If I had to guess, the next "website" will be AI-driven avatars that you can talk with over text (chatbots), calling to speak with them (voice-enabled chatbots), by inviting them into your home (AR), or by visiting them in their "home" (VR).

I believe the era of documents (print or digital; brochures or websites) as the dominant form of information exchange is going to go away.

I'm not sure that's dystopian, though. Sounds kinda neat to me.

I doubt documents and websites will go away. Laying out information in text and tables is an extremely efficient way to communicate information quickly. Even the most poorly designed storefront is densely packed with information.

In contrast, a conversation with an AI via text, voice, AR, or VR just isn't as dense. It's a very inefficient way to communicate mundane things.

If I want to buy some socks, I can hop on Amazon, search for "socks", and find literally tens of thousands of items for sale. I can quickly refine that search with filters or just browse to find what looks good to me. I can find pretty much exactly what I want in less than 30 seconds.

Now imagine that same task (buy some socks) through an AI 'virtual assistant' interface.

"Hi Alexa, I'd like some socks."

"I have over 60,000 socks available to purchase. I recommend 'Dickies Men's Dri-tech Moisture Control Socks Multipack' for $12.99 with free Prime same-day delivery."

"Tell me about the socks you recommended."

"These socks are currently available in 4 different sizes, which fit as expected, and 60 different colors. They're made of 64% cotton, 33% polyester, 2% spandex, and 1% nylon. They feature soft breathable moisture control fibers, ventilation channels to enhance air flow, arch compression support, and durable reinforced heels and toes."

"Are they low cut?"

"No, these socks are only available in crew cut. Would you like to search for low cut socks instead?"

And so on...

You could certainly get to what you want faster than this example, but communicating all of the mundane product information through a conversational interface is a bottleneck.

We'll certainly see Ai-driven avatars for some things. They'll be salespeople on car websites and customer service reps on other sites, but regardless of the role they play, they'll supplement the document based interfaces that we already have rather than completely replace them.

A good interface is one that makes the user comfortable and enables them to get things done quickly. In terms of getting things done quickly, AI avatars can't really compete with just dumping information on the user. I can look at a list of socks and filter out the ones I don't want much faster than I can communicate to a salesperson what kind of socks I'm looking for. And that's fine. Let the avatar do what it's good at and let the document do what it's good at so you get the best from both.

> I'm not sure that's dystopian, though. Sounds kinda neat to me.

Sounds like you're not familiar with telemarketers, door-to-door salesmen, ...

Popular culture never cared about reading anyway, let alone reasoning on top of a strong literate culture. And those who have to reason through long chains of arguments will continue to do so, I believe. Therefore, I don't think the serious people will stop with long arguments/analysis/literature/etc.

Whether or not AI replaces the web, as long as people find the content they need, is that a bad thing? Why stick to the status quo if something better comes along?

As long as AI is not better, the web will live. When AI is better, it will not. And there is likely a long period of overlap before either of those end states occur.

> every ...

Let me stop you there hoss. "Every" is not a thing. We do not live in a homogeneous world at any level.

It is weird they chose to post this on a website without a chatbot.