Brewster Kahle Argues the Internet Forgets — and Why That Matters

Brewster Kahle makes the case that the web's supposed permanence is an illusion. The common belief that anything published online stays retrievable — the idea that "the internet never forgets" — has bred what the piece calls a dangerously false sense of permanence. In practice, sites are revised, taken down, and abandoned on a continuous basis. The Atlantic published the argument in October 2026, framing it around efforts to block the Internet Archive and the claim that such blocking will not stop AI. Kahle's position centers on memory as an essential function the network does not reliably provide on its own.