Pause for a moment. Try to visualize the Web as you know it today: your profiles, your games, the networks you use, the sites you visit most; the messaging, downloads and interactions that make up your daily routine in the browser. Now, travel 25 years into the future and imagine what the Web will be like. The Internet Archive did exactly that to celebrate its 25 years online through Wayforward Machine project, and the result is a thoroughly unsettling future for users.
This is not an invention. We have already seen it in action through our online profiles or through contacts who disappear for days: algorithms turned into paladins of morality, basic information restricted for ridiculous reasons, crystal castles and closed digital ecosystems that tie us hand and foot, yet they escape all consequences when they do something wrong.
Wayforward Machine: The Dark Future of the Web, According to the Internet Archive
Everything starts when you type the address of any page into the Wayforward Machine search box. The pop-ups don't take long to appear: some ask you to deactivate all privacy mechanisms and firewalls before you can continue. Others work like paywalls, asking for money to access data that was free and open for decades. The most worrying ones represent a “Ministry of Truth” throwing an “error 451”, in which access to the site was disabled “for our own good”, and a company called Global Network Securities that demands personal data to access “classified information”.
The official Wayforward Machine site explains some of the things that could happen before that future becomes reality. From Internet blackouts organized by the governments of the day to the balkanization of the network, through an explosion in the use of deepfakes and the creation of synthetic content to confirm or refute evidence. We also find the revocation of the famous Section 230, reputation management agencies suing millions of users around the world, the closure of the Internet Archive, Wikipedia escaping to the Dark Web, and more.
Will we really reach those extremes? Honestly, we have no idea, but if we visualize the current situation… everything seems very likely.
Official site: Click here
