In this case, we are a little behind schedule, but working to rapidly catch up.
In the Cyberpunk TTRPG universe, the original internet (known as the Net) collapsed during a catastrophic event called the DataKrash, which occurred on June 3, 2022.
this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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And the new net will be ID-gated for everyone. Everything said and done will be tracked and known to state actors.
hope for the best, prepare to go amish
I'll go cyber-amish, with a mesh networked mini Internet to my local peoples.
honestly i've been slowly working towards that kinda lifestyle for a few years now and i kinda hope the "internet" fucking dies so i'm free to go all the way, it just seems like what things should be like if our recent development wasn't so directed by corporate interests or just happened more slowly.
Old-timey life was really quite a lot better in many ways, like we're just not evolved to constantly read about every single horrible event that happens to any human, and we need to be a little bit bored sometimes.
But also smartphones are fucking awesome and i like being able to call emergency services if i've fallen and i can't get up, which even the actual amish recognize.
Also the aesthetics/vibes of judicious mixing of technological eras is fucking impeccable, i want the countryside to look like Hobbiton, small towns like 18th century sweden, cities to look like 1920's new york with everything VIOLENTLY art deco, and all of it connected with trams and trains that look like metal caterpillars and where 30-minute departure frequency is seen as bordering on not even having service.
For the children. You have to think of the children.
/s but also actually what they say.
AI tools are some of the most powerful and destructive things humans have ever created. And they are being effectively tested by the public in real time in the real world. When the Manhattan Project was trying to work out the power of their atomic tech, they did not do so by sending everyone the specs each morning and seeing which houses blew up.
Honestly, this. In their desperate attempt to break even, AI companies are throwing everything they can at the wall to see what sticks, without any due regard as to its effects on society at large...
Which unfortunately have proven time and time again to be horribly corrosive towards human culture.
Context:
If you work in or around the film industry, there is a decent chance you have used the work of The Numbers this month, whether you realise it or not.
Its hand-researched data is the highest quality, tracking box office grosses, budgets, home video and streaming across more than 78,000 films and 236,000 people. It gets north of eight million visitors a year, and is treated as THE definitive authority by journalists, academics, filmmakers, prediction markets, and even Guinness World Records.
Poor title, but pretty interesting article. The future of the internet is going to be wild.
What future?
Slaves?
I meant the Internet doesn't have a future, it's already half dead
Oh.
The Internet itself surely will continue, but yes the "free and open" version is already gone (how to test this: attempt to self-host a website now, like a Lemmy instance, and see how long until AI scrapers bring it to its knees).
I don't think so. I think it's going to fragment a la cyberpunk... It's beginning already through a mixture of government controls and profiteering. Large enough platforms will still exist everywhere, but I think we're going to end up with more regional networks
I think youll still be able to route a package across the world, but the age where you could access the same Internet from everywhere is ending
eh, i don't think things'll have time to regress that far before the pendulum swings back, plus it's only getting easier to set up your own connections over long distances.
What i can see disappearing are things like youtube and global multiplayer gaming, because that's just so incredibly data-heavy. But lightweight stuff like sane websites, forums, chats.. that's quite feasible on something like a globally interconnected mesh. At worst you'll have to wait a bit for things to load, but like.. we would probably benefit from that..
Yea, like the matrix, the Internet is now an intrinsically dangerous place where anyone is potentially some highly capable AI with potentially very malicious intent.