Every civilization eventually forgets what made it strong. Ours is forgetting faster than any before it — not because we lack memory, but because we’ve outsourced it to machines that do.
The web that once promised universal knowledge has become a patchwork of walled gardens and incompatible truths. The Splinternet isn’t coming; it’s here, and its side effect is cognitive decay.
The collective Ebbinghaus curve — the rate at which a population forgets — is now visible in everything from market reactions to politics. We are living inside a forgetting machine.
In the early days, the Internet was a cathedral of connection. That drove me to write my book Broken Web in 2012. Back then? Protocols were open, bandwidth was shared, and information wanted to be free.
That was the dream. But as every engineer knows, dreams get patched, monetized, and eventually fenced off. Each firewall, each algorithm, each national censorship node split the network’s once-coherent fabric.
We didn’t notice the fracture because the lights still came on — but the light was no longer the same everywhere. The Internet of things became the Internet of factions.
For investors, this fragmentation isn’t just cultural; it’s financial. The same Ebbinghaus law that measures how quickly we forget words now applies to market memory.
Traders forget so crashes happen faster. Consumers forget scarcity sooner. Corporations forget lessons learned about leverage and risk.
The result is volatility without conscience — capital chasing momentum through an amnesiac network that can’t remember yesterday’s mistake. In a world of accelerated forgetting, valuation becomes a hallucination shared by algorithms.
That’s where this week’s Peoplenomics report begins: at the intersection of systemic amnesia and digital fracture. This ain’t just another TA shop.
We map how the Splinternet undermines not just geopolitics but investment stability, how the “Ebbinghaus-Ure Effect” explains recurring cycles of risk blindness, and why the next crash may not be caused by war or debt — but by the sheer inability of markets to remember what coherence looked like.
The real danger isn’t disconnection; it’s forgetting what connection meant.
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Speaking of forgetting things, thanks for reminding us of Pee Wee Herman:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2y94xe397o
Yo Chief,
Them thar fireballz be dropping out da sky on the regular nowadaze, saw a couple last night while out stargazing, in a museical trance, induced by the sounds of babbling brook/pond less waterfall feature in backyard. A very cool/interesting NRGetic event occurred LIVE on MRMBB3 youtube show last night. He had the soho camera live feeds open on site when an enormous “bolt” of white Light flashed by the SUN? Within seconds of this bolt of NRG flashing by, the SUN emitted one of the largest Flares possible- full (360) spectrum blast in direction of the Ohuremomma “comet”.
One moar time for the weak intellect types – that thing is NOT A COMET .
70- pts or less = weak intellect, care to guess avg boomer score ?
Dont bother, just look around..
You cant handle the Truth…just yet, but we are getting there ever so slowly, and Ure brains havent fallen out yet, so thats good.
As for the Anti’s anything ?
Being anti anything can not supply a positive vision of the good .
Rocking Ronnie Rayguns granted amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, and uncle Milty taught a generation to believe in borderless markets. This synthesis (reagan/freidman)became Bipartisan Continual Wisdom, and it destroyed any idea of conserving the actual Nation.
Antifascist taboo against “blood & soil” ended in Demographic replacement and the erosion of any shared civic identity.
GNR -Civil War..aint so civil-https://youtu.be/OXAcZ_IPK5c?
Turn on the waterfall next time.
GU : a few remarks (having only speed scanned the ChartPack on your contributor side on PeopleNomics.com ) :
“… The web that once promised universal knowledge has become a patchwork of walled gardens and incompatible truths. …”
Truths remain (barring the blather from your Poster of the same name) but are skewed by perspective and narrative. Paywalls are surprisingly easy to defeat. In some cases hit “X” [stop loading] then the circular arrow (reload] and, shazam, the hidden content appears?
“… the Internet was a cathedral of connection. […] Protocols were open, bandwidth was shared, and information wanted to be free.
That was the dream. But as every engineer knows, dreams get patched, monetized, and eventually fenced off. …”
To serve instantaneous info on a click request. That’s where we started. The Longwave crowd formed as did hundreds of other high powered sometimes opinionated in extremus groups sussed out just about everything. I used to participate in a forum with top end Australian and Kiwi PROs (Principal Race Officers) and RC (Race Committee) heads. An amazing collection of knowledge, shared for free … for ever. But, that was last forever?
Our site still struggles with monetization. We have decades of interested parties offering serious money to (in the day) serve a side-bar or banner ad. Six-ish years ago the owner of the largest sailing site on the planet proposed his sponsors would become ours too in a sharing arrangement. Then, a free high powered sailing journalist (who we all knew).
We decided to stay free, pure in a sense, vs. being beholden to the industry. Now, seeking a middle ground, I am interested in long form sponsored info-mercials. There are loads of highly specialized firms making products for top end sailing so ? None of the four of us need the money but … more would get done if paid a stipend? TBD.
Markets usually wobble before taking the next leg higher -or- collapse. Remember, they shoot the Generals first. Watch the AI complex and Mag-7 for smoke signals.
Egor
Excellent and savory, as always Egor – thank you.
For those thinking we have gone woke, his reference to Australian and Kiwi PROs (Principal Race Officers) is not militant Maoris (a great lot) – something a little different – Sailboat Racing Committees. No additional BP’s needed.
Too early to hoist the martini pennant?
A once proud member of https://styc.org/ and https://opyc.com/