More and more people around the world are allowing the forever-developing World Wide Web to make their lives that little bit easier.
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Business, social networking and communication are being advanced in what can only be described as the technological age that we are currently living in.
What would you do, however, if the internet as we know it was completely switched off via a single switch without any warning?
Fortunately, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has stated that there is no such thing as a single “Off” Switch because the world is decentralised and split up into hundreds of countries, there is no central “Off Switch”.
The only way it could be switched off is if the governments of the world come together and agree to change it from a decentralised system to a centralised one.
But what if everything were to revert to the way it was prior to 1990?
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A number of businesses relying entirely or partially on the internet would be severely damaged.
Also all people who make a living through pod-casting, hyperlocal news and those selling products on the internet would all consequently lose their jobs.
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With nearly one billion users connecting with friends and family nearby or abroad, the death of Facebook would probably result in the majority of people just not trying to stay in touch any more.
If the internet has made people lazy enough to stay at home to communicate with friends rather than meet in person; will people really put in the extra effort?
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Yep, you would probably regain a large portion of your brain capacity to resolve difficult problems; which would previously have been looked up on the internet.
People would have to rely on books again and reading more has frequently been linked with increased intelligence.
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The newspaper industry has been taking a nosedive in sales ever since the introduction of the internet. With no more “instant” news through websites and social media such as Twitter; the flow of information will travel much slower.
Does this mean more people would revert to reading newspapers for information? As well as more traditional methods of news gathering? More than likely.
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Without the internet, corporations and government will find it much more difficult to publish information to the public – therefore encouraging the emergence of more Quangos.
Quangos are not affiliated to the government, yet rely on government funding and have been heavily criticised for a true lack or transparency.
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As opposed to working from home or teleworking. More and more companies have turned to outsourcing, resulting in a lot of money being saved – but without the internet this could prove difficult.
This will result in many people hopping into their cars and driving to work before…
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Although GPS systems would still operate, but this would prove difficult without a constant flow of internet-based updates.
The loss of Google Maps and other map based technology on the internet would result in people being unable to print off a direct list of instructions and ultimately getting lost. And finally…
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And you wouldn’t be reading this post. Nor would you be reading any of my other posts or the posts of thousands of other bloggers across the globe.
Just a concept I know, our lives in many respects would probably benefit socially and personally but at the same time be ridden with economic decline in a world without internet.
Would the world be better without internet?
Daniel Mayes is a recent Journalism graduate with an upper-second. He has experience working at BBC World Service, Sky News Online and has worked on projects in Europe and Africa.
Moment Matters 
This reminds me of the episode of IT Crowd in which they convince the ‘supervisor’ that the internet is kept in a small black box that gets stored up in Big Ben. Or was it the Tower? Only that was silly and this is a more serious take on the question.
I thought so too. One of my favourite eps.
It was Big Ben. 😀 I LOVED that show. 🙂
I love the IT Crowd. Also, I believe in another episode the idea of Googling Google will destroy the internet. I’ve still yet to try that one…
I remember there used to be all sorts of fun google search tricks to get interesting and amusing results. They were like ‘Easter Eggs’ in the gaming world. I wish I could remember some of them. I wonder if they still work.
Funny, my computer is broken so my online access is limited. I’m miserable! I’ve realized I rely on it quite a bit. So, this is an appropriate post for me today!
It goes to show, you don’t miss it until it’s gone!
Better?! you have to be kidding me…It would be quite horrible really.
But entirely different too. We’re used to it now, it’s much harder to go back.
I’d love it to be shut off for a couple of days just to watch the world go CRAZY!!! (although without internet access, how would I know that?) Nice post!
Kind of reminded me of this article I read earlier in 2012.
College student did away with internet, cell, social media, tv for 90 days just to see what it’d be like. Granted, he lived on a college campus so it made it easier to keep in touch with friends, but I actually was a bit inspired by this and did my own little project. I went 30 days without texting and email (besides work email – otherwise i’d be fired, hehe) and a full 90 days without social media (facebook, twitter, blogging).
