I (as an armchair philosopher, and not a very good one at that), argue that the problem is not the web, nor technology, but Complexity Vs. Convenience.<p>In order to create the modern world, in order to create its conveniences, systems, sometimes very complex systems, must be implemented underneath, as infrastructure, to support all of that convenience.<p>Sometimes they are "systems of systems", that is, infrastructures heaped on top of other infrastructures, etc.<p>They provide conveniences; that's true, but they conversely create a series of corner-cases, a series of circumstances where the complexity creates additional problems, where the complexity serves to be the problem.<p>Consider a future sci-fi scenario of robot war...<p>What happened? What went wrong? Here's what went wrong:<p>Robots were created to serve humanity, but over many centuries, many generations, the knowledge of how they were created (and what it took to control them) was lost, as mankind became lazier and lazier, and deferred all work to the robots.<p>The complexity of the robots (and their AI) increased, whereas the knowledge humanity possessed about them decreased.<p>At a certain time, at a certain critical juncture, because of the increasing knowledge asymmetry, creator (humanity) and creation switched roles, and now the creation caused great problems for the creator, who had basically lost the knowledge, ("lost the manual for" <g>), how to control the creation.<p>We see this pattern repeat in a variety of formats, in a variety of historic and present-day contexts; it includes (but is not limited to!): Technology, Religion, Law, Governments, Social Systems, etc.<p>Basically, all of those things were created to serve man, to serve mankind...<p>And (depending upon where you are in history, or what your knowledge (or lack of knowledge) of them is, in the present day), some of them either will, or at least have the apparency of, the loss of control by their creator -- mankind.<p>Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, is an allegory of this theme, that is, of a creator that creates something for beneficial purposes, only that with enough time (and/or loss of knowledge), the creation turns on the creator...<p>Understood properly, here's the reason why all societies eventually fail, and why far in mankind's past, there may have been a high-tecnology society (Atlantis?) which was destroyed, because with all of the solutions it brought, it also brought additional problems, such that those could not be controlled, and eventually it was destroyed, or was the cause of its own destruction...<p>The Greek myth of Sisyphus -- is also an allegory for this
phenomena... If the stone which he has to roll up a hill (only to watch it roll back down again! "There goes the neighborhood!" <g>) represents society, then he is fated to roll it up the hill to its pinacle -- only to watch it roll back down again... over and over and over, for eternity...<p>So, Complexity Vs. Convenience. With every new convenience, you require more complexity, and you generate a new set of problems...