Tied To The Internet: Could we cope without it?

What if, for reasons unknown, the Internet stop working permanently and for presumably other unknown reasons we couldn't replace it with any other technology? Just think up the number of things that would be immediately useless or incredibly limited. Your cell phone would for the most part be just a phone. I bet even text messaging wouldn't work because I am sure that somewhere embedded in the Short Message Service  (SMS) technology is a reliance on the Internet. So scratch one fancy phone. Your computer, aside from your home network, would literally be a standalone machine. No email, video calls, and definitely not know uploading and downloading. No streaming. You get the idea.

Just the removal of one component of our technological life… A technology that is so integrated into everything now that I'm sure almost no one has a grasp of the full impact of the loss, should it one day disappear. My wheelchair gets updates over the Internet. That right. that in itself, tells us how deeply intertwined this communication technology is. I don't think society could go back, actually when the Internet didn't exist for the average person. It is tempting to think "Oh yes, society could go back" but in all honestly I don't think that thought is realistic. Not only have billions of people grown up with having the Internet and have gotten very used to looking up anything pretty much instantly. (Here we are not considering the quality of the information retrieved, just the fact that it can be retrieved easily.)I can't see business reverting to the old ways of doing things either.

It is however, and intriguing thought experiment. The public Internet began around 1993 when the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) put the underlying software in the public domain, and yes I just use Gemini to look that little factoid up. Any links in this article will be my attempt to corroborate these statements. That small amount of "research" took all of 20 seconds. If however we were back in the year 1989 or so, what what I have to do to find the information?… My first thought would be a trip to the library, and I'm probably only thinking that way because I am 66 years old and can remember using a library. However how would someone in their 20s or 30s if they were put in such a situation find any information. A library may be a relic to them, something they will only heard about from their parents.

Let's say a city like Vancouver British Columbia Canada was put in this situation. Would people begin to rally to the challenge of a pre-Internet existence? To be clear I'm not talking about rolling the entire city back to the year 1989 or so, just removing the Internet itself. This might make a fascinating book or at the very least a video series. That may be even better because the viewer could see the impact of losing a technology so critical to our modern lives. 

False Creek, Vancouver BC Canada, circa 1980s
Click to download the full resolution image.
I, Patrick Clark, hereby place this image in the public domain.

This image was scanned originally from a "slide" (More information on what a Slide projector was can be found here,) which had faded and was corrected with scratch removal, white balancing, and slightly cropped because the original image was not aligned properly in the scanner. This photograph was originally taken by my father and scanned into a computer some years later running Windows XP. Restoration was done in 2026 on Windows 11 using Corel Paint Shop Pro 2023 by Patrick Clark.

 

 

I know the photograph of the Vancouver from the early 1980s is a little out of place with the topic at hand since at the time of the photo very few people knew about the Internet and it was still in extremely early development. But it does underline how much things have changed. I think cell phones were just becoming a thing and again they were expensive. But could the average person living today adapt to a world without Internet? I mean, my watch needs the Internet to set the correct time. There is no way to set it manually. So if the battery ever dies, that's it for the watch.

I have lots of old skills that would enable me to cope, and I do remember researching school essays by hand, raiding the aforementioned library. Or buying a physical book and reading the whole thing. These behaviours are sufficiently ingrained in me that I'm not even sure what skills I am using. Someone born in the 2000's however, would have their skills tied to the Internet. 

 

Socialization

This could be most difficult for people who grew up with the Internet. Without social media and text messaging this could be very difficult to adjust to. It would include discovering the lost art of conversation. And conversation is pretty much a lost art indeed in some segments of the population. Go on public transit and there is very little discussion among the riders. Everybody is glued to their devices. There is a lot of subtlety in being social: 

• You have to pick up on clues in the environment. 
• Know how to keep a conversation engaging. 
• Know when to not engage someone. 

 These are all skills that can take many years, may be months if you're only rusty at the particular task.

From my perspective social media has done more harm than good. It doesn't allow people to naturally mature emotionally because they can write or say something inappropriate online and then just disappear. Do that in real life and you would get an unavoidable reaction from the other person. People I think would have a rough time regaining old skills. Learning how to be in a larger environment and sociable is something humans start to learn when they're young and it is complicated to say the least.

When I was about 15 citizens band radios (CB) were all the rage and I was caught up in it. This is the first time we saw people say things and act inappropriately go off the air. You couldn't do that before. If someone said something rude the other person or a group of people would let them know right then and there that whatever they said was unacceptable.

My CB radio a RadioShack Realistic TRC 30A
Circa 1975

Society needs people with good socialization skills. It is fundamental in getting along. The question is and I know I'm repeating myself - Could people pick these critical skills in adult life? Would there always be something rough around the edges with these people or could they successfully master socialization? My goodness the number of questions in this article so far is rather surprising. From my initial perspective it looks like we really do rely on the Internet in a lot of areas.

On the other hand, there are many positives that being able to communicate rapidly and exchange information brought to us by the Internet that have benefited people. So like life itself there are no absolute good or bad in this discussion. 

I remember my parents absolutely freaking out whenever it was necessary to make a long distance phone call. The price was expensive and charged on a permanent basis. Now with just your browser, you can have a conversation with a friend on the other side of the world and the cost is negligible complete with real-time video. 

Would handwriting come back in to use?

This is a point I really find a mind blowing. The fact that they do not teach handwriting in school. Initially it makes sense since everything is done online. But consider the intimate connection of writing something on paper. It involves a completely different mindset and I wouldn't be surprised if it ultimately affects in a positive way one's cognitive abilities. Not just the mechanics of creating a written sentence, the way you are putting together the thoughts in your mind. It is much more intimate than typing on a keyboard.

I know from personal experience using voice dictation that a person speaks in day-to-day language very differently than they write. Presumably this is due to the fact that you have time to think while constructing a paragraph. Voice dictation on the other hand there is a tendency to write very informally. So if someone always had access to the Internet and did not learn handwriting the challenges they would face would be quite large. After all this was a skill which took time to develop. Never mind reading someone else's handwriting. Both my parents were in healthcare and my father had particularly bad, almost abstract, and writing. Very few people have to deal with this now.

And all that is happened is that one component, albeit a big one, has been removed in this discussion. "The Internet".

I am really interested to hear your comments. When time permits I will also add a YouTube video version of this article.   ... And here it is:

Have a great day!
Patrick 

 PS: This is the 200th post on this blog. I plan to keep on going😀.

 

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