What would you do if the internet went down, for good?
I've been writing a little short story for something, and the premise has the main character "break" the internet in a major city. All the landline servers at once. I'm not sure how most would react to being disconnected all of a sudden. How about you?
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Given that a significant portion of my job is internet related (software development, a good bit of which is web development), it would be a pretty big hit to me if it was permanent.
In my non-work life, there would be less WoW/other MMOs. Other than that, I have a lot of books I've been meaning to read that fanfiction has been keeping me away from.
1676802
Hmm, so that's one so far that would just go on with his life. Coolio.
My life would have no meaning, and then I'd finally be able to play the add-ons to Fallout: New Vegas. So I have that going for me.
1676815 Oh that's a good point, I never played any of the NV addons and I already own all of them.
1676815
And fapping.
I would probably play my xbox 360 (story mode obviously) a lot more since I pretty much use my free time on the internet lately. Then again much like djthomp above, I do have a number of paperback books that have been collecting on my shelves that I should get around to reading.
That being said, I would eventually go out and get a subscription to the local newspaper, get myself a library card, and look into getting an encyclopedia set.
Would loosing the internet suck? Oh absolutely but I would get by since I grew up without internet. I wasn't fully enveloped into the internet scene until after I started college (about 8 years ago). On a side note, I already own an atlas (which is sitting in my jeep) so I have google maps covered if I am in a need to travel.
EDIT: I'm certain that the level of general public freak out would be determined by how permanent the disconnection would be. Back in college the internet would randomly go out for a few hours which was very frustrating. Anything past that would just get us pissed. I think more people would freak out more if the damage was irreparable and worldwide (especially the news media personal).
I would miss reddit and Xbox live, but other than that my life wouldn't change too drastically
Considering the internet is used by me as a sort of safe haven and a major source for everything for me. I'd get shut down for quite a while and it would take some time for me to recover from. I'm too reliant on it, but hey what're you gonna do?
Start collecting food and water. Barricading my home then wait till the internet up again.
I would curl into fetal position for a while. Then I would go to sleep.
I sleep a lot.
1676838
Hmm, most seem to agree with you, mate.
"It'd suck, but we'd live on."
Interesting.
I'd get it online again.
I'd unplug it, and then I'd plug it back in again. If that doesn't work, I'd set Steam to offline mode, and continue as usual. I'd need some new hobbies, and I'd go to the library and local video stores more often, but in truth my biggest issues would be mostly immediate but fixable stuff like my phone effectively stopping working and my GPS system, which I use almost every time I go anywhere farther than three blocks from my house and which is, again, on my phone, crapping out. Life would be harder, and different, but it would go on.
Now, as it is relevant and I absolutely love the story, let me share a news article with you all.
I would have literally 200% more free time. Honestly I think the shock to the system would leave me wondering what to actually do. I guess I'd probably just hang with friends IRL more haha. LAN parties maybe?
Well I do my schooling online, so I guess I'd have to go do school with real live people again. I'd also be, as most people have said, reading a heck of a lot more. Maybe I'd even get lost in my studies just to have something to do. *shrug* My life would be completely different. Worse? I'm honestly not sure.
First I would get mad. That disproportional angry you get when suddenly the only thing you ever do is gone kinda angry. Not because I can't live with out it but because the internet is sadly were most of my life is lived. After I accept that I no longer have internet I would get sad. Kinda mopey and depressed, not sure what to do with myself and such. This would transition into boredom while still being kinda sad for a while. I would stay bored for a while before I get the will to crawl out of my whole and go meet real people in a real world. I have that now but it would be a lot more. I would probably end up getting in shape and being a hell of a lot more productive. I mean sure I would still have the connectivity to others through my phone but I would end up exploring things more. Reading more actual books instead of fanfiction, It would be an interesting time at first but I would quickly settle into the new way of things and end up better for it probably. More attached to a world I keep a distance from now and other such drivel. Hope that helps you out with the story.
1677047
So, the seven stages of grief?
1677070 yep, like mourning an old friend. I may not have grown up with the internet but it has become a big part of my life. It's a little pathetic but I am an introvert and I don;t get out much so I have a lot of friends I know almost exclusively online. It has made it a decent chunk of my life.
This...
i184.photobucket.com/albums/x71/Kadngi/bender-1.jpg
'Nuf said.
(Walks to the house of the person who broke the internet. Knock on door. They answer.)
Hello
Me:(pulls out a 9mm and shoves it in face sideways) dafaq is my internet bra?
Them: How the fuck do I know?
Me : Wrong answer, bitch(pulls trigger, blows his brains on the back wall)
Me : (kicks his.dead body for a few minutes and then put a few more caps in his ass
But in reality just go hang out with friends and.study more at school but I would be really.pissed off at.this mother fucker
yea...first i would be annoyed...then i bet it would be like withdraws from hard drugs. I would get super agitated and claustrophobic and antsy and probably mentally flip on someone or someones....I dont like that this is my answer but it is the truth.
I... would get really sad for a bit, then after about a month of rehab, Id probably be fine. My job (which I'm currently on leave from) leaves very little time to use the internet anyway... (For about 9 months I had literally no idea what was going on in the world).
I spend most of my time out in the last fronteir enyways so I would hardly feel it. I only ever really go on the Internet to read some fanfics and watch the new episodes on saterdays.
