I need internet to get to our school system’s database, which I have to use to do many, many things in my day-to-day work. Our entire system went down for three or four days last year, and it was chaotic enough dealing with that.
More catastrophic for my family and the families of the other partners in the business would be the effect on Mr. Legend’s company. He has to have internet access in order to work from here with the people in California. I suppose if it went down long-term, he’d have to commute to California or maybe we’d have to move there. Assuming, that is, that he could get things done at all without it.
I do all my banking online, I download library books for my Kindle, I keep in touch with family members online. I’d miss all that, but I could get around it. The effect on our livelihood would be devastating.
I voted OMG don’t even suggest it. More and more courts, including all federal courts in my state, have gone to electronic filing, even state courts mostly have online dockets, and I don’t even want to think about trying to do legal research with books. I was likely one of the last law school classes even taught that method. None of the small firm/solo lawyers I know even subscribe to the reporters anymore, and haven’t updated the volumes they do have in years. Most don’t bother buying the state code books anymore, either. Everything is online.
I love the internet. I’d suddenly have to spend more time outside without it so that could kill me! It has barely effected the way I do business however. People losing internet might even be a net boon for me.
At first I’d miss it so much and not know what to do with myself, but I’d probably eventually learn to cope without it and then not want to use it anymore once it returned. For me and many, the internet is like a spell put on us that keeps us in chains… it’s like an addiction you don’t know how to be free from.
I don’t miss it at all when I take a genuine vacation ( hmmm…haven’t done that in awhile ). Don’t own a laptop, my phone is dumb and I dislike my tablet’s internet ergonomics, so I’m pretty much internet-free during those times.
But several months of non-vacation time? I’d probably miss it a lot. It’s not critical to my job ( though an intranet connection of some sort is ) and I could put up with the inconvenience and loss of cheap entertainment. But it would be pretty annoying.
I’ve actually been thorugh this. Last time I moved house, due to basic incompetence it took the cable company more than two months to link up my new phone and internet connection.
I missed the 'net like crazy for a couple of weeks. After that it stopped feeling very important; I just did other things instead. (Caught up on a lot of reading, for one thing.)
I wish I could take a temporary break from the internet. It’d be easy to do if I didn’t think I was missing so much online going on around me in the meantime.
It’s amazing how dependent we’ve become to the internet. I recall in 92 that it was mostly still ftp sites. I used gopher, veronica and archie to search for files. Telnet was my main protocol back then. I got Mosaic on my Vax Station in 94 and thats when I started seeing formatted web pages.
E commerce like Amazon and Ebay emerged maybe 96 or 97? E Banking about the same time. So in about 17 to 20 years everyones lives became very dependent on this technology. For someone over 45, thats a really small part of our lives. We were in our thirties when the internet really took off.
Reading the thread, I’m amazed at how many people’s jobs depend on the internet.
I work in a library, so my job would be difficult but not impossible. I am assuming networks like the library’s would still work, no? If not, we would be back to paper cards with metal tags in them and KACHUNK machines. Anyone remember those?
I could go without internet at home, though, after initial withdrawal discomfort for a week or two. I’ve got plenty to do. If texting still works, I’ll keep in touch with my peeps just fine.
Due to a server error, Google was unavailable in Australia for about 15 minutes a month or so ago. Worst 15 minutes of my life! The whole internet, gone? -dies-
I’m 54. My husband will move heaven and earth to make sure that I have a good, fast, reliable internet connection, and he’s willing to spend quite a bit of money to ensure that I do. Because apparently if I DON’T have a great internet connection, living with me is like living with a group of touchy time bombs.
Occasionally I have to travel, and have to rely on my husband’s (old, slow) laptop, or on the hotel’s computer and wifi. It’s not pretty. Really and truly.
Yes, I’ve got books to read (a lot of them on my nook, now) and craft projects to do, and I suppose that I could even do a bit of housework if I was completely at loose ends. But I need the internet. I was just born too soon.
Outside of work, I’d be inconvenienced, but would find plenty to do.
At work, I’d be massively hindered - my job (strategic IT support, but not mainly web-based systems) wouldn’t exactly go away, but it would be hard to do - you pretty much can’t troubleshoot, upgrade, plan etc without internet access to communities and supplier knowledgebases, etc.
Anything within the same building or campus might but city wide library networks are very likely internet based. Even security requirements that call for dedicated links are provided virtually for anything that’s far enough away you can’t see it. The scenarios in the OP’s linked article are all different however and while they would take down sections of the internet none of them would crash the entire network. Local communications would likely continue working in most of those scenarios unless you were the locale that was impacted.
For me I’d be either out of work or working on non internet solutions for our network dependant national retail outlets. We also have IP phones so communications would be problematic as well.
From a personal standpoint there are a lot of people I would lose touch with over that period and I would have to go out more to shop but it wouldn’t remove anything but my ability to work remotely, entertain myself and simply some tasks. Nothing critical to my life or well being depends on the internet. I would miss it but I wouldn’t die. I would be damned annoyed that I’d be back to communting every day and so would the entire city so traffic would suck even more
36 years old. I also grew up without Internet. Doesn’t mean I want it to go away.
Job is all on Citrix, remotely accessed. Actually they imaged all of our computers and we have just a little better than dumb terminals left over.
Do a lot of ordering through Amazon, online retailers
Book all my vacations, do all my research through online
Do research for damn near everything online
Hell, I’m going back to school in the fall and my studies will be 85% online. Guess that’s fucked. Without a job I won’t be able to pay for it, anyway.
I don’t even want to think about it anymore.