Very interesting post you wrote though on how it would be. I mean, people survived without it before, but as you have said, so many things rely on the internet now. It would be kind of cool to have the world turned off from internet for a few days.
I remember before the internet was even here. We read books, we looked at maps to figure out where we where going. If the internet had an off switch that would be some what awesome. People need interaction with other people via face to face time. I agree that people have gone lazy due to internet use also not using their brain to figure out simple situations….everything is looked up now. I think if they did have a shut off switch it should be on the weekends lol you know start Friday back on by Monday. I have a feeling a lot of people would freak out on that. LOL. good post by the way. 🙂
The Internet is like so many other things, it has pros and cons. What if we had no phones of any kind? We might talk face to face with our neighbors more, but how would you notify the fire department that your house was on fire? Same with cars, etc.
Good article.
The World Wide Web, introduced by the U.S. military and marketed as some sort of quirky left-over from the “Cold War”. Actually has much more of the appearance of “Big Brother”? …. see, 1984 by G.Orwell. Consider; that all of the info. on the web, goes through the mainline servers in U.S. With the right software, it is probably easy to filter through the information? So, that all secrets are revealed. You may think? “Oh, it’s just another appointment, on my personal diary”? Yet, so much easier to look over your shoulder, by authority? Or the secret police?
I wonder if we would have been so quick to embrace the web, if we had been told it was compulsory? Instead we paid for our own chains, of online shopping. We already know that it is proposed to limit access and to censor information. The golden years are over, for the web. As authority or others, slowly clamp down on users and the information accessible.
Avaaz – Save the Internet
Do you really know, what your server and connections whisper about, when you’re asleep? “Do androids dream of electric sheep” ~ PK Dick.
If internet was switch off … we would realize that we have family and maybe the all board games would be out again. That would mean that more boys will be out playing football on the villages streets again and I wouldn’t start buying newspapers again, but I would start reading books again for sure – and I wouldn’t get lost, but I would miss the connection with my friends all over the world – because no internet no SKYPE, but I’m sure I will be able to go back to paper and pen again. If internet is off … it’s off and the frustration wouldn’t be that big as it’s now when the connection isn’t the best.
Life would be better, after everything has crashed, a lot of people have died of misery and nothing will work anymore. Then, a new generation will rise from all the mess. A pure generation… basically, if the internet were turned off, it would be the end of this world… 😀
Great post, so true. We’re miserable as soon as we’re disconnected. It’s like being cut off the rest of the world. Sometimes I wonder whether we are more productive, have more fun, or do more “stuff” now that we have so much at our finger tips?
The Internet does have an “off” switch, sorry.
And we already get WAY lost using our GPSs, sorry, again. (Updates are no good unless they are uploaded, right?)
I think it’s important for individuals to turn off their own access to the internet every now and then. I find it very therapeudic, and often very creative, to not have the constant distraction of the internet through my laptop, my tv, my phone. But there’s no point turning off the larger Internet, it’s a part of the world now and humans don’t go backwards when it comes to technological advances. We know the world functioned just fine then, and we’d cope again if the Internet did just disappear, but whether that world is better or worse than the current one is pretty irrelevant.
It’s hard to go backward, huh? Growth is always in a forward direction, for better or for worse. That said, there’s no remedy like unplugging for a spell. Great post – thanks for sharing!
I’m not sure, my computer would be nigh on useless as it would just sit there trying to do a windows, java, adobe and anti-virus update without having a connection. As everyone knows, on a PC, the first thing it does is to connect to a network before you can use it and when updates occur, it can be almost 15 minutes before I can get to use the friggin thing.
With almost all computer products all now requiring constant updates (due to piss-poor QA), the whole computer experience is fast becoming a tedious load of shit.
I would be happy to see the interweb shut down for a few days just to shake people out of their online slumber and learn to interract with each other again instead of becoming corporate zombies.
