Tech Déjà Vu

Remember when websites became a thing of the past?

Well it was on the 24th March 2036, to be precise.

That was when the last human being in the world with a laptop looked something up on the web and tried to order it from Currys.

Even as the last-ever "Order cancelled: sorry out of stock" email landed in the last-ever spam folder belonging to 96-year-old Derek Spodd from Ilkeston, it was the end of an era.

Derek received the same sort of media attention on the Fatline as the passing of the last WW3 veteran - we would not see their like again.

Of course the rest of us were all doing it the easy way by then - simply thinking our orders directly over the Fatline and letting our IAIIAI client (Individual AI Instigator of Autonomous Interaction) select and deliver the right product for us.

Not a website in sight.

Not even a landing page, whatever that was.

You see, Derek was a product of the early days of the internet, when users actually had to find out things for themselves.

This caused of a lot of problems, because a great many of these users were actually quite dim. And they only had one or two massive "search engines" to tell them what they could have.

It wasn't easy at all.

As time went on, retailers tried to game the search engine algorithms with increasingly arcane and expensive strategies - none of which actually worked. No wonder there were worldwide celebrations when AI dipped its toes into the industry and 'SEO' became irrelevant.

For a while there were firms out there touting 'AI-optimised GEO', just like there were a few human developers still trying to build physical websites that had a 'Logo' and actual 'Pages' to 'choose' from.

Incredible, isn't it?

To add to the hilarity, they still continued to bicker over whether 'Wordpress' was better than 'Webflow', long after the Fatline took over and the IAIIAI we know and love today became compulsory.

After all, the 'WorldWideWeb' had always been a bit rubbish, hadn't it? Words and pictures held together with ever-more complicated 'Web Glue'?

Barely fit for purpose.

The Fatline said "Good Riddance" to all that nonsense and just concentrated on giving you the best product you deserved, finally giving us human beings the seamless wish-fulfillment we always craved.

So now our cherished items just arrive straight from the Autofac - and the best of it is we don't have to make any effort at all!

If anyone else feels that recent tech advances seem eerily familiar, could it be that back in the day - before the Ray Bradbury Act got rid of all the books - you were a keen reader of science-fiction? If so, you may have already experienced today's technology in the company of Philip K Dick or Dan Simmons or many other notable authors.

Can you remember the last time you had tech déjà vu?