The Extended Internet Universe

For several years now, I’ve been watching the creeping, unheralded growth of what I call the cozyweb, and for which others have lots of creative names. Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickler called it the Dark Forest in a recent post.Unlike the main public internet, which runs on the (human) protocol of “users” clicking on links on public pages/apps maintained by “publishers”, the cozyweb works on the (human) protocol of everybody cutting-and-pasting bits of text, images, URLs, and screenshots across live streams. Much of this content is poorly addressable, poorly searchable, and very vulnerable to bitrot. It lives in a high-gatekeeping slum-like space comprising slacks, messaging apps, private groups, storage services like dropbox, and of course, email.

Source: The Extended Internet Universe – by Venkatesh Rao