The author makes a lot of witty, erudite References – a method that has annoyingly become popular and is often mistaken as "good writing" – but I think he has missed a simple and obvious truth: culture is determined by fashion. Not fashion as in clothing, but fashion as in ideas and things that are trendy for a time then fade away, replaced by the next thing. The next thing is often an indirect reaction to the previous thing. Sometimes it's the exact opposite.
Culture has been very online for the last decade and extremely online for the last 3 years. We are just witnessing a cultural shift away from this and toward ideas like real, physical, human, touch, outside, present, etc. being trendy. The Internet isn't "over", it's just adapting to a new cultural fashion. The technological immaturity of stuff like VR is also a factor.
Culture has been very online for the last decade and extremely online for the last 3 years. We are just witnessing a cultural shift away from this and toward ideas like real, physical, human, touch, outside, present, etc. being trendy. The Internet isn't "over", it's just adapting to a new cultural fashion. The technological immaturity of stuff like VR is also a factor.
By 2040, we'll all be extremely online again.