How does it sound to imagine a world without the internet? Let me make a few guesses: Dystopian? Medieval? Impossible? Well, for me imagining scenarios is always so interesting. That is why today I will try to collect other people’s opinions and share my ideas on “imagining the world without the internet.”
I do not doubt how significant the role of the internet in your daily life is. It is so important in my daily activities as well. To give an example from my own life, from the moment I wake up, social media, maps, to see when the next bus is coming, cooking recipes, communication with my family, my work and many other things happen online.
The internet detox, which I have been thinking about for a long time and wanted to do, made me think about it, and as a result, I wonder how the whole world would go through detox without the internet.
The position and benefits of the internet – around the world
The history of the internet, which started with the development of computers in the 1950s, has experienced great developments especially in the last 20 years and has taken its current form. Think about the activities you do during the day: how many of these do you need the internet for? How often do you use the internet to search for something? How much of your daily communication do you do over the internet?
Now, I want to share some insights to be able to understand the importance of the internet:
Internet users worldwide are 59.5% of the world’s population. That makes 4.66 billion users. All over the world, people spend around 7 hours on the internet daily. People around the world spend 2 hours and 25 minutes on social media, listen to music for 1 hour 31 minutes, listen to radio/podcasts for 1 hour and play video games for 54 minutes.
92.6% of internet access is done with phones. There are 4.2 billion active social media users in the world. In the last 5 years, the number of social media users in the world has almost doubled. The 25-34 age group is the age group that uses social media the most.
Trying to escape from the existence of the internet seems almost impossible, considering the data we have just mentioned. However, being aware of this and still unable to escape from this issue, it’s time for the topic I started with: what kind of a world we will face without the internet for 3 days.
If the internet goes down all over the world, you will not have access to your money except for the cash available in your pocket. You cannot use your card in ATMs or stores. This made me think of how much we use credit cards and internet banking nowadays.
In supply chains, stock and shipment status information will become inaccessible almost everywhere, so the movement of these goods stops or slows down to a near standstill.
The healthcare system is also one of the things that can be affected in a bad way. Especially in big cities, making appointments and tracking the process of the patients might be more challenging. As a result, it becomes impossible or prolonged for you to buy medicines and access treatment even if you are diagnosed.
Public transport is largely sustainable. Especially in train networks, even if it is not 100%, transportation is possible with secondary systems with basic capacity. On the other hand, road transport alone becomes very dangerous due to difficulty accessing fuel and traffic management systems problems.
Let’s try to imagine electricity, water and gas infrastructures. As a result of my research on this subject, I saw that these systems could continue with backup systems and advanced infrastructure works. But since such a scenario has not occurred yet, we do not know the truth of the matter.
In addition to all these, human psychology will, of course, be affected at the end of 72 hours of internet deprivation. I guess we won’t know if it’s positive or negative until we live it…
Let’s imagine that after 72 hours, the internet is accessible again. A period of at least one month will be needed for all these systems to perform their functions again.
The end of our dream: Is it possible for the internet to go down completely?
The internet is not a physical thing. It is a collection of material items and is constantly changing. Any moment on the internet is not the same as another moment. Of course, it is possible that some parts of the internet are offline; this happens all the time. Whether it’s a specific server that crashes and needs to be restarted or replaced, or a cable under the ocean is damaged. There are things that will disrupt internet service, but these are isolated and temporary issues.
The work of the people who helped design and develop the internet has made it an extraordinarily stable tool. Even if some parts of the internet experience technical problems, the rest will continue functioning as usual.
Thank you for reading my collection of ideas about this topic. See you in another “Imagine the World!”
