I came of age in the early 2000s, and Wikipedia was this for me. Eventually, it ran out of meaningful depth to me and in college I hopped to surfing books. You

I came of age in the early 2000s, and Wikipedia was this for me. Eventually, it ran out of meaningful depth to me and in college I hopped to surfing books. You can surf on books til the end of time. I think hypertext as a medium has a lot going for it that books don’t, but I don’t think we’ve figured out distribution, quality control, and discovery sufficiently to make the internet so stimulatingly surfable. There was a period of time a few centuries ago when adults looked at kids reading romance novels the way that adults today look at kids scrolling through TikTok. I think all mediums go through cycles. On the other side (when the wild internet’s commercial viability wanes, and people can no longer make easy money hosting mediocre terrible, SEO-driven drivel), I think a lot of the good content will survive the great filter, and that’s when we’ll be able to appreciate it for what it is/was. The next 20 years might be rough, but the work of this generations’ Dickenses and Pushkins and Gogols will survive.