Saved by owl and
What happens when the internet disappears?
The internet has become a series of lacunas, spaces where content used to be.
s.e. smith • What happens when the internet disappears?
We are watching the internet slip away as websites and apps rise and fall, swallowed by private equity, shuttered by burnout, or simply frozen in time — taking with it our memories, our cultural phenomena, our memes. In theory, as we like to tell Zoomers who are putting it all out there, “the internet is forever.” Employers and enemies can and will... See more
s.e. smith • What happens when the internet disappears?
The same accessibility and low barriers to entry, that same easy come — I can set up a website in the time it takes me to finish this sentence — can also morph into an easy go.
s.e. smith • What happens when the internet disappears?
a recent Pew Research Center study on digital decay found that 38 percent of webpages accessible in 2013 are not accessible today.
s.e. smith • What happens when the internet disappears?
There is something deeply offensive in knowing not only that hundreds of thousands of my words have vanished, but that some LLM is probably crawling through the tattered fragments to churn out mockeries of the very real sources, research, and energy that once backed those words. They’ll be vomited back on the shores of my browser, squirming and sti... See more
s.e. smith • What happens when the internet disappears?
When you describe yourself as a “writer” but your writing has become hard to find, it creates a crisis not just of profession, but identity. Who am I, if not my content? It is hard not to feel the disappearance of creative work as a different kind of death of the author, one in which readers can’t interpret my work because they can’t find it. It is... See more
s.e. smith • What happens when the internet disappears?
Tied to greater fears of losing relevance
The notion that everything that ever has been and ever will be on the internet will always be there — potentially to haunt us — feels less true in an era when data is constantly disappearing.
s.e. smith • What happens when the internet disappears?
Changing FB name for college applications
Historical content can be an incredibly informative resource, telling us how people lived and thought. But we must remember that it’s a small fraction of contemporaneous material that survives, even as we hope, of course, that it’s our own existence that is ultimately memorialized. Sometimes it is through the gaps that we read history or are forced... See more
s.e. smith • What happens when the internet disappears?
History is written by the victors
When you describe yourself as a “writer” but your writing has become hard to find, it creates a crisis not just of profession, but identity. Who am I, if not my content?