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What If They Turned Off the Internet?
theodp writes "It's the not-too-distant future. They've turned off the Internet. After the riots have settled down and the withdrawal symptoms have faded, how would you cope? Cracked.com asked readers to Photoshop what life would be like in an Internet-addicted society learning to cope without it. Better hope it never happens, or be prepared for dry-erase message boards, carrier pigeon-powered Twitter, block-long lines to get into adult video shops, door-to-door Rickrolling, Lolcats on Broadway, and $199.99 CDs."
If it gets Idle off /., it wouldn't be a complete loss.
What is this, digg? Cracked joke pages don't belong here.
True, life was just fine before the Internet. Now, though, the Internet has infiltrated almost every aspect of our daily lives. Given that, if the Internet were to be shut off permanently, we would have to do without a lot of conveniences we've become accustomed to, which would make it a lot more painful than life before the Internet was. To throw in the requisite car analogy, life without cars probably wasn't all that horrible (at least, not due to the lack of cars specifically). However, now that cars are a major part of the fabric of our everyday lives, it would be substantially more painful to give them up completely now.
Add to all this the fact that a large percentage of us would have to find something else to do for a living, and many of us would have to emerge from the basements we've been in since 1987, and you have a real problem.
Because it would never happen.
Why I'm so sure? Because there is no "they" in the Internet. Everybody can connect to his neighbors' wifi router, if needed. And the moment when no company on the planet is interested in using the now unused wires and cell phone towers, to sell services to customers, is the moment when humanity itself ceases to exist.
I don't see a point in imagining not having the Internet. And I know how it would look anyway, since I already lived when there was no such thing. I even know how life in a monastery without electricity is. Or in a hut in the middle of nowhere.
Now, that we know of the concept of a Internet, as long as there is a critical mass of humans exists, there will be such a network. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I was only picking on GP's mistake of calling ammunition "bullets" - this mistake is quite popular. Bullets alone won't do you much good, unless you are familiar with the reloading press.
But with regard to leftover ammo and guns in case of major troubles ... ok, let's assume some people decide to abandon their homes and go ... where? Ok, let's assume they are gone. You are standing on the road, and there are presumably empty houses around you. You can break into some, but if the house is not empty you will be very dead. If you are lucky and the house is empty you can start searching. The house is large, and ammo is usually stored hidden and locked. You can spend a lot of time searching for something that may not even exist. Your time is not free because in a conflict zone there is always something hunting you, be it zombies or just gangs. So here you are, in an abandoned house, with little ammo of your own, holding a position that the owner himself saw as indefensible. Instead of moving on you are searching for ammo and guns; meanwhile zombies come closer and closer...
Also about the weight. I think I have about 2,000 rounds of 17HMR made by Hornady, all ready for the spring squirrels. The box is not that heavy, maybe 14 lbs. If you escape in a car you can load ten times as much. If you escape on foot, I'd probably dump some food items and take all the ammo because food is easier to find; you can always shoot a bird if you have to, but you can't defend yourself with a can of beans.
All it would take is one really bad Windows Update to turn off 70% of the Internet.
Question for Homeland Security: who has access to the master signing key for Windows Update? Who does the background check on those people?
More like trade DVDs, books etc. with your friends. Don't copy them, just engage in some barter for the physical DVDs/books etc. The legal way to tell the RIAA + MPAA and such to frak themselves.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I started out on a BBS in the mid 80s and later BBS networks like fido and WWIV. Back then I paid for longdistance. The main allure of the internet, that came along later, was being able to access a computer outside of my area code without a per minute fee or paying the BBS's longdistance fee. Bandwidth of the internet then wasn't all that special. Pirate BBSs were common. Porn BBSs were common. "EMail" and messageboards and turn based games on BBSs were common. Of course you had CompuServe as well. All of that folded their tents when almost anyone could set up a server to the internet and talk to anyone else on the internet.
I guess if I woke up tomorrow and there was just no internet anymore, I'd set up a BBS network. I'd expect it to be really busy since long distance is so cheap and data is so bloated now. But it's really a ridiculous question unless it's specified what it is that no longer works. No DNS? That just requires ip addresses. Cumbersome, but doable. Go much further than that and nothing works, including phones and BBSs. In which case my basic engineering, practical fabrication, and hunting/looting skills should become useful.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
Which side of the fence?
I was in Cuba (Gitmo) in the 80s. We went to the beach, we played D&D, we skated, we did all kinds of things. You read a lot. Hell, we didn't even have cable or a McDonalds until 1986 or so. You really have to make do with what you have.
It's amazing what you learn to live with and what you find to entertain yourself with.
"Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet." General James Mattis
I remember the good old days before the internet was everywhere. We had ascii and RIP graphics, door games, and FIDOnet.
If anyone needs me I'll be leveling my L.O.R.D. character.
It wouldn't be too bad. Bicycles work as well now as they ever did. Without cars filling up the streets, we'd have plenty of open road to bike to/from work, stores, etc.
Supply and demand would kick in, and in short order, instead of mega shopping malls on the edge of cities, there would be a large number of smaller stores throughout each town. Instead of people driving 60 miles each day to work, they'd stick to slightly lower-paying jobs in-town, or else move to the city where they work... Horror of horrors, I know.
Of course, these analogies all fall down because you can't single out an object, and remove it. The technology behind it will just be developed into slightly different imitators (bicycles with gas engines, or computer WANs simply being interconnected in a more ad-hoc way). You really can't get rid of device X without getting rid of the decades of technological development that created it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The internet is really a collection of communications protocols. So what is meant by 'turning off the internet'?
...hypotheticall would we shut down any direct computer to computer communication? This would have to include modem communication, as this could be used for internet-like networking.
The reality is all the worlds communication infrastructure could be considered "Teh Internets" with the exception of traditional systems, the postal service, telegraph, analog and early digital phone exchanges. At a fundatmental level these systems are information networks just the same.
So where do you draw the line?
Are we cutting out HTTP + HTML and friends?
Is this extending to international internet routing, BGP, etc etc?
International links only? WAN? LAN? or...
What no one has pointed out is how the postal service and telephony systems would collapse without internet. Since these services depend on on infromation services and connectivity to transport data, manage inventory, and other aspects of such operations.
So not only is switching off the internet possible, but we wouldn't have the faintest idea where to begin.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Right up until someone decides that "misbehaving" includes "submitting content of which we do not approve." The last thing we need is for the internet to give some powermonger the tools to easily silence dissent.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Actually more trouble would come from the fact that many banks are not any more set up to handle all customers mailing payment orders or standing in line in the bank.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.