The Day We Quit The Internet.
It was January 30th 2029, a day the news media called “The Great Quit.” The day humanity quit the internet. Mostly. We didn’t stop using the internet entirely, but enough of it that it seemed to have become some sort of digital wasteland to many. It was as if some switch had been flicked. Everyone woke up, packed their collective digital suitcases and headed out, never to return.
Oddly enough, humans have a long history of packing up their bags and moving to greener pastures, or at least as far away from a society or place they no longer liked.
A prime example is the Kwakiutl from Canada’s Northwest Coast in what is now British Columbia, who were sedentary in the winter months and split into small, more mobile groups in the summer. They operated decentralized polities, much like today’s Web3 ideas.
While it would take sociologists and anthropologists some time to figure out exactly why we all just sort of quit the internet, the deeper reasons at least, plenty of pundits weighed in. Economic and business models collapsed they suggested, others that oppressive government regulations made running a social media platform too difficult. Some that AI was simply too expensive to run at the hoped for scale.
Some suggested it was something similar to the 1518 dance plague in the French city of Strasbourg where people…
