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The Internet Is Breaking Up — What Will Replace It?
We are seeing the birth of a splinternet.
Whatsapp? What’s that? In China, most people have never heard of it. Why? Simple. It’s banned.
Instead, they have WeChat. That’s China’s superapp, where you can message your friends, order a taxi, and pay for food, all without switching apps. Over 1 billion Chinese use it. Yet, in the West, it barely exists.
In the smartphone era, you have two parallel national app ecosystems co-existing, a US-led Western one, and a Chinese one. Each has its own dominant apps, and ways of doing things. Over time, the rift between them is growing larger and larger.
It’s a far cry from the idealistic dreams of the future that were floating around in the 1990’s. It seemed as if an era of global unity was coming. The initial workings of the internet were a reflection of this optimism.
Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web, had a unique vision of what he was creating. He wanted to design something universal, where everyone would have access to everything.
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.” — Tim Berners-Lee
Thirty years later, Berners-Lee’s vision is falling apart. The universal Web is splitting up, atomizing, dividing itself into separate bubbles. We are seeing the birth of the splinternet.
The internet is splintering according to national lines
The way things are going is quite evident from a speech China’s leader Xi Jinping made in 2015.
“We should respect each country’s right to choose its online development path, its network management model and its public Internet policies.” — Xi Jinping
Xi just put into words what China had been doing in practice. Just like the Great Wall was supposed to keep the barbarians out, the Great Firewall is aimed at keeping potentially incendiary foreign stuff from the eyes of its population.
Facebook is banned. Google is banned. Twitter is banned. Heck, you can’t even watch Mr. Beast do stupid shit in China. YouTube is banned too.
