Are the days of web surfing over?

In an opinion piece for The New York Times on Feb. 4, Evgeny Morozov declares the days of cyberspace exploration over, snuffed out by the world of social media and search engine optimization. Drawing a parallel to 19th century Paris, Morozov invokes the metaphor of the Flâneur — a careless wanderer of the streets — to the early days of the Web when users could freely surf with anonymity. Morozov concludes that Facebook and Google have replaced this era of freedom with one dominated by the voyeurism of the crowd and driven by advertizing dollars. Morozov cautions that the new concept of "frictionless sharing" — from the articles we read to the movies we watch  — has comprised our freedom to surf.