This might seem a little premature, melodramatic, or just insane but it has been on my mind, of late.

With the recent problems of payment processors deciding that they should globally censor the sale and distribution of any media which doesn't fit the interests of their brand, combined with the sudden push into massive internet censorship and user tracking in the UK (and potentially everywhere else, soon), I really do wonder where we go from here.

It is starting to look like the internet may be a "progress trap" (the adoption of a technology which displaces previous approaches but then is a dead end, causing dramatic regression to even earlier approaches). Of course, the social media age has already made many wonder if this is actually a net benefit, at all, and some even proposing it as a "great filter" in the context of the Fermi Paradox.

The problem is that this has defined everything about the world since roughly ~30 years ago (since mid-late 90s is when the internet made dramatic inroads into residential environments in first-world nations). Hence, I don't even know what would happen if it needed to be abandoned as a global project (much of the infrastructure could still have use, even without it).

So, just even running through the thought experiment, I am not sure how to even bootstrap the thought process.

Of course, there is also the possibility that what we need is just to move away from the centralized systems and managed (aka "controlled and snooped on") access points. Even that, though not all that big a change, is probably inconceivable to most people (not to mention the resistance from the powers who control those).

Of course, it doesn't really matter since I am not involved in any of this, nobody wants to have interesting conversations about these ideas, these days, and I am hoping to not survive long enough to experience the accelerating descent into this dark age (the gradual descent of the last 20-25 years has been quite enough, thank you).

Seeing all of this instills a panic in these tired eyes,
...Nights