So how would my life change? It wouldent
I maintain almost zero social connection to my overly religious family, and I have almost no local friends. I use the internet as an escape from said family.
...
What you've just described is what we refer to as a sanity-break. An event that would render the last vestiges of sanity a specific individual - myself, in this case - obsolete. The result would be rage, sir. Rage.
I wouldn't really care about losing the internet itself, as I can go on pretty well without it. What I would be worried about, however, are all the great friends I've made on the internet, and how exactly I would be able to communicate with them again.
Well, a huge chunk of the economy up and dies to start with. On top of that, the stock markets don't work anymore, hospitals can't get patient records as they're all transitioning away from paper, airlines can't book passengers, police can't check records or registries, stores can't order stock, utilities can't be remotely managed, automatic fault reporting doesn't happen, government services shut down, banks can't move money, most remaining long-distance communication systems stop working (telephone infrastructure depends on the internet now), and the general population in the West just lost their favorite time-sinks. Basically all the worst parts of the Book of Revelation rear their ugly heads.
No, seriously. Bad idea. Megadeaths, especially in winter.
I'd have the time to focus on my work as I should... but since my work is web design, I wouldn't be able to do it anyway.
I believe I'd pull loads of extra hours and stress a lot - It would most likely be my fault anyway.
Otherwise, I would miss some features of the internet, but since I use it mostly to find things to do later, the implications would take a few months to hit, when most my albums grew stale, and I had no movies to watch.
Perhaps it's not in the proper spirit of the question, but "for good" has a scary finality to it. The internet was originally designed to survive global thermonuclear warfare, and while modern reality has it slightly more fragile than intended, to take out "the internet" for more than a few weeks or select areas would imply catastrophe on a scale we haven't seen since the black plague.
So what would I be doing if the internet went offline permanently? Statistically, I'd most likely be evaporating into whiffs of hydrogen, ozone, and carbon dioxide. Failing that, banging rocks together to try and reinvent fire.
I would go on with my life and laugh at all the poor bastards who depend on it.
1679446
At the risk of belaboring my point, assuming you don't grow all your own food and live "off the grid", your life does depend on the internet. Your bank account would go *poof*, any government services you use will stop, real-time long-distance communications are out. Water and power will become unreliable, your supermarket will run out of food, and all your records will become inaccessible. All the things we've modernized over the last three decades stop working.
This isn't just "oh dear, YouTube is down." The frigging phone system craps out, and we've torn down the telegraph lines. The economy and stock markets drop dead. Plane travel? Forget about it, they can't book you, coordinate flight plans with other airports, or any damned thing. Like hell could the TSA or customs let you through even if you could get there. Power and water systems that currently run with tiny staffs now need a dozen people for every one they had. Your news media has nothing other than local stories, because they can't receive stories from reporters.
Given all the old infrastructure we've torn out and replaced with the internet, we're probably looking at backsliding a century's worth in those areas, except we don't have the technology of the 1900s to use until we can replace it with something better. And good luck with that, because your local library has probably replaced their Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikipedia. That means we keep sliding. This is a no-kidding recipe for complete societal collapse.
I would probably go talk to my friends about how much not having internet sucks.
1679542 Of course if the internet went down the entire country would die.
1679729
I'm going to assume that's sarcasm.
It's not "the internet", but rather all the stuff that's connected to the internet. Think of it like "the electricity" or "the water". "Oh dear, my lights don't work", right? Yeah, for the first few hours. Then everything in your fridge and freezer goes bad. And in the supermarket. The hospital's generator runs out of fuel, and the operating rooms shut down. Now expand that from just your town to the whole country.
As just one example, back before the internet, store owners also had warehouses. On a regular basis, delivery trucks would take goods from the warehouse to the store. When the warehouse started to run low, they arranged a delivery from the supplier.
Now, stores use "just in time" delivery directly from the supplier to the store. This is carefully planned out and automated over the internet. Without the internet, the entire delivery system for every major store in North America completely fails. They're not set up to take orders by mail or telephone, and they can't send out directions to their drivers without the internet. Within a matter of days, your local supermarket will run out of food. The entire supply chain will have to be re-built from scratch, and while every other industry is simultaneously affected. So yeah, people would die.
Or take banking, instead. Before the internet, you couldn't take money out of a bank location you didn't have an account at, unless you set up a "wire transfer" using the phone or telegraph. ATMs and debit cards didn't exist. Now, the entire banking industry, along with the stock markets, depend entirely on the internet. Ever been in a store when the debit and credit machines go down? Imagine that everywhere, except you can't even go to the bank and withdraw cash. The whole system grinds to a halt. The global economy implodes overnight.
1679796 You're talking to me like I'm stupid. I know very well what would happen. Absolutely everything utilizes the web. It would put the entire world back into the stone age, only with cars and houses and everybody panicking because they can't play their Iphone games anymore. People would be fucked all around until they learned how to not depend on gadgets again. In America's case; all the dumb fuckers would kill all the rational people and that would be that.
I took Ravens' definition of 'internet' to be primarily social-based things such as anything you can access with a computer and browser. I looked at it from a simplistic standpoint because I didn't want to be the guy that got technical and explained the entire degradation of world order an economy.
1680072
Ah, apologies then. Nuances of tone don't come across well in text without out-of-band assistance.
... Go back to reading books?