The Internet reverses and twists this approach through what can be called a point-to-point network. The possibility of making direct connections between users accessing the network is a mode of communication that, in a sense, was anticipated by the telephone, a media that, thanks to the switched network, makes it possible to communicate directly from one user to another. But the Internet makes possible much more structured forms of communication by also incorporating the Point-to-Multi-Point mode typical of traditional media. In fact, the first phase of the Internet, also referred to as Web 1.0, saw the prevalence of a fairly traditional mass media approach. Many websites and portals aimed to become the reference content published by a publisher for the enjoyment of many users online. Even today, some On Line Video-On-Demand platforms (e.g., Netflix) maintain a substantial point-to-multipoint approach, even as they enable two-way forms of interaction and response. However, this approach typical of the first phase of the Internet was superseded in the second phase, Web 2.0, in which the point-to-point logic began to prevail: all users became at the same time authors, publishers, and users of the content. Every user and device accessing the network can both receive and communicate content to all others. With this typical architecture of the Internet comes considerable difficulty in identifying authoritative and quality sources. From a technical point of view, all users, including content sources, are on an equal footing.
The advent of AI fundamentally subverts the logic of the network.
The large-scale affirmation of models such as ChatGPT tends to reproduce systems of unidirectional dependence on monopolistic platforms, which, while presenting themselves in an ostensibly interactive mode, tend to marginalize the bidirectional participatory logic of Web 2.0 and reconstruct a user dependence on a “monological, one-way oracle.”
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