What Would We Do Without The Internet?

It’s been a worrisome week for the Internet. Last Sunday, Google went down for five minutes and 40% of internet traffic upped and disappeared. A day later, the same thing happened to Amazon. In the forty minutes it took their tech staff to get the website up and running again, the company had lost $40 million dollars. It seems that the future of technology isn't as rosy as we're led to believe.

Al Gore warned us against relying on machines in America's foremost educational cartoon: Futurama. He said that we could only stretch the goodwill of the Internet so far before it turned on us. Instead of listening to him, we torrented David Hasselhoff's entire discography and frivolously bought a Starship Enterprise pizza cutter. When the robots decide they've had enough and pull the plug we'll regret all the data we've wasted.

What would happen if we had to safeguard our future internet usage? First of all, governments would have to implement wartime-esque rationing of the Internet. To prevent downloads only one PC with a low-space hard drive would be allowed per household.  Images and video hoarding would be frowned upon.  Only 2 funny animal videos would be allowed to be watched a week.  Any unnecessary Google searching would result in a fine.  It would be difficult, but only these and other draconian measures would ensure that future generations can access Wikipedia for school projects.

Another solution would be to stop using the Internet altogether. It might sound crazy but people are sure to embrace a non-Internet life when they recognise the benefits. Perhaps without the Internet, families would once again gather together in their homes to entertain themselves. Away from their many internet-connected machines, they’d return to more traditional family activities, like Guitar Hero parties. Bloggers would give up their hermit existence, return to society and reinvigorate the world’s depressed and recessive economies. Church attendance would sky rocket as people who just couldn’t figure out what they were supposed to do on Sundays would flock to services. The world would turn into a Star Trek-esque utopia.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to think that either scenario could happen. It’s far more likely that the Internet will go awry.  Instead of a utopia, the world will become bleaker and cyberpunk-esque. World governments will collapse due to the need for blackmarket bandwith. Corporations with cybernetic street urchin minions will rise to power and, within twenty years, dealers will be able to get you brief Internet access to look up who voiced Count Duckula. Today’s drugs will disappear due to the more expensive high of watching animals do funny things.  On the plus side, the trenchcoat and sunglasses businesses will have more money than they know what to do with.

We should start limiting our internet usage today, just in case.  Only use the Internet for the most necessary things: IMDB, gamefaqs and this blog.

Featured Image: FOX