad revenue.
And the internet persisted. Despite the disgust of the users, nothing seemed to stop the influx of capital into the community. And then came encryption, allowing people to even buy and sell things online. The internet died again, becoming a giant mall, a place you went to find stuff to buy rather than people to talk to.
And then came social media. It took the idea loved by so many of the early pioneers of the internet, that everyone could have their own site, dedicated to whatever they loved most, and centralized it. Friendster, sixdegrees, MySpace, and so on. With this change, the spirit of the web died again, commercializing even the idea of your personal page, your digital representation of yourself.
It has died. It will die again. Nothing can be relied upon.