The internet did not get boring. Our routes through it did.

Disclosure: I’m the independent creator of Web Wander. I’m sharing the design idea behind it, not presenting an independent review.

There is a peculiar contradiction in modern browsing. The internet contains more pages, tools, archives, essays, games, experiments, and personal projects than any person could visit in a lifetime. Yet “going online” can feel like opening the same handful of doors.

That is not necessarily a failure of the internet. It is a consequence of the routes we use through it.

Feeds are built to reduce uncertainty. Search engines are built to answer questions we already know how to phrase. Both are useful. Neither is especially good at the moment before the question—the moment when someone is simply curious.

Serendipity used to be an ordinary side effect of browsing. A personal homepage linked to an essay, which linked to a tiny archive, which led to a tool made by one person for an audience of twelve. The route was inefficient, occasionally confusing, and often memorable.