A cinematic journey into the heart of the internet with the people working to take it apart, from an anarchist squat in Berlin, to a remote village in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, and the heart of the technological vanguard in the San Francisco Bay Area, The End of the Internet offers a glimpse into the history, development, and infrastructure undergirding the web, and the struggle for its future amidst a movement for its decentralization. 

The film traces the lineage of internet decentralization – a model based on equality and multipolarity – from its cold war military origins to its radical present. From engineer Paul Baran's work on decentralized communication networks in the late 1950s to Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web in 1989, the internet was envisioned as a tremendous tool with no hierarchy that could be shared and accessed by all. However, as these technologies developed, corporate and political interests took hold and have steadily choked the internet into centralized points under the consolidated control of a few of the largest corporations in the world, who are all too willing to censor and surveil on behalf of oppressive regimes. These interests have geared the internet primarily as a tool for data collection and exploitation, commodifying users worldwide. 

The internet is often described as a cloud, shapeless and abstract. But this ephemeral force shapes geopolitics and is sustained by a vast hidden infrastructure of cables snaking millions of miles around the world. The physical components of the internet are built on infrastructures of empire – transcontinental cable is laid along routes of the slave trade, and data centers occupy former forced labor camps – and as such continue to reify destructive practices and philosophies of the past. But just as clouds are malleable, so too is the next iteration of the internet. The End of the Internet is a compelling and engaging journey through the most consequential technologies of modern life outlining the power struggles for the ability to shape the internet and our world.

Streaming option not available for Post Secondary institutions.