I personally think that staying in touch with your friend on the other side of the world is counter-productive for both of you. If someone who moved to a new country is clinging to their home friends, then they’re never going to be happy in their new country. I found that when I moved to Holland and Germany.
No-one will ever be like your true friends, but if you have to move abroad, then just take yourself with you, not all your baggage.
My work is almost all online and having instant access to information that used to take days or weeks to acquire is priceless. My job wouldn’t disappear, but it would become a whole lot harder to do. I ought to know, because I’ve been doing the same work for 30 years, well before the internet or even computers played any part in it. I suppose I would be one of the lucky ones if teh interwebs blinked out, because I already know exactly how to function without it. 😀
The internet has been a wonderful boon for keeping in touch with my distant family and friends. Talking on the phone is nice, but we all know that actually seeing someone when communicating is better. Unfortunately, it is also not always possible. I live nowhere near most of my loved ones and face-to-face contact would be nonexistent without Facetime and Skype. For example, last week I got to see my newest great-nice just minutes after she was born! You can’t beat that.
That said, I am online far more than is probably good for me doing silly stuff, too. It’s hard to disconnect when so much of your life, both work and play, is enmeshed in it. I do take breaks and go web-free occasionally, but never for more than a day.
We all have a lot in common when it come to the tech chain , we all carry one , Great Post .
I totally agree. It’s amazing how the things that are (were) supposed to make our lives easier and more efficient become the biggest time sucks in our lives. Reminds me of the “what’s your hurry” episode of The Andy Griffith Show. We are so connected, it is almost impossible to disconnect. And, honestly, I’m as big an offender as anyone. Thanks for the reminder!
The Internet, like Money, is a construct of the human brain, developed over time to meet certain needs which can grow and evolve but cannot exceed the original concept. Money is crashing, the Internet will do the same, and out of the ashes something else will arise. Money is manipulated by those that can, the Internet is similarly affected, both have so many layers of involvement, it’s hard to know what’s what. One thing is certain, the Internet offers no guarantees, it’s a user beware environment, a melting pot of conflicting possibilities, not necessarily a comfortable or pleasant place to be.
The great social media moguls, Facebook, Twitter, Google et al, satisfy their own needs first, by setting the ground rules by which everyone must interact with them, thereby altering the concept of personal privacy, democratic freedoms and a whole host of other interactions. Just humans in action we can say, but what price real freedom, we put great store in that idea, but give it away unthinkingly, being diverted by ploys and toys. Fortunately nothing stays the same, we will have change in the Internet, but whether it will be better for the users remains to be seen. Just a thought.
When “kids” ask me what we did before Google, I tell them we all just sat around and wondered.
Some days, I wish I had my own off switch, where I didn’t have the need to check Facebook so often. But I enjoy being connected to friends and family across the globe, as long as I don’t abuse it. As long as we teach our children to use other methods along with the Internet, we can have the best of both worlds.
THANKS for subscribing to my “pun-ny” photoblog. I hope I can bring you a smile (or at least a groan) everfy weekday.
As someone who works 40 hrs./week from home for a university and whose main hobby is his photoblog, I would be directly impacted if the Internet disappeared. I would really miss the close-knit community of my blogging friends (which is so richly rewarding that I’ve never had any patience with Facebook and deactivated my account).
Because I grew up in the 1950s and 60s–before computers or cell phones–I hope that I am more grounded in the real (as opposed to the virtual) world than many people today and think that I could survive the “retro” culture shock. Mine was the first TV generation, which was a major technological advance, but we could “leave home without it” and not have to be plugged into the information grid at all times.
I can’t say that all of the new technology has made my life simpler.
Back at the dawn of the Internet Age (and somewhat comprehensible home computers), a very smart techie friend laughed when I told him I wanted a computer because it would simplify my life. “No,” he said, “you’ll just do more. And more, and more.”
Great article, food for thought. p.s. I’m a web designer so I’d probably start to farm or something energetic like that 🙂