If someone turned the internet off

KIPAX

KIPAX

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KIPAX Lancashire UK
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What what would it mean to you if you woke up tommorow and there was no internet... Apart from not being able to answer this thread I mean :)

I have been on the internet for over 20 years now.. But sometimes I think I need to get a chunk of my life back and cut it off.. however I do need it.. my website makes money for me and I do a lot of networking as part of my business...

So how would no internet effect you? Can you do without TP and facebook,. Twitter.. Chatrooms or whatever takes your fancy?
 
I think I would go absolutely mad.

Ive grown up with the internet and use it for nearly everything in day to day life, and I have spent time living on the internet (ordering food, contact with friends etc.) and never left the house, not one of my healthiest phases :cuckoo:

But I still use the internet for alot, primarily contact and recreational use.

Ive had periods of not having the internet for 2 - 3 weeks at a time, and well, to be blunt, I go a bit funny, agitated and irrational. I also dont get half the things I need to do done.

Please dont take the internet away from me :shake:
 
My life wouldn't be worth living. Which is very disturbing...........

I use the 'net every day, for on thing or t'other - Facebeook, TP, flickr, eBay etc.
 
I might actually get something productive done for a change.

Like the OP. I've been kicking around the net for a long long time now, but I remember the days before the net, which, as one of my younger friends puts it, means I'm old. This, however has the upshot that I'm skilled in the old fashioned methods of contacting people and arranging my social life ;)

If it was switched off, I'd miss it, but I'd survive no problems.
 
Wouldn't put me up nor down,even though I use it very often . Don't get me wrong it would be strange at first ,the rest of the world not having would be a worry though .
 
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There's an episode of South Park where the internet goes on the blink across the whole of America..... Flippin' hilarious!!!

Think I'd drive SWMBO mad, I wouldn't even be able to play my PS3 online :|
 
Wouldn't really matter. I got through the first 40 years of my life without the internet, email and mobile phones, and they're not critical - or even very important - for me.
 
The newspapers would become ever so powerful again, that is a worry.
 
No more free Porn :gag:
 
I don't think it would give me any more available time as all the things I now do online such as email, shopping, logging into work sites etc would have to be done another more time consuming way, e.g. writing and posting letters, going to the shopping centres :gag: and driving around the country visiting more premises.
 
Heaven forbid I would actually need to visit a library again to find things out!
 
i think gramps has hit the nail on the head, its definately sped up some working processes. another example would be this weekend i would have had to be at work while on call rather than sat at home on my sofa.

also, the lack of access to porn :D
 
u8myufo said:
What Library? :lol:
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Yep same here :eek:

The only reason I first got the internet was so the kids could do research online for school, nearest library is 10 miles away and no buse/trains either
sdo interent was cheaper then nightly taxis
 
SteveH40 said:
Heaven forbid I would actually need to visit a library again to find things out!
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A library...... Is that a place where they keep books that are out date before they get on the shelves? ;)
 
BT and the Post Office would start making a profit again.
 
Unfortunately the Internet is now interwoven into the fabric of our lives that, coupled with the increasingly fragile economic situation, it could precipitate a catastrophe far beyond the obvious lack of private/public communication.

Think of all the companies whose profits and employees are now wedded inextricably to the Internet - Social sites such as Facebook, Twitter et al, hosting companies, broadband suppliers, to name but a tiny fraction.

You would see a stock market crash which could bring down all the major economies worldwide.

.
 
For me it woulkd mean having to go to town to shop etc but apart from that i have started to cut my time down on it, I use it for my colage course at the mo but thats only investigation work, i could do it out of books if i needed too.

I also think alot of the PC brigade would slow down. Look at what happend to JC on the one show the other day, would a big deal of been made about it if people could not have emailed, shared it over the internet to each other??? I doubt it!!

I think the internet and mobile phones are one of the best inventions but it casn be sooo damaging aswell.

spike
 
I think the internet gives me more free time rather than less. It means I don't have to waste time doing christmas shopping for starters - a few clicks and it's done. I used to hate the palava of going round the shops looking for things when I'd rather be doing something worthwhile like photography, cycling and a myriad of other activites far more interesting than shopping :eek:
 
Purely from a business point of view, it would certainly be interesting. With no online portfolio, it would mean the need far more local advertising in the print media, organising exhibitions to get my work seen, might even have to dig out my old portfolio cases.
I actually think I'd get more real work done without it, I do waste an awful amount of time just surfin, and on here too :bonk:
 
It would definitely mean I had more time and i would probably be doing a lot more different things with that time.

However, the person I am, the Internet means I can learn things, in amounts no book could ever match.
 
It wouldn't really make too much difference to me - I have a real life with real friends (NOT just people who have ticked tyhe box saying they accept my invitation on FB. Yes, I would miss wasting time on forums but I might actually get some things done here. I don't conduct any business via e-mail or use VOIP telephony, so snail mail and old fashionned telephones would do for my communication needs.
 
Nod said:
It wouldn't really make too much difference to me - I have a real life with real friends .
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Your not suggesting your the only one are you.. or even anyone else doesnt have real friends? i think we all have real lives as well.. just wondering what the effect would be ... lets not kid ourselves the internet is a massive part of most peoples lives..... certainly doesnt mean they havent got real friends.
 
Of course I'm not suggesting that that makes me unique, although many people's addiction to Farcebook and the like is scary!
Yes, the web is a part of my life but not one that I can't live without. In fact, I find it quite liberating when we stay in a town with very limited free Wi-Fi when we're on holiday.
 
