If, on the other hand, we take the kind of long view I’m proposing, instead of seeing Facebook and surveillance capitalism as the culmination of the internet’s short history, we can view them instead as an early experiment that is in the course of failing (or at least of having its parameters changed). From this point of view, it’s easier to see the web of the 2000s, not as a developmental stage that has now been surpassed, but rather as a set of possibilities which still have plenty of potential to be realized. Maybe it’s possible to go back after all.

—Art Kavanagh, in “The good old days of the web may be just around the corner”