AI Is Killing The Web
But it's fostering reality
If you are like me, a child of the 90s, you remember discovering the wonder of the web. Not the famed children's book, Charlotte's Web, the internet. In the 90s the internet was the wild west. It was messy, very basic, and mainly a place to consume text. Asking Jeeves and using Yahoo were the closest thing to search. The web was a place of discovery and serendipity.
Now, the web is barely considered as a thing. Everything is an app. The internet, as a connectivity paradigm, is just called wifi. To be clear, wifi is not access to the internet, it is a connectivity protocol. For the last 10-15 years, most people do not search the internet to go down a rabbit hole. They don't want to end up on forums, chat rooms, or in a sea of research papers. They want an answer, that's all. Enter AI.
AI gives the people what they want. The answer to the question they are asking the internet, with as little friction as possible. While AI does get the answer wrong, so do people. You can present 20 links, snippets, and summaries to a person; based on their existing knowledge and bias, they'll interpret the information in front of them. Most people don't check multiple links, if the sources are trustworthy, or factual. So, AI is not much worse.
For the last 8 months, my search engine has been mainly ChatGPT. Most people that I talk to would say the same. Before ChatGPT, the average user of the internet would not even consider a “search engine”. The default has been Google. Googling and search are synonymous to most. Most do not even think of the other options. When I am not using ChatGPT, I use DuckDuckGo. There is also Bing, Brave Search, Ecosia, Neeva, and Kagi. But again, most people don't even think of these, because search is Google.
As an advocate for the web, open standards, and knowledge management, I love what the web is and has been. But the web is dying and AI is killing it. When I originally started thinking about this, I was a bit angry and very nostalgic. I thought back to the times I was lost in the web, finding the answer to my question, then finding a dozen more questions to ask. But now, in the 2025 world we live in, I don't think it's so bad.
I have been at the bleeding edge of tech since Windows 4.11. I was so engulfed, that I forgot how to write by hand. But now, as a 38 year old, I crave less tech and more reality. So, a tool like AI for search is actually kind of great. It gets me an answer, one that is usually correct, quickly. It gives me more time to engage with the world in front of me, rather than the one behind an LCD screen.
I know most people would not leverage their time gained for experiencing the real world. They would likely watch short videos on their phone or work more. Most do not even notice this shift happening. The last shift from library and encyclopedia to the web was noticeable, but this one is silent. You learn how to use AI, then slowly default to it more. While this has its downsides, especially for people that have not had the privilege to dig through stacks of books in a library, learn the Dewey decimal system, and cite their sources—it has its benefits in normal, tangible life.
I miss what the web was. While there are still ways to experience it, most will not go out of their way. So rather than mourning the death of the web, I'd rather welcome a different future. If done right, this future can be more human. We can spend more time in the real world, surrounded by physical people. I look back, fondly—to the hours of sitting in a dark room, with the glow of a monitor on my face, scouring blogs and chat rooms for the answer I was looking for. But I also look forward to a world where we can get time back to engage with the world, feeling the warmth of the sun, rather than a monitor.