Its hard to imagine a world without the internet, I mean where would we be without computers? I can only assume the world would be very different from what it is today, maybe it would even look different (it probably wouldn’t be a bad thing because we wouldn’t know any better, right?). But because humans left that world behind and created a new one, a better one (at least depending on how you look at it) here we are, with technological capabilities unlike any other generations before, we’re the first of our kind and as we advance further, it seems the world will continue to depend on the internet.
Its a known fact that the world runs on software, a lot of people say money runs the world and I agree… and bare I add money is software. How?… well let me ask you this, when was the last time you used physical cash to purchase something, when last did you have a thousand bucks in your wallet (and that is if you still carry a wallet with you). Most of the worlds money isn’t physical cash, its held in Cryptocurrencies and stocks, and that’s not all, the balance showing in your banking app is just a number… a promise that your money is there, held safely for you by a bank of your choice, but banks also don’t hold a lot of cash in vaults nowadays and for the right reasons, one being that it isn’t safe or smart for them to do so. There’s still a lot of cash flowing around though, my point here is that its only a minuscule amount compared to whats held online. Before I move any further, I understand that the internet is a vast network and its near impossible to take it down, it isn’t just dependent on certain computers, but I want to discuss what would happen if something like that were to actually occur somehow.
You and I depend on the internet right now at this moment, I’m writing this on the web, to share with you on the web, so you can read it on the web, now consider this:
Its 00:00 midnight and you’re on twitter, scrolling through tweets as you always do, then the app refuses to load new tweets, so you turn your wifi off-on thinking maybe its a connection hiccup but again, no new tweets, so you log-off and decide to check your email, in your inbox you’re notified that devSpace has posted a new article/blog, so you click the link to read the new blog post but your browser doesn’t load the website, you try reloading but nothing… hhhmmm. You finally give up and go to bed. When you wake up in the morning you check your email, nothing new, your Alexa didn’t wake you up, didn’t read whats on your calendar and is also not giving you updates or daily news. You let that slide and open twitter on your phone but the app doesn’t open, this time you don’t see any tweets at all, just the twitter logo blue screen. Instagram, the same thing, YouTube as well… so you take a shower, eat breakfast and head to work, on your way to work you notice Apple Carplay won’t launch, nor your navigation… about 60% of your car isn’t functioning at this point. On the road there’s more traffic than usual, some road signs aren’t working, you get to work 40 minutes late… oh but there’s no problem because nobody’s working, office servers are down. When you look through the window, everyone’s panicking, you still don’t realize whats happening, you head to the cafeteria for coffee but you can’t pay for it because the whole system is down, so you think of using cash, you head to the nearest ATM but it isn’t working so not only can you not use your credit card, you can’t get cash either. The whole city is going crazy, Train stations are packed, no train is moving, no planes leaving or landing the airport, buses can’t operate because tickets cannot be processed, no uber, no Google Maps (no google at all!), GPS-guided drones are falling from the sky. Planes currently in the sky may also crash, pilots have lost all communication with air-control-facilities, no Airbnb, people can’t check-in or check-out at hotels. No Netflix, no Amazon, no social media, no Spotify, no Transportation, no money is accessible, no texting, no power for those houses with Smart grids, your tesla car and your phone at this point are both useless and this is happening all over the world.
24 hours with no internet would be a disaster, it would probably be one of the biggest events in history. Now I don’t know how something like this could happen, the internet is massive, too big to take down but I do think of all the chaos if it were to go down nonetheless. Most of us wouldn’t be able to work or even get around. Can you imagine google search not being visited by anyone at all? Facebook having 0 active users for a whole 24 hours?
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