The Slow Web, Ten Years Later

My journey to the heart of the forgotten internet

Slowly but surely, huge swaths of the internet are vanishing. But the artefacts of the early web are still out there, and they have lessons for the future.

Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality

The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity—and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending

Funding The Web: A Wise Choice

The Web is slow-motion collapsing for multiple reasons, but at the heart of it all is a little known system: the Search/Browser Levy. Let's fix it!

Funding The Web: From Cartel to Covenant

The Web is slow-motion collapsing for multiple reasons, but at the heart of it all is a little known system: the Search/Browser Levy. Let's fix it!

The Zero Click Internet

The internet is undergoing the biggest change since its inception. It's huge. And there is no going back. The web is changing into the Zero Click Internet,...

The Attention Forum: October 23/24th 2025

The internet was initially sold to us as a force for connection – a borderless, democratizing set of technologies that would amplify voices, allow us to spread ideas, and strengthen civil society.

The Disappearing World Wide Web

Fare thee well, oh honey...

The Internet Transition

The Internet is allowing us to build a richer, more complex society but the way in which we Internet today is failing to support the governance systems that a more complex world requires. I take a look at why these issues are related, try to develop an intuition for a way forward, and point at the emerging field that is coming together to build that future.

The one and future internet

The internet has become inextricably entangled into our economies, cultural and social lives. We stand on the brink of the next technological revolution, in which the internet of things transforms ...

Welcome to the Post-Naive Internet Era

The grand idealism of the free and open internet might be over for now, but in its place falls a more practical mindset. Just like Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs are entering their “Hard Tech” era, the people building web alternatives are also entering their Post-Naive Era. Here are the names to know.

The web was always about redistribution of power. Let's bring that back.

It's time to rekindle the movement.

Historical pragmatism and the internet

This article argues that the literature describing the internet revolution in the 1990s was characterized by the rhetoric of the technological sublime. This rhetoric suffered from three fatal flaws: (1) it was not sufficiently grounded in the historical development of technology; (2) it viewed the internet in isolation, failing to consider the wider technological context; and (3) it failed to examine the internet in view of the social, economic, religious and political circumstances of its users. Several examples from history are cited, demonstrating that changes in various systems for the production, dissemination and preservation of cultural information both border and deborder the world. The article suggests that if internet researchers take a pragmatic, historically grounded approach, they will discover that the introduction of internet technology can be seen to have similar consequences. While the technology overcomes many boundaries (of space and time, politics and economics), other social borders may be created at the same time. It is easier to see old boundaries coming down than to see new ones being erected. Rather than being swept by utopian or dystopian enthusiasms, the article insists that the really interesting discoveries are to be made in locating the subtle social shifts taking place, relatively unnoticed, as a consequence of technological change.

AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?

The rise of ChatGPT and its rivals is undermining the economic bargain of the internet

We can have a different web

Many yearn for the “good old days” of the web. We could have those good old days back — or something even better — and if anything, it would be easier now than it ever was.

Computer Files Are Going Extinct

Technology services are changing our internet habits