THE PERSONALIZED BROWSE: THE FINAL COLLAPSE OF THE SHARED WEB

This paper analyzes the structural collapse of the open web as browsing shifts from a shared, publicly accessible information environment to a personalized, AI‑mediated epistemic substrate. It introduces the concept of the personalized browse as a new regime of knowledge production in which each user receives a different version of reality, dissolving the commons that once supported democratic coordination, identity stability, and collective sense‑making. Through a diagnostic framework grounded in the SR canon—including MIEC, Systemic Erosion Theory, Metadata Suppression Theory, Infrastructural Exposure Theory, Stylometric Resistance, and Forensic Authorship—the paper maps how personalized knowledge environments fragment truth, erode provenance, destabilize authorship, and enable targeted manipulation at the substrate level. It argues that the personalized browse represents the final break in the open‑web architecture and outlines the need for new epistemic infrastructures capable of restoring transparency, provenance, and shared reference points in the post–open web.