“We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are as gods, and we are not.” — John West

Back in 2006, at the height of Web 2.0 optimism, Time made YOU person of the year. The user-generated technology of the internet, Time implied, would make all of us into digital gods of memory and forgetting. Twenty years later, the script has been totally flipped. Now we know that the internet is all-too-human. And so are we. This reminder of our mortality is the heart (if that’s the right word) of the new book by John West, the double Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal computational journalist.

West’s The Internet Will Die, and So Will You is a kind of digital memento mori. His argument is metaphysical rather than political. Offline, he writes, our lives are marked by constraint. But we mistake the internet’s destruction of physical distance for limitlessness. “We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are as gods,” he reminds us, “and we are not.” A Christian and a digital deconvert (not an uncommon combination in the technocrati), West wants us to import our mortality online. If we recognize that the internet will decay and finally die, he suggests, we will make it human. (Re)Make it, as us.

I’ve been making a version of this argument since The Cult of the Amateur in 2007. Only West’s version — by contrasting Bach, Ecclesiastes, and Mary Oliver with the infinite scroll — is more poetic and musical. Politer too. Noli timere, as the poet Seamus Heaney texted before he died. Be not afraid. Of life, of death. But beware of YOU. Be afraid. Timere. Very afraid.

Five Takeaways

• We Are Not Gods. Offline life is constraint; online we mistake acting at a distance for limitlessness. “We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are as gods, and we are not.”

• The Deconvert’s Meditation. Digital utopianism born in a middle-school computer lab, dead by monkey’s paw: the mechanism that found him anime fans now feeds pro-anorexia rabbit holes. “Plato and Postman were right.”

• A Few Thousand Weeks. The Luddite summer is about lost control: data centers without democratic say, marketing that promises to take your job. “Our dignity demands that we have some say.”

• Religious, Not Spiritual. West inverts the chestnut — religion is the binding technology. And the billionaires? “Every dollar is like a little Iago whispering poison into the ears of the Silicon Valley elite.”

• Noli Timere. Heaney’s last text — be not afraid — carried by the Internet to thousands. Remember not more, not less, but differently. The Internet will forget, and so will you.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy The Internet Will Die, and So Will You: herebelowbooks.com

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: a nation of Luddites?
00:02:30 The magic box that takes your job
00:03:40 No Internet, no AI: one continuous story
00:04:30 Talking to databases: computational journalism
00:05:09 A better way to be online
00:06:19 Foot-loosening technology and the illusion of no limits
00:07:52 “We have deluded ourselves into thinking that we are as gods”
00:08:45 Mary Oliver, Bach, Ecclesiastes: a metaphysical book
00:10:34 Magic needs limits
00:11:29 Plato and Postman were right
00:12:33 Rapture or rupture? A Freudian slip
00:13:05 deBoer’s Copernican punditry — but this time it might be right
00:14:30 The deconvert: from computer lab to monkey’s paw
00:16:21 Supercharged: the rabbit holes he wished for
00:17:54 The old order’s crack-up
00:19:25 Religious, not spiritual
00:19:56 Billionaires and finitude: every dollar a little Iago
00:22:25 Luddites and lost control: a few thousand weeks
00:23:47 Noli timere: Heaney’s last text
00:26:09 Liberation theology: heaven here on earth
00:26:57 Remember differently: Wikipedia rots, red solo cups remain
00:29:05 Moana, not the Odyssey
00:30:16 The Internet will forget, and so will you