io9 
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San Francisco, 7:22 AM
Sat Dec 5
24 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/19/09
Well, that's a bit much, isn't it?
These people depended entirely upon the Machine for their existence. The internet is mostly an entertainment medium, and a convenience.
My life would go on pretty much normally w/o the internet, I'd just use the TV, telephone, and mail more often.
-Kle.
11/19/09
It'd tear the crap out of all financial markets, for one thing. Most trading nowadays is super-computerized; something like 97 percent of NYSE trading is on electronic networks (1). The implosion of all that would make the recent financial problems look tiny. And that's just one facet of the problem.
Think of all the things that would really go of the rails if the internet just stopped. All electronic commerce, of course (goodbye Amazon), but all kinds of other things, too. The DMV or your insurance company wouldn't be able to access any of your records; the police wouldn't be able to use any criminal databases. Any company that uses electronic inventory tracking or management (ie, every large company, nowadays) would have operations grind to a halt, at least for a while. Half the time HR, accounting, etc is all online now too. And, anecdotally, every federal office I've ever seen runs on email. Internet failure would be a clusterf*ck of epic proportions.
And that's even assuming all the peripheral systems like phone systems and wire transfers and credit card transactions and ATMs were unaffected (and how many people do you know that don't carry cash anymore?)
Now, I'm not saying it would be the end of civilization as we know it. We'd deal. But a sudden, prolonged internet shutdown would be a massive disaster, and unless you live totally and entirely off the grid, it would probably disrupt your life in all kinds of ways.
1) [arstechnica.com]
11/20/09
Most of the things you describe wouldn't affect me directly, and many of them I would see as positive.
For example, everyone loves Amazon, and everyone hates WalMart. However, they are exactly the same thing. The death of Amazon would please me greatly. The world financial system shutting down? That's what should have happened last year - at least then the people who caused it would be suffering along with the rest of us, instead of raking in bonuses.
The world ran just fine before the internet, it's loss would be a speedbump.
-Kle.
11/20/09
The world ran just fine before the automobile, too, yet if they all stopped working suddenly, it be a colossal disaster affecting pretty much everyone- even those without cars. To borrow your metaphor, hitting a speedbump is fine if you see it coming and brake accordingly. But a sudden internet failure would be hitting a speedbump at 90 mph with your foot on the gas.
My main point, above, was that a lot of the infrastructure underpinning every aspect of modern society has moved online, even the core things like managing supply lines for food and basic services. And yeah, we could probably move it all back off again if we planned it out and had warning. But if everything ground to a halt unexpectedly, I maintain it would just shut down huge swathes of every industrialized society. Which would a) cause a lot of damage to society as we know it, and b) worsen a lot of people's lives individually.
[Aside: I picked Amazon simply because it's a big, recognizable name. The same, however, applies to the mom-and-pop couple selling hand-knitted baby clothes online, or the small engineering firm that's a collaboration between ten people on three continents. And ecommerce is ALL peripheral damage; the real harm would come from the fact that every other company uses the internet a lot these days too.]
Now, I don't know your circumstances; it's possible that you live on a farm and grow your own food and really wouldn't see any change in your life except using mail and TV any more, and economic collapse is something that happens to other people. If so, good for you. Most people in the industrialized world aren't so lucky.
But your last post above seems to suggest "it's not a disaster if everyone's life is ruined equally". I don't buy that. Or the idea that it's not a disaster because some good comes of it. ("Hey, a plague killed everyone over age 40, but guess what? No more Alzheimers!") In seriousness, it's possible a world without the internet might be a better place. That doesn't mean that suddenly stopping it right now wouldn't cause a colossal clusterf*ck.
11/21/09
I don't think the world would be a better place w/o the internet.
I do think that people use the internet for all sorts of amazingly imprudent purposes - and I think that if people suffer for making decisions a child could have told them were stupid, just because they are convenient, it's funny.
The world financial system (for example) shouldn't rely upon the internet, because the internet is inherently unreliable and unsecure. People shouldn't really manage their money electronically, because of the above reason, and the simple fact that banks are out to screw them.
Here, this xkcd should explain my position pretty clearly:
[xkcd.com]
Most things that are important to the function of society, that rely on the internet, should not.
-Kle.
11/21/09
It is funny when someone's obviously boneheaded decisions catch up with them. It's much less funny when you get hit by collateral damage from their bad choices.
11/22/09
"It is funny when someone's obviously boneheaded decisions catch up with them. It's much less funny when you get hit by collateral damage from their bad choices."
Yeah, but I'm willing to take the hit, if it wakes people up. Same with the current economic troubles; I don't think there should have been a bailout.
People rarely learn w/o pain.
-Kle.
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
'i am make science! i tame machine for use for man!'
'you go to far! you am play gods!'
'no, am progress! am automation! machine work for man!'
*machine fails and no one can fix it
'me am play gods!'
11/18/09
i mean it's easy to look around and see complacancey everywhere if that's what you're looking for but it's just as easy to look throughout history and notice that there have always been individuals who would never have been satisfied with such a life. they would never have created a machine capable of these things to use it themselves because they would have been to busy making something newer and cooler. edison didn't invent the light bulb and then bask in the glow of his invention for the rest of his life. no, he went on to experiment with newer and more interesting things in addition to leveraging his invention to his own social, political, and financial advantage. that's what people do, not create things and then think 'well i'm done i'll just do nothing from here on out because i can.'
11/18/09
11/18/09
One of my favorites.
[www.cbs.com]
11/18/09
That being said, I agree that it's cool to read stories like these, especially considering that it was written twenty years before Alan Turing conceived of the "Turing machine" model of computing. I like stories that think outside the box when it comes to the very nature of the computers involved in the failure or revolution . . . it doesn't always have to be electrons and circuits.
11/18/09
11/18/09