The image shows the map of the undersea network that carries the internet. Our network traffic, mostly made of cat vidoes on Twitter, make their way through these cables, spanning continents.

We kind of assume that our social media feeds and our text messages and whatever are meta physical, and just "appear" out of thin air. But they are as physical as it gets, just like any other technology. This depiction makes us realise that we are all physically connected enabling us to express ourselves and tell our unique stories.

The Humble Beginnings

According to the The Internet Society, the concept of a massive network of computing devices scattered throughout the world was just a concept in 1962. That was around 60 years ago! J.C.R. Licklider from MIT wrote a series of memos envisioning a "Galactic Network" of computing devices through which "everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site". It was just a concept note 60 years ago, and today, every field touched by humanity from medicine to finance depends on it.^[1]

The ARPANET program, initiated by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was the starting point of the internet to which the first ever node connected was from Network Measurement Center at UCLA in September 1969. Stanford Research Institute soon joined as the second node. Two more nodes were added at UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah. As a result, by the end of 1969, four host computers were connected together into the network.^[2]

During the following years, more and more computers were connected to the ARPANET program. In October 1972, the first public demonstration of the ARPANET was made at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC). And it did not take long before it grew and grew into the internet as we know of it today.^[3]

Let's Get On The Internet!

When Tim Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989, all the documents and programs scattered around found their presence on the internet. It was now not just for the science guys with glasses but for everyone. It was made available for the general public around 1993 and everybody swarmed on the internet with desires to tell their stories. Most of the websites of the time were made of static content like text and images and hyperlinks connecting the pages with one another.

Interactivity was introduced to the web after Brendan Eich developed the JavaScript language while working for Netscape, the company behind Netscape Navigator, the most popular web browser of the time. By the early 2000s, technologies like PHP, AJAX and web frameworks were developed amplifying the speed of web development. When everyone was on the internet, it was a no-brainer for the companies to have their presence in the web as well.^[4]

The Dot Com Bubble

As people had realised that the internet was a force to reckon with, the investors were keen to ride the wave of the new technology. At the same time, the number of people willing to be on the internet was increasing. Between 1990 and 1997, the percentage of households in the United States owning computers increased from 15% to 35%.^[5] And with that percentage grew the willingness of people to be on the internet.

Adding to this, economists claim that the economy was at the right time to fuel the fundings as well. Due to lower interest rates, funding became easier. As a result, investors were willing to put heavy amount of investments in any business that had an internet presence and the infamous ".com" suffix in their names. People to this day talk about the pets.com company that had a huge investment funding when it became one of the biggest victims of the eventual "pop"!

While most of the internet businesses that had nothing to do with the internet failed, some players came out of the bubble largely unaffected. They went on to become the big tech of the Silicon Valley. Some of those survivors were Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft. They survived the bubble because they were internet companies unlike the majority.

Steve Jobs And The iPhone

While the internet was ever growing in popularity and more and more companies were creating products for the web, most of the products were for desktop computers. The cellphones of the time were not "smart" and were only used for making phone calls. That was all about to change when Steve Jobs went onto the stage on June 29, 2007 to unveil the iPhone.

After the iPhone, a million smart handheld devices capable of surfing the web were in the hands of customers in mere months.^[6] The popularity of smartphones grew exponentially in the initial years and more and more smartphones were being used to connect people on the web. Smartphone operating systems and their app stores became popular to create better apps and experiences.

Even though people download apps, the underlying web technologies remain the same. Also, more people rely on the internet for information and education than ever. Social media apps like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have billions of users using their platforms each month. News web portals amass millions of visits each day with most of the users coming via smartphones.

The Rise Of Internet Services

Internet has become an inseparable part of our daily lives. We start our day with social media feeds. We find and order groceries via the internet. We find our daily commute route via internet mapping technologies. We collaborate together at work through productivity suites created by tech companies. We connect with our loved ones via social apps. We take online courses for skills we want to work on via web platforms.

Our dependence on the internet has made tech industry a large industry supporting the economy. During global emergency like the Covid 19 pandemic, the internet services were the only means to learn, work, connect and get information. Digital products, unlike physical products can be replicated almost indefinitely which makes the software industry have big margins on the products they create.

As a result of large returns, the software industry has been a go-to for new generations to join the workforce. University degrees like Software Engineering and Computer Science see double or treble the enrollments compared to other degrees. Well, that was the trend for years lately until this new wave of technology has been the new talking point: AI.

AI Slop

Generative AI is the new hottest thing in the tech space with large language model chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini being at the centre of the attention. While the promise of them being able to replace much of the human workforce in work environments hasn't panned out as expected, they have had a great effect in one thing for sure: The Internet.

People make money on the internet by making valuable content and using adverts to account for monetization. Since the article or the blog post or the video provides value to the user, they do not mind the adverts (as long as they are not too distracting, of course!) and just focus on the content. That had been working up until these "generative" technologies with the capability of "generation" arrived.

It hasn't been easier to create content on the web using these generative technologies. While the quality of the content is below par, the quantity of the output that can be generated can't be ignored at all! While a blogger spends hours and days to craft a beautiful blog post, the generative AI can spit out tens of blogs in one prompt. With these even crazier things like AI agents, they can keep posting these blog posts about topics they deem useful forever.

We, the dwellers of the internet, love to hate these things and call them by a beautiful and representing name: AI Slop. They have been spreading their thousand arms into every caverns and crevises of the web and just a couple of days ago, they have made a major milestone: AI generated content just surpassed the human generated content on the internet.^[7] Sad.

Going Forward

To be honest, much of this doesn't surprise me at all. Greed is one of the dominating human emotions and it gets the better of us most of the times. When people realise that they can make a quick couple of bucks without actually doing the work, they will try their luck in it. Makes sense. Can't blame them for that. Forgery and fraud and scams have always been a part of the internet along with the good it brings. Now, it's just harder to pick them out.

Along with scaring the content creators, the slop has also given some hope to them. Now, the people consuming content appreciate the hard work that goes into the process even more. The actual human buddies creating value out of their content are cherished even more. The diamonds get to sparkle even brighter among the dull coal surrounding it.

The damage has been done, is being done and we just have to live with it. The internet has more content than ever but requires more digging to extract the gold out of it. Now, we will have to label the gold mines apart from the others. People are more internet literate than ever and they will figure a way out! They will figure out a way to keep their quest for knowlegde and connections going. Human perseverance has always triumphed and will continue to do so. Until next time! 👋