The web we lost wasn’t just a technology platform. It was a culture. It was a set of assumptions about how information wanted to be free, how creativity could flourish without gatekeepers, and how connecting with strangers online could be an act of genuine discovery.
We had personal websites. We had webrings. We had blogrolls — a public declaration that said ‘here are the people I find interesting, go read them too.’ Every website was a potential starting point for a journey you didn’t plan.
That web is mostly gone now. Not because the technology changed, but because the economics changed. When five companies control most of the traffic, the architecture of discovery collapses into the architecture of recommendation.