The Dude Abides. But The Open Internet Is Dying.
Every so often I get an idea for a new website or service. I imagine you do as well. Thinking about new ideas is exciting — all that promise and potential. Some of my favorite conversations open with “Wouldn’t it be cool if….”
Most of my ideas start as digital services that take advantage of the internet’s ubiquity. It’s rare I imagine something bounded in real space — a new restaurant or a retail store. I’m an internet guy, and even after decades of enshittification, I still think the internet is less than one percent developed. But a recent thought experiment made me question that assumption. As I worked through a recent “wouldn’t it be cool” moment, I realized just how moribund the internet ecosystem has become, and how deadening it is toward spontaneous experimentation.
So let’s start with the idea itself. I was watching an episode of And Just Like That… the other day with my wife. Yes, I know, but sometimes you want to turn off your brain, OK? Anyway, there’s a scene where Carrie Bradshaw scatters her husband’s ashes into the Seine. She chose the bridge where her husband “Big” professed his love, ending a series-long on again, off again affair and beginning what became an apparently blissful marriage in the years between Sex and the City and the sequel which came some 15 years later. In any case, it reminded me of several similar…
