Questions for a faded Internet

“Untitled #7 (Analog Primate).” Mixed media on canvas, plush toy. 152 x 122 cm. Manuel Cebrián, 2017.

It’s hard to tell, but today’s Internet is perhaps the strangest version of what could have been and also the least ambitious. Some tough questions need to be asked. This list is a work in progress.

• Was the Internet destined from the beginning to become a reflection or co-option of the analog world? Could it have followed a wildly different path if we were to run the tape again from the 90s? Who is responsible for it, who has lost the most and won the most?
• Does the Internet need people to perform activities in the real world — even if they give them low experiential value — so that a decent amount of entropy is kept flowing inside? Why cannot the Internet generate its own entropy? Will the Internet collapse if people only performed Internet-activities?
• Where did the bizarro Internet of the Markovian Parallax Denigrate, Cicada 3301, 11B-X-1371, I Love Bees, etc. go? What was behind it, what did they want and most importantly, why did they stop? What is at the edges of today’s Internet and where are they, or are they shut down?
• Why are books, movies or music unable to tell good Internet stories? Why doesn’t the Internet contain true escape, utopias, or dreams? Why is it incapable of creating aspirational narratives like the media before?
• Why doesn’t the Internet have really weird political movements? Movements with aspirations that would be completely unthinkable to somebody in the 60s?
• Why is it impossible to have a transformative experience online? Why does the Internet lack any sort of experiential prestige? Why is it fully covered by this sheen of boredom?
• What is the scariest thing you can do on the Internet — fully detached from the real world (e.g. not tied to money or health or politics)?