The versioned future
Web 5.0: With wide-spread access to cutting-edge bandwidth speeds, the video becomes the predominant form of communication among Internet users. Conversations become passe; soliloquies and monologues are the norm. The acronyms of SMS and IM die out, replaced by more sonorous abbreviations, a sign of the language adapting to the medium. JavaScript and CSS, with no content to manipulate, disintegrate into pebbles, S-expressions, and hope, the standard devolution for all programming languages. All social contact ceases. New upstarts in the Valley of Heart’s Delight search for the nexus of webcams, hyperlinks, and publishing technology. Wordpress forks off into Studious while Movable Type merges with LiveJournal to form one of the remaining cornerstones of text-based content. The others are Fan-Fiction.net and Metafilter. Nobody is quite sure what happens with SomethingAwful: New user registration and public thread viewing end on dates predating Web 5.0, and nobody—nobody—ever finds a SomethingAwful user in real life. Its registered-user count, however, continues to increase, somehow.
Web 6.0: Soliloquies overtake pornography as the most common form of Internet traffic. Pornography and gambling, unable to combat the increasing narcissism and self-isolation of the Internet, quit permanently. With print media imploding simultaneously, the global world culture experiences the Dark Ages of erotica for several centuries until it finds a voice when electronic print is perfected by Icelanders. Valley of Heart’s Delight upstarts are unable to advertise their oils as even Google cannot penetrate the ad-free, video-only environment of the Internet. In a bold venture, beer companies hire actors to produce personal monologues and viral ads; both formats are too glitzy to ever attract more than a handful of the now-ancient YouTubers of yore. Some companies attempt to use management-level personnel as “actors” in combination with homely production values. This achieves the intended effect of community acceptance, but with it comes a complete lack of Internet traffic. Mission accomplished. Venture capitalists abandon the Valley, and a vast space of parking lots and secondary succession takes over.
Web 7.0: Google, neither able to index video content nor place ads in them, emanates its last few quanta of light and terminates, marking the denouement for the post-bubble Internet era and the catalyst of an era where the idea of user-generated content reaches its absurd conclusion. In lieu of erotica, Fan-Fiction.net becomes the only source of sexual taboos, fetishes, and cobwebs. It experiments with user-generated porn photography and video for a week though the quality and concepts behind most of the initial submissions create massive voluntary eye gougings among the community. Overnight, the Internet population decreases by 5%, doing to the Internet what the bubonic plague did to Western Europe. The market system of the United States sputters and stops, unable to ensnare 18-36 year olds. Most public relations firms turn to the business of making pizza dough, having found this cheese-and-bread staple to be a lucrative industry in the new self-isolation culture. As advertisement designers and market researchers turn to the dark arts, the pizza industry experiences a Renaissance in technology, spurred by increased profits and desperation. Liquid pizza becomes the second hottest fad, second only to IV-drip pizza and heroin designer jeans. SomethingAwful continues to grow, becoming the third largest source of Internet traffic according to Alexa. Alexa by now, of course, is a black-hat company completely devoted to the subterfuge of the world hegemonies and the Internet infrastructure. They fail, miserably. Iceland’s fjords become the location of a new, global Silicon Valley headed by a coalition of everybody except America and a largely deserted, single-country Africa. That country’s name? The Republic of Machetes.