The Evolution of the Internet: From Convenience to Surveillance
The internet has undergone a significant transformation since its inception. Initially, it was perceived as a convenient tool that provided faster browsing, smarter recommendations, and free services subsidized by advertising. However, this convenience came at a cost. The power shifted from users to platforms, and autonomy gave way to extraction, while consent was disguised as convenience. The internet, which was once a symbol of freedom and openness, has become a surveillance economy where personal data is the raw material.
The modern internet is no longer just a platform for interactions; it has become a medium that studies our behavior. Every digital gesture, purchase, scroll, location ping, message, pause, or late-night search feeds a behavioral model that we have not consciously participated in. Our personal data has become a valuable resource that is used to predict our preferences, draw conclusions about our psychological problems, and anticipate our relationship tensions. The biggest platforms have become powerful by creating better profiles of us, rather than developing better software.
The Impact of AI on User Control
The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has further exacerbated the problem. AI systems promise benefits, creativity, and productivity, but they operate on an extractive logic that is more sophisticated than anything web2 has attempted. These models need our prompts, conversations, writing patterns, photos, emotional cues, frustrations, secrets, and metadata to “learn.” People treat AI systems like private notebooks or digital confidants, but in reality, they are nothing like that. The largest AI companies actively collect, store, analyze, and train the material that people assume is transient and confidential.
The implications are profound. For the first time in history, not only companies but also computer systems themselves are learning about our behavioral limits, vulnerabilities, and preferences. If web2 undermines privacy by hoarding our data, AI undermines it by internalizing our inner lives. The internet is drifting into an era where machines understand us, not because we’ve told them who we are, but because we’ve given them enough fragments to piece together a version of ourselves that’s more precise than our own self-perception.
The Failure of Web3 to Deliver Sovereignty
Crypto emerged as a philosophical rebellion against the concentration of power. The industry promised us self-sovereignty: ownership of our assets, identity, and data. However, in practice, the first generation of web3 systems made a different mistake. To solve the problem of trust, they ensured radical transparency in everything. Blockchains turned human behavior into public ledgers, making wallet flows, transaction histories, social graphs, and financial habits visible to everyone, forever. This created a paradox: the very technology intended to empower individuals ended up creating a perfect environment for surveillance.
The Need for a New Internet
The core problem that unites web2 and web3 is deceptively simple: users have no control over what others can see. The next era of the internet must be built on a different foundation. Instead of selectively encrypting addresses or obfuscating transactions, the next generation of the internet should have encryption at the protocol level. Everything – state, storage, computation, logic, user interactions – should be end-to-end encrypted. This structural change opens up a fundamentally different scope for design, where developers cannot extract behavioral data from users, and third parties cannot track how, when, or why users interact with apps.
Gavin Thomas is co-founder of TEN and CEO of Obscuro Labs. Gavin was formerly Engineering COO of R3 and built the engineering function at R3 from the ground up, leading to the delivery of Corda. Prior to R3, Gavin built the multi-award-winning Fusion platform for the world’s largest dealer broker TP ICAP, making it a world first in the space from its inception. Gavin’s first exposure to blockchain came in 2015.
The Future of the Internet
The coming decade will be marked by a return to something that should never have been lost: individual control over their own data. The principle that must move us forward is deceptively simple. Data belongs to the person who produces it. Transparency should be a voluntary act and not a mandatory requirement. Applications should work without intruding into the private lives of their users. And privacy should never be a premium feature reserved for tech-savvy people; it should be the quiet, unobtrusive standard of the digital world. Read more about the future of the internet and the importance of user control at https://crypto.news/the-next-internet-must-give-control-back-to-users/
