Is Our Future Internet Cyberpunk? - Closer Than We Think...
- The White Hatter
- 11 minutes ago
- 3 min read
In Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk universe, the “Old Net” (basically our internet) was destroyed during corporate wars and battles with rogue AIs. What replaced it wasn’t another open network, but thousands of fragmented intranets and local city nets. Each city became its own walled garden network infrastructure. If you’re curious, the Cyberpunk wiki has a fascinating breakdown (1).
This is not a post about heading towards uncontrollable killer AI robots or other sci-fi extremes. The comparison is about control. More specifically, how governments are experimenting with ways to control the public internet and what will functionally be the outcome, possibly similar to the sci-fi Cyberpunk world.
China and Russia have long relied on firewalls - keep the global internet out, let citizens use a heavily filtered or local version. In Cyberpunk terms, this is exactly the global outcome: the public net is too dangerous, so just build your own.
NATO-friendly countries are experimenting with a different model. Instead of blocking off the internet entirely, they’re trying to enforce bans or content restrictions on the open web itself, even on platforms with no physical presence within their borders.
Take the UK’s Online Safety Act. Sites like Kiwi Farms and 4Chan are pushing back, arguing that legal age-verification laws do not apply to them since they have no servers, offices, or staff within the legal geographical borders (2).
This isn’t just about national governments. In 2024, the province of British Columbia introduced the Intimate Images Protection Act, giving people the power to force platforms to remove intimate images shared without consent, and seek damages for non-compliance (3). This BC law was recently tested against X (formerly Twitter). The court ordered X to remove an image from its control. Instead of deleting it globally, X blocked the picture only in Canada, arguing that BC law doesn’t extend beyond Canadian borders. The judgment disagreed, X was found in violation and hit with a $100,000 penalty for not complying with the BC legal order (4).
Interesting note - The BC decision leaned on a previous Supreme Court of Canada case, Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc., 2017 SCC 34, where Canada’s Supreme Court held that global injunctions against foreign internet companies were possible.
As it stands, U.S. citizens are suing European government agencies for infringing on their American right to free speech, while companies outside of Canada argue that Canadian law applies only within Canadian borders and that no single government should have authority over what is accessible on the global internet.
We are entering messy territory. Do national laws apply to websites with no servers or staff in that country? If not, what tools remain?
It’s difficult to imagine many alternatives. If something exists on the internet that is prohibited within a country, is the direct blocking approach used in China and Russia the only viable solution? Do we move toward national firewalls, blocking entire sections of the internet? And for platforms themselves: is the future one where every country requires its own localized app, server, and ruleset? Not because the law explicitly mandates it, but because it becomes the only practical outcome. Otherwise, with nations continuing to impose highly variable internet laws, it may be simpler for platforms to create localized versions than to attempt to satisfy everyone at once.
If each nation continues to apply its own laws and exert influence over the public internet, Pondsmith’s vision of fragmented, city-by-city networks (only in this case, country by country) may not remain just sci-fi lore. It could be a preview of what lies ahead.
