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The Internet Archive would be nothing without actual content to archive. There are of course hundreds of thousands of valuable blogs (millions? tens of millions?), along with forums where people gather, discuss and share, such as this one. Such things won't disappear, because the act of publishing, talking to people, sharing has value even when done for free. That said I do worry about the future of the Internet. I think for example the game industry has been ruined by in-app payments, because of the "free to play, pay to win" model. It's only natural that this evolved of course, as the attraction towards "free" stuff is irresistible. We are so irrational in our decision making process, that we'd rather try out something free that will frustrate us endlessly until we pay. I also think the music industry is ruined by streaming services. Yeah, we had radio stations before these, but those were valuable for discovering music, after which you ended up buying vinyl records, magnetic tapes, cassettes, CDs, etc. And people owned those after buying them. The concept of collecting music is fading away. Even once respectable software is moving in that direction. My favorite subject being 1Password, which is moving to a subscription based model, managing to be both rentware and expensive. It's just evolution on one hand, but right now the pendulum is not swinging towards freedom. The main problem is that people will pirate if given the opportunity. This says something about how unfair the copyright law is of course, but the response of the industry isn't to make stuff free as in freedom, but to rob people of the opportunity to pirate, punishing and locking-in honest customers in the process. And how are they doing that? Well, they cheat and they lobby and they play mind tricks and they push hostile software and devices on us, etc. And we gladly accept all of that, with a smile on our faces, in the name of grandmas everywhere that need handholding. And going back to ads, you might hate ads, you might not think they provide value, but alternative business models are coming and I believe they'll be far worse. And that's because, judging by recent industry trends, there's no reason to suspect otherwise. |