So one thing I always come back to in my head is 'The Internet', and I can't help but think sometimes that humanity would benefit from the internet being purged from existence. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like modern society is ridiculously obsessed with the internet, or at the very least, gossip and social mediums. There's so many people you meet today that act like they'd commit suicide if they didn't have their Facebook, or Twitter, or whatever modern media is currently the 'in' scene. While there is also a vast treasure trove of valuable information, there's books and magazines that those can be recorded to. But how do you feel about the idea of 'No more internet' to the end of humanity? Would the lack of internet (Yes this extends to laptop, wifi, or anything else that extends to internet use) drive you insane?

I would be able to live perfectly fine, might be out of a job but my field would still be open to me.
I still know how to play board games, ride a bike, swim, climb, run, dig and a punch of other natural activites so yeah I'd be content and happy without the internet. A few friends might be lost metaphorically and literally but what the hell adapt or die, right.
I actually prefer singleplayer/splitscreen games to online multiplayer so even my gaming style would survive.

Without wikipedia, I'm basically a moron


Still charming, just mentally challenged is all


That goes double for my spell checker




also I would miss you guys a lot

But...what about those uh....En....cy...clopedia thingies all them old people ramble about? (I'd be a moron without wikis too >_> )

Alas, I am more the latter than the former.

I too would miss a place to rant and rave about things and just be a bitter person in general the pleasant and charming conversation of this board.

I'm basically an all-not-knowing manchild God without the Wikis.
I pick the first one, the latter can shoo, for myself.
This placed helped my grammer somewhat, I actually use comas and. FULL STOPS!
If it isn't my favourite drinking buddy!

Without the internet, the world would be a much slower place......and that's not a good thing......could you imaging how slow it would take for a internation business deal if everything had to be done through post and in person.....thats bad for economies.

The internet has also allowed anyone from anywhere to learn about the rest of the world (provided they can get access)......and of late...organise against corrupt governemnts.

Speeding up process can also be a bad thing...Iran would know about nuclear weapons if not for Western information being all over the internet and easily accessible. Hacker would never exist and your bank details would only be at threat from robbers who heist banks.

I also would be unable to purchase a lot of things since internet shopping wouldn't exsist. yes for every positive there are cons.....but in the case of the internet, the positives long outweigh the cons.

You'd still have phones and telex machines.

Yeah true, though most of the pro's are just speed. Like the stuff you buy over sea's you'd still be able to get via mail and shipping, obviously you'd have to know a foreigner to know what you want exists and have them take your order back with them then bring it back. Effort. It depends of the seriousness of those cons: If the internet bring me x new friends, a place to talk to them and allows me to buy foreign goods, is that worth the dangers it brings to others in the form of organised crime, terrorist advertisments, child <> demands and other not very nice goings on?

No more internet? Can you even imagine the horror? All at once, the world's collected troll population will emerge from their basemants. Blinded by the daylight, the brainless, drooling hordes will stagger through the streets... Forget mysterious diseases and reanimated corpses; this is how the real zombie apocalypse will start, mark my words.


I could say a few things about the political consequences in various parts of the world, but that's a discussion for another forum. Personally, I can live without most of it - even Wikipedia. The idea of no more Youtube comments isn't entirely unappealing. I'd miss these forums, though.

Without the Internet I would be insanely bored at work and I would have to go behind the black curtain once again. Other than that, meh

No. I'd be fine, so long as I have other ways to access information. Like libraries.

I am stockpiling printing presses anticipating the occasion....really old ones that don't even need electricity. (not kidding but stockpiling might be a stretch)

And empty soup cans and really large balls of string (Ok..kidding)

The horror! THE HORROR!

Well, I'd be bummed about going to school for something that is completely useless

Since today the emphasis is more on being able to find the information you need rather than actually storing the information you're going to need.. It'd take me a lot longer to get anything done.

That said, with the internet gone, maybe I'd actually get something done in the first place.

I dropped out with an 8th grade education, yet maintain excellent grades in college and scored the highest on the GED in my town, possibly in the state (my state being Rhode Island ). Without the internet, none of this would have been possible, and I'd likely be in jail right now. All I can ask is, benefit whom?

When information and thoughts are no longer so freely passed around things will get much worse.

Far too much available information that is valuable would be lost.
I have learned and grown as a person quite a bit thanks to the internet, and the information contained within it.

I could survive without internet, and likely power too. I have enough land to farm some crops, I know how to hunt and hopefully I will be making my own ammo in the next couple of years (just need casings and powder).
It won;'t be fun, but I could make it.

World's largest, mostly free, database? Yeah I think we'd be worse off without it.

Although, I'd probably be a more sociable person without. But at the same time, I developed most of my current relationships with friends through to internet.

The free exchange of digital information has changed our world so much - for the better, I might add - that I don't think its minor drawbacks are any detriment. "There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere" - how true this is of the internet! The web is the greatest playingfield-leveller since the invention of democracy. I think our civilisation is merely going through an adjustment period, just like when any new piece of revolutionary technology emerges, and it's a process that can easily take centuries to complete. So for now we'll see people with the social acuity of a pea without their precious new gizmos, but in time the absence of that tech will become as unthinkable as being without trousers, and eventually new social ethics will evolve around it. It won't be our generation, since we still vaguely recall what the world was like before the internet (although, ironically, we may need to Google it) and maybe even the next generation will be too soon, but 3 or 4 generations from now the internet will be in everything, you'll pay for everything through wireless tablet transfers or something, and that'll be that - a fully digital world.

Libraries are free, unless you return the book late.

I disagree entirely, Colonel. As our technology advances and grows, we as a people grow around it and naturally begin to rely on it. The Internet plays such a crucial role in everyone's life and so much of our technology and services, just imagine the implications if it disappeared. If it was slowly shut down over time, I'm sure we would survive, albeit reluctantly.

I've never understood people saying that we should go backwards on technology for any reason. Going forward is the only way to grow, and growing is the only way to thrive.

Explain?
As far as I'm aware growing children nowadays are becoming dafter, they fail to do simple maths without the aid of calculators, as they begin to rely on more advanced technologies at much younger ages, I see a child everyday on my bus, no more than 2yrs old, using a mobile phone and then throws a fit when the mother takes it back...now I'm picture that kid at the age of 5 using Facebook, imagine the spoiled brat the will be in coming years.....now we see the child around 10 with access to wikipedia telling me I am wrong on a subject I study just because they read an anonymously entered paragraph 2 mins prior.
It's not going foward technolgically that makes us thrive, it's the will and determination to improve one's self. Before the technology man was thriving, becoming smarter and mentally growing. During this era of technology people have became dumbed down to the point there is more character in a ball of playdoh, it has made people lazy and unwilling to go out and learn stuff themselves. Like myself, I know plenty of Australia just from 20 mins on Google, and some Japanese by Googling phrases (Accuracy debatably).
I think this last part went away but hey gotta empty my mind somewhere.

The answer is: The Intranet (ala North Korea).