The Web We Know Is Going to Disappear - Minid.net<br>June 15, 2026<br>The Web We Know Is Going to Disappear

Every generation of computing believes the interface it loves will last forever. It never does. I saw information move from floppy disks to BBSs, from BBSs to the Web, from the Web to Flash, from Flash back to open standards, from websites to mobile apps, and now from search engines to AI chat interfaces. The Web will not vanish overnight, but the Web as we know it, the open place where people search, click, read, browse, publish, and discover, is already being replaced by something more convenient, more centralized, and much harder to escape.<br>Another Drama Rant, With Modem Noises

I am 48 years old. I started using computers in 1990. Back then, I did not have access to networks. Everything was local. Information moved physically, usually through floppy disks. It sounds primitive now, but at the time it felt like magic with a plastic shell.

Every week, I exchanged what felt like an insane amount of information for that era. Maybe 20 MB. Today that is basically one screenshot from a modern phone, but back then it was treasure. People gathered with bags full of disks ready to share video games, text magazines, software, weird utilities, manifestos, manuals, books, and things nobody could properly categorize.

I remember collecting legendary articles, technical texts, strange essays, and digital magazines like they were sacred objects. You did not "bookmark" things. You physically had them. You labeled them. You protected them. You prayed the disk did not die.

The Web did not exist in my life yet. Search did not exist. Social media did not exist. There were no feeds, no timelines, no notifications, no "like and subscribe," and no algorithm trying to guess whether you wanted to buy shoes because you once looked at a chair.

Information still moved. It just moved through people.

The First Network That Felt Like the Future

My first real encounter with a network was a BBS, a Bulletin Board System.

Around 1995, I started one with friends. Our modem was 14,400 bps. Yes, bits per second. Not megabits. Not gigabits. Not fiber. A 14.4 kbps modem that screamed like a tiny robot being tortured by a fax machine.

We were a small group of friends who gathered at night to receive calls from strangers. People connected to our system, chatted, uploaded files, downloaded files, left messages, and disappeared into the darkness of the telephone line.

It was not massive. It was not scalable. It was not "cloud native." If someone had said "cloud" in that room, we would probably have looked out the window.

But the experience was magical. The first thought I had was simple: this is the future.

I was convinced every person would communicate this way. Every business would have a BBS. Every community would have one. Every company would run its own small digital place where people could connect, talk, trade information, and build something.

I was wrong.

Not completely wrong about the direction, but very wrong about the interface. The future was not the BBS. The future was the behavior behind it: people wanted to connect, publish, exchange, and discover. The BBS was just an early container.

Then the Web Arrived

Then came FidoNet, other networks, and eventually the early World Wide Web.

The first time I saw a webpage rendering in Netscape Navigator, my opinion changed instantly.

The Web was the future. Not BBSs. Not CD-ROM encyclopedias. Not isolated digital islands. The Web.

Suddenly, the idea of buying an encyclopedia on discs felt absurd. Why would you keep knowledge frozen in plastic when it could be updated online? Why would artists, writers, developers, companies, communities, and weird hobbyists depend on publishers when they could have their own websites?

The early Web was messy, ugly, slow, inconsistent, and full of broken pages. It was also alive.

Artists had websites. Musicians had websites. Game developers had websites. Writers had websites. Companies had websites. Nerds had websites. Some people had websites that should probably have remained private, but that is the cost of civilization.

Audio and video came early. Images loaded line by line like some kind of digital archaeology. You waited. You watched. You hoped nobody picked up the phone.

Compared with BBSs, the accessibility of the Web made adoption explode. The Web was easier to reach, easier to link, easier to publish, easier to explain, and easier to commercialize.

BBSs became obsolete almost instantly. I still remember a group of maybe 10 or 20 of us meeting every Friday in downtown Buenos Aires to drink, talk, play video games, and discuss technology. We were the sons of the BBS era. We had seen one world appear, and then we watched it disappear under our feet. That would not be the last time.

The Web Almost Became Flash

A few years later, around the late 1990s and early 2000s, I became deeply involved in advocating for Web Standards.

That...