The internet as we know it has always been an interwoven mesh. One link leading to another, a recursive architecture of references and rabbit holes. By design we navigate it as an ecosystem of discovery, where one page branches into ten more, and meaning is assembled like a collage. It trained us to think laterally, to embrace contradiction and to construct knowledge through juxtaposition. But what happens when that structure collapses into a single conversational thread?

Now with conversational AI agents like Claude, Perplexity and ChatGTP replacing search and our general exposure to the internet, that sprawl collapses into a single thread. Instead of exploring, we ask. Instead of following links, we receive answers. The shift from web to chat is a shift from networked knowledge to linear dialogue. It’s the difference between wandering through a library and having a librarian hand you a single book.

Then again the internet has already drifted from its early form buried under SEO sludge and algorithmic funnels, now accelerated exponentially by AI. Maybe we weren’t really wandering freely anymore anyway. So maybe this isn’t an end so much as another shift. Like before the internet print overtaking oral tradition, which came with its own design choices and consequences. Each new medium restructures thought. The links may be gone, but what comes next—how we design it and its consequences—will define whether we’ve lost anything at all.

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