I'm 46 so I spent most of my life without it. But life is different now, obviously. The existence of the internet has changed the world as we know it, forever.
If for some unknown reason the internet completely ended tomorrow and there was no online anything, what would happen to society? How would everyone in the world react? Short-term? Long-term?
Wonderful.
1994
Somehow we coped before but I'd need to find my check book.
The stock markets would stop functioning, there would be a run on the banks, there would be no deliveries, no inventories, Amazon and the like would be gone, the Post Office would collapse under the weight of mail and worst of all, there'd be no Flotrack..
I think if the internet ended tomorrow that people would get out and put into action the things they've been communicating about online, i.e. society has crossed a line of no return, which is all good and has served to bring all of society throughout the world much closer together.
Hopefully the tv boob tubes would also be gone, but in any case I think people would pay much less attention to them, and would find more worthwhile endeavors in the real world from now on.
good and bad........ wrote:
1994
Gas was only a dollar, "The Sign" by Ace of Base was all of the radios, Jerry Seinfeld was talking about nothing, and Hakeem Olajuwon was a household name.
The year was 1994.
You don't need the internet to communicate via computer. Just use twisted pair phone lines, dark fiber, and non-internet software.
Over 80% of Fortune 500 companies are dependent on some sort of cloud computing.
Department of State, CIA, FBI, INS, IRS, DHS, TSA and some major police forces couldn't function without the Internet.
Most banks couldn't do business. Hospitals are dependent on the web. Public records are stored on the Internet.
No-one would know where to pick up freight or where to drop it off to. Supermarket shelves would be empty. No-one would be able to get medicine.
Planes would be stuck on the ground. Oil production would stop. Electricity and gas companies would have problems as energy is monitored and traded in real time on the web.
And much more.
good and bad........ wrote:
1994
I'm not asking what it was like before the internet. I was 26 in 1994 - I remember it well. I'm asking what life would be like if it disappeared tomorrow after having lived with it all this time. For you, and the rest of the world.
If the internet disappeared tomorrow, this would be my last post on Letsrun.
Randy Oldman wrote:
Over 80% of Fortune 500 companies are dependent on some sort of cloud computing.
Department of State, CIA, FBI, INS, IRS, DHS, TSA and some major police forces couldn't function without the Internet.
Most banks couldn't do business. Hospitals are dependent on the web. Public records are stored on the Internet.
No-one would know where to pick up freight or where to drop it off to. Supermarket shelves would be empty. No-one would be able to get medicine.
Planes would be stuck on the ground. Oil production would stop. Electricity and gas companies would have problems as energy is monitored and traded in real time on the web.
And much more.
You don't need the internet for any of that. Other technologies did most of that w.o the internet in former days.
That's Great! Keep us updated!
Old Buzzer wrote:
You don't need the internet for any of that. Other technologies did most of that w.o the internet in former days.
You could go back to the old methods, yes, but it would take years to untangle.
I deal with technology at the 25 biggest banks in the world and it would take them months for them to recover their data.
I'm pretty sure phones wouldnot work either since a lot of land lines if not all of them are VoIP now. A lot of cafes would go out of business.
The internet WILL disappear within 300 years. It is all stored on non-durable media. The best currently is gold-based optical discs with a 300 year lifespan.
Sure, much of the data will survive, continuously copied from one server to the next, until civilization collapses. But in 1000 years, there will be no such thing as a contemporary source for what's now online. You can dig up a Mesopotamian city and find 3000 year old clay tablets that say "this is what was going on right now" 3000 years ago. There's plenty of informative stuff carved in stone in Egypt. A lot of medieval stuff is on well-preserved vellum.
How much of the information on the internet is archived on acid-free paper? Painted on walls? Carved into stone? Almost all of it is not. One day it will all be gone, lost to history.
Bad Wigins wrote:
in 1000 years, there will be no such thing as a contemporary source for what's now online.
I'm not worried about that. :)
Bad Wigins wrote:
The internet WILL disappear within 300 years. It is all stored on non-durable media. The best currently is gold-based optical discs with a 300 year lifespan.
Sure, much of the data will survive, continuously copied from one server to the next, until civilization collapses. But in 1000 years, there will be no such thing as a contemporary source for what's now online. You can dig up a Mesopotamian city and find 3000 year old clay tablets that say "this is what was going on right now" 3000 years ago. There's plenty of informative stuff carved in stone in Egypt. A lot of medieval stuff is on well-preserved vellum.
How much of the information on the internet is archived on acid-free paper? Painted on walls? Carved into stone? Almost all of it is not. One day it will all be gone, lost to history.
How do you know that those ancient civilizations didn't lose their electronic records too?
you dont have to use the internet. just hookup other old networks from the past. there are dozens that worked very well ages ago.Randy Oldman wrote:
Old Buzzer wrote:You don't need the internet for any of that. Other technologies did most of that w.o the internet in former days.
You could go back to the old methods, yes, but it would take years to untangle.
I deal with technology at the 25 biggest banks in the world and it would take them months for them to recover their data.
deep thoughtz wrote:
How do you know that those ancient civilizations didn't lose their electronic records too?
If they did, they were smart enough to write the important stuff down on clay and stone, unlike us.
Bad Wigins wrote:
The internet WILL disappear within 300 years. It is all stored on non-durable media. The best currently is gold-based optical discs with a 300 year lifespan.
Sure, much of the data will survive, continuously copied from one server to the next, until civilization collapses. But in 1000 years, there will be no such thing as a contemporary source for what's now online. You can dig up a Mesopotamian city and find 3000 year old clay tablets that say "this is what was going on right now" 3000 years ago. There's plenty of informative stuff carved in stone in Egypt. A lot of medieval stuff is on well-preserved vellum.
How much of the information on the internet is archived on acid-free paper? Painted on walls? Carved into stone? Almost all of it is not. One day it will all be gone, lost to history.
Isn't that rather missing the point? for the most part, we care about current content - not about what was on some web site 300 years ago.
Digital record keeping is a different issue from the effect the internet has on our lives.