This is my entry for this month’s IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by V.H. Belvadi, on the topic of “where do you see the IndieWeb in 2030?”.
2031.12.04/Lyon
You have to understand that i thought the web was dead. They told us that after the great AI metastasis of 2028, it was impossible to clean up the mess, and they had to pretty much reboot the entire internet. Apart from a few fringe non-profits, everybody agreed that strict digital ID control would be necessary to prevent rogue agents from ever slopping the networks again.
Amazon, Apple, Google and a few other companies decided to work together on a “new internet” that costs roughly €99 a month. In exchange for a 15 to 30% fee on all transactions, they subsidize the cost of the “creator’s license” that you need to purchase in order to create new apps, and which can cost up to several million euros in some jurisdictions. As most influencers and the few lingering press outlets are on the newnet, it’s become the most popular network in the EU, Pacifica and Japan.
After Instagram’s meltdown and Mark Zuckerberg’s trial, the Metaverse has been in shambles. In a weird twist of events, the infighting between the different flavours of theocratic extremism has led to an explosion of competing networks in the 28 remaining United States. Brazil, China, India and Siberia each launched their own state-owned and controlled networks. Last year, Turkey banned the newnet for a while, but it was restored after Apple imposed sanctions.
So imagine my surprise when i learnt that you could still connect to the “world wild web”. It’s easier if you use older operating systems, but even Google’s Aluminium and Apple’s Gala can be tweaked to allow insecure connections. It’s almost impossible to find anything amongst the GPT X-generated drivel since Google has unplugged its search engine, but a friend of mine lent me his copy of the Internet Phone Book, “a directory for exploring the poetic web”.
Hopping (and hoping) from link to link, i found numerous apps websites forming what they call “the indieweb”. Nobody seems to agree on which protocol they should use to interconnect and which technology they should use to operate their websites, but it doesn’t seem to matter that much. It’s chaos, far from the corporate polish of the newnet, but a joyous one.
They use so many mixed metaphors that they’re sometimes hard to follow. Their websites are delivered by “servers”, which seem to be as temperamental as Parisian waiters, and they organize through “forums”, which seem far less civilized than their antique counterparts. I think they like the mystique, even though they’re far from being a secret society.
States and companies seem to tolerate them — they’re a speck of dust in the wasteland of a network that almost nobody uses anymore. They even organize meetups to teach each other the basics of creating your own website! I think i might go to the next one in town. You can’t even swear on Apple Chat, for Jobs’s sake. Should i wear a hooded cape?