Issue #81: The Web Is Breaking. What Comes Next?
Howdy 👋🏾.
One of my favorite post-WWDC traditions is watching John Gruber’s Talk Show Live. For over a decade, he’s hosted in-depth conversations with Apple execs, but this year, after his excellent piece critiquing Apple Intelligence and Siri, the invite didn’t come. Instead, we got something better: Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge, and Joanna Stern, Senior Tech Columnist at The Wall Street Journal.
I’m only about 30 minutes in, it’s my go-to long neighborhood walk listen, but the way this group talks about AI, the web, and what’s coming next is catching my attention. The consensus seems clear: The internet is broken. AI is cracking those faults wide open.
But maybe, just maybe, that’s what makes room for something new.
It’s a tension I’ve been sitting with: business models and UX patterns that made perfect sense in a web-first world now feel out of sync with an AI-driven one. Take DoorDash vs. Uber Eats – how do you build brand equity when users just say “get me Thai food” and an AI agent handles everything behind the scenes? If pricing is similar, do you care who fulfills the request?
That’s the same pain publishers are feeling. The BBC just threatened Perplexity for scraping content without credit or clicks. They need the traffic to survive. But AI doesn’t play by the old rules.
For enterprise companies like Salesforce, the strategy is to consume platforms and create a moat that locks you, your teams, and your data into their systems. Now, AI wants data lakes and communal pools of our data to better understand things, and this threatens old strategies. For now, at least, open data access is a key to unlocking the powers of AI.
So what replaces the web as the “front door” of the internet?
There’s a new technology bubbling up called MCP – a system where the web shifts from static pages to dynamic APIs designed for agent-to-agent communication. As Nilay pointed out in his interview with Sundar Pichai, Google is clearly preparing for this. They envision a world where the web becomes a set of building blocks for AI to remix on demand, turning data into dynamic applications, tailored to each question you ask.
It’s like a T-1000 UI—liquid, adaptive, shifting based on what you need in the moment. The UI adapts to the need, the data, and the request, whether it comes through voice, visuals, or augmented reality. In this shift, UX and UI are not static concepts, but a shape-shifting interface that serves intent.
Like I always say, today is the AOL days of AI, but the shift that’s coming likely means the web as we know it is going away. The question all of us are wondering is what replaces it, and what might the new web and UX be?
-Jason
What the Heck is MCP?
Meet MCP: MCP Is the Quiet Protocol Everyone’s Talking About
I went deep on this one. MCP might not sound flashy, but it could seriously reshape how AI agents work, moving from “let me find that for you” to “done, what’s next?”
It’s got action, memory, and real-world utility baked in. If you’re building agents (or just curious where this is all headed), I’m breaking it all down.
📼 Talking Tech: Watch & Learn
Tuesday’s WTCI AGILE event on Building Earth’s Future From Space was packed with bold ideas, big questions, and the kind of cross-industry thinking we love to see.
From space-based sustainability to the future of communications, it’s clear that space isn’t just about exploration; it’s about solving real problems here on Earth.
Catch the recap video for a look at what went down and where this conversation is headed next.
🔗 The Best in Tech This Week
🎯 Job hunting turns into AI vs. AI warfare – Recruiters are overwhelmed, applicants are burned out, and AI is now on both sides of the hiring process. Job seekers use it to apply faster, hiring teams use it to filter harder, and everyone loses. It’s time for AI to help interview, not just screen.
🧠 AI is eating the internet—and your traffic with it – Search traffic is drying up fast, and AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity aren’t sending users back to your site. Cloudflare reports major drops in publisher traffic, and the open web is giving way to closed ecosystems. If your strategy relies on SEO alone, it’s time to rethink.
🍎 Is Apple about to buy an answer engine? – With Google’s antitrust challenges threatening billions in revenue, Apple may be eyeing Perplexity as its next big move. It’s fast, accurate, and could finally make Siri useful, while quietly launching a Google Search rival from day one.
🎤 The AI Roadshow: Workshops, Talks & Beyond
June 27, 2025 – WYPR Midday Talk Show at 12pm 📻
July 11, 2025 – Startup Grind AI Workshop
July 16, 2025 – Community Connect #5: From Code to Cure
July 17, 2025 – Delaware Division of Libraries AI Speaker Series
P.S. Before you go…
Google Veo and Flow are good, so good that they’ve opened the flood gates to an amazing amount of AI slop, someone should trademark that word, and questionable AI content. I don’t know about your feeds, but mine are filled with everything from influencers interviewing slaves, to chefs cooking Pokémon, or food eating itself. Things are getting weird, friends, and also harder and harder to tell what’s a prompt and what’s not.