Nod said:
Of course I'm not suggesting that that makes me unique, although many people's addiction to Farcebook and the like is scary!
Yes, the web is a part of my life but not one that I can't live without. In fact, I find it quite liberating when we stay in a town with very limited free Wi-Fi when we're on holiday.
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sorry its just that when a group of people have somethign in common and one announces "I ahve got a life".. its usualy means they are saying the rest havent..

first time i went on holiday abroad (while on internet) i memorised my webmail password as key points on the keyboard..ie a shape... i was amazed to find out not all the world used qwerty keyboard layout :)
 
Indeed, really does highlight on how we take the 'net for so granted these days as it become a common household item such as the TV, the fridge, hoover, etc.

Have to admit that I'd be totally lost without it if it suddenly went on the blink, especially when I do think on how the whole thing relies on electricity to keep it going.

Now I'm going to make myself a strong and sweet cup of tea to calm my nerves down. :'( :D
 
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it's evident on those days when i come into the office and the broadband connection isn't working. I'm the one who fixes it / investigates what's gone wrong.. while my business partner paces round the office like the whole world is about to end. Comical, but it emphasises how much we rely on it.
 
Seeing I've been online since before there was the internet (I had Prestel in 1982) I'd be a little lost but have a LOT more free time.

Darn sure I could cope more than the youngster of today :)
 
KIPAX said:
What what would it mean to you if you woke up tommorow and there was no internet... Apart from not being able to answer this thread I mean :)
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No job. No income. No house....

I sent my first email in 1988, before there was a WWW :eek:
 
I was on BBS systems and joined the internet in the first yr of the www ..I think the internet as we know it is about 10 yrs older than the www.. a lot more from its concept but as we know it..

I went online wiht an atari st.. half a meg internal memory.. no hard drive.. used telnet
 
Nod said:
It wouldn't really make too much difference to me - I have a real life with real friends (NOT just people who have ticked tyhe box saying they accept my invitation on FB. Yes, I would miss wasting time on forums but I might actually get some things done here. I don't conduct any business via e-mail or use VOIP telephony, so snail mail and old fashionned telephones would do for my communication needs.
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The telephone network is packet switched now, not circuit switched. So I'm afraid you would lose telephones as well if IP broke. Snail mail only, but the Royal mail probably co-ordinates a load of stuff between depots electronically, so that would probably suffer massive failures as well, particularly as co-ordination of getting fuel to petrol stations would fail with no electronic communications.

Don't forget that your bank wouldn't be able to find out how much money you have in your account, as there would be no way to communicate with the server where that information was stored, so cashpoints would stop working, direct debits would stop working, standing orders would stop working etc.

I think you might be more affected than you expect.
 
KIPAX said:
I was on BBS systems and joined the internet in the first yr of the www ..I think the internet as we know it is about 10 yrs older than the www.. a lot more from its concept but as we know it..

I went online wiht an atari st.. half a meg internal memory.. no hard drive.. used telnet
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My parents wouldn't let me have a modem on my BBC Micro due to concerns about the phone bill, so I didn't get online until I started university. Never looked back since then, got my dialup account at home in 1994 with Demon, still have it(!) as I don't want to lose the email address.
 
Internet to do schoolwork? What an absolute p**s taking joke. When I was at school in the 60s and 70s we had obviously had no internet. The teachers taught us everything that we needed, and had no need for libraries either as we had all the necessary text books. The modern breed of pathetic teacher uses the internet as an excuse to do even less work. Half of them cannot even spell. As teenage schoolkids at my own [grammar] school, every last one of us could write with barely a single spelling or grammatical error.
 
I'd be a lot worse off. No ability to hunt out the best prices for things. No online banking so I'd have to take a trip to the nearest town or use an ATM regularly. I'd see and hear less from friends as they're on facebook no matter where in the world they are in. Some I'd probably never hear a thing from again.

Without the online medium fewer companies would need photography as paper catalogues are far too expensive to produce in full colour but whacking it up on t'internet cheap as chips.

With most people's busy lives ringing them up and them being free and available when you are is almost impossible.

I'd send a lot more texts as I guess that is the only asynchronous but instant medium there would be left.
 
onomatopoeia said:
The telephone network is packet switched now, not circuit switched. So I'm afraid you would lose telephones as well if IP broke. Snail mail only, but the Royal mail probably co-ordinates a load of stuff between depots electronically, so that would probably suffer massive failures as well, particularly as co-ordination of getting fuel to petrol stations would fail with no electronic communications.

Don't forget that your bank wouldn't be able to find out how much money you have in your account, as there would be no way to communicate with the server where that information was stored, so cashpoints would stop working, direct debits would stop working, standing orders would stop working etc.

I think you might be more affected than you expect.
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How did banks manage before the internet then? Direct debits would still work - BACS used to have a telephone- or ISDN-only system called BACSTel until only a few years ago. BACSTel-IP is the internet-based system that replaced it. They would switch back to that system.

How did cashpoint machines work in the early- to mid-80's, before the internet? ISDN is my bet... Presumably they would switch back to that as well. As for card payments? I'm guessing that the banks would make us use those imprint swipe machines and get authorisation codes like we used to in those days as well...

From my own perspective, I need the internet for work - not only AT work but also working from home when I need to...
 
The internet for me is instant information, no more wondering what that song was or who wrote that book. You can find almost every answer to every question you care to ask it, for us thickos that's a godsend. I'd hate to lose that.
No more utube, iplayer, lovefilm, i radio, wiki, imdb, google, i banking, amazon, flikr, facebook, Tp. Christ, I'd have to talk to the wife!!
 
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