No, he wouldn't. The whole thing is all blitz and little substance of someone who seems to be over-read and under-thought. It's best described in his own words: a handful of sugar instead of a meal.
I'm not going to deconstruct the whole thing to appease a stranger, but let's just take the first point of the argument: That it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the internet.
Setting aside what does "end of the world" actually mean, who's making this statement?
Almost nobody is, since practically every instance is someone referencing somebody else with little commitment. Essentially this is arguing against a person instead of some wide-spread view.
Even if it was wide spread, does it even matter?
It obviously can't be true since end of the world in any reasonable understanding contains end of the internet. So what exactly is this point and argument against it trying to show? I have no idea since believing or not in something dying generally matters little to it being (or not) in such process.
Let's say it is important. What are the arguments that it is incorrect beyond being obviously so?
Well, some unrelated people before you were incorrect about unrelated shape of future so you, but not the author, probably are too. Then he follows this by putting words in mouth of the people he disagrees with, before he swerves into his own experiencing of internet consumption and resulting numbness. I guess based on his expectations of near future there's an expectation of universality of his experience, but even if it was universal (and huge amounts of emotions exhibited online create at least some doubt that it is), why would it contribute to internet's death? It obviously doesn't stop him from scrolling, or writing and otherwise engaging on internet. Again, I have no idea.
So all of it does not really add up to much, but I admit it is entertainingly written which is more than most of us manage.
> It obviously can't be true since end of the world in any reasonable understanding contains end of the internet.
No, it obviously can be true. I can imagine many ways "the end of the world" could occur. Also, maybe it's not crystal clear what "the end of the world" means to you, but for me, and likely other people, it means the collapse of human civilization, which could happen from nuclear war, climate change, etc.
Just because "the end of the world" would include "the death of the internet" doesn't imply that by imagining the end of the world you're also imagining the ways in which every aspect of the world get destroyed. When I imagine the end of the world I don't focus on what happens to say, Paris, specifically, but I do know, implicitly, that the end of the world would include the end of Paris.
All you did is bring back the point that "end of the world" is woefully undefined in his article and discussing it makes it therefore difficult at best.
We obviously disagree on what it means. For me it doesn't mean something of high value to me would end/disappear. It does mean in almost axiomatic way that if internet is still working, then the world hasn't ended as some part of civilization is clearly still running to a very high degree necessary for that to be the case.
The dramatic claim in the title is not well supported by the content.
What seems to be happening is churn. Geocities was supplanted by Myspace, which was crushed by Facebook, which was marginalized by Tiktok... Does this ever settle, or what?
The real breakthrough would be if someone came up with something like Craigslist that won on price. Operate at a low enough cost that just charging for ads in areas where people purposefully look at ads, such as apartment rentals, is enough to keep the the thing going.
Make social so cheap that the big players go bust.
It also was how N. saw his thoughts at times. An evidence, disgraced for being explained. And stylistic flamboyance around a theme is hardly foreign to philosophers, this one in particular (any chapter of Zarathustra can be read as a blog post in the same way).
I still advocate that style - and being drunk with style - can lead the writer to singularly original and contemporaneous ideas. Language is a dynamic object, filled with the spirit of the age, and very high sensitivity to it within a philosophical context can act as a catalyst.
As someone with sweet-tooth I don't mind the style, but I do think it masks how empty his arguments are and how unsubstantiated. Explanations that aren't really.
I guess our main disagreement is if he has original ideas. I've only read a couple of things he wrote so I'm certainly not in position to have the definitive opinion, but neither of his articles impressed me.
I think you're right on the crux, with a qualification: every argument has already been made in one form or another - the underlying universal concepts are not that complex. the talent of a writer is to present it in a manner congruent with the geography/times. Isn't vacuity when speaking in pure style, but in a style that itself acts as a mirror to the zeitgeist, a valuable tool for thinkers? A frame, a kind of meta-thought?
Agreed, and for me, the main thesis of the article was that we should create things that we want to create, without concerning ourselves about how much engagement, reach, impact etc. they will have.