The printing press also allowed low-quality garbage to be spread with unprecedented effectiveness.

I'm not convinced that previous systems of more centralized distribution of information (television networks and woodblock printing) were better than the ones that succeeded it.

> The printing press also allowed low-quality garbage to be spread with unprecedented effectiveness.

I'd dispute that, after making one clarification to my original comment: I meant "unprecedented relative effectiveness." At no other time has any rando with a batshit insane idea been able to spread it with near equal access to same the tools people use to spread real knowledge and understanding. To contrast it with the previous system, it's like hiring a bunch of incompetents and then getting rid of code review.

I still believe the pendulum will swing back to something else... internet 2021 is not the final state of the cyberspace, and things will evolve as connectivity, cost of hosting and ubiquity of computer systems increase.

What will be the web once we move to a new 3D / AR media or a metaverse platform? What id the internet become distributed again (I see some seed in blockchain / DAO), or if connectivity become ubiquitous (think smart dust).

We are just at the beginning of this journey, and the GAFAM of today are the IBM of tomorrow.

Cyberspace does not exist in isolation, it's a network reflecting to a large extent the sum of its parts. In the early / mid 90s, before the masses moved in, "cyberspace" was for the most part what Barlow imagined it to be.

The race to the bottom, adtech, consumerist takeover only started when the "stupid" society at large became the majority, so for the west this process was really inevitable. China, being a dictatorship on top of a closed-feedback system and unwilling to let capitalism run unrestricted, has a much better chance of controlling the process and using it to shape society according to a central vision. We should be worried.

dismay is I think due but "turned out to be" is not at all how I see it. the conquest of massified consumerism over the frontier is a true story, but the frontier is still out there, still ready, still awaiting, still vast beyond our wildest imaginings. the excitement of a new liberation, out of corporate data centers & back in to power, back into freedom & exploration, building new connective mediums and places, is more compelling to me personally than ever. and increasingly more feasible, as we get better at developing systems and software.

in the aughs Tim O'Reilly was talking about chasing the alpha geeks. by contrast we seem fixated on the muck & mire of the lowest experiences, these days, and we have few visible free radicals pushing the ascent. I believe the former to be not worthy of fixation, and the latter to be imminently close to rediscovering themselves, & they will be equipped with vastly better means to pioneer onward with.