Imagine All the People Without Internet

Imagine an internet blackout like the one in Egypt in your country. Imagine all the people without internet in America, Japan, Brazil, China, Korea, India, Nepal, etc. Imagine no access for a day, a week, a month.

If you're like me, you know it would be painful at first. But you also imagine it would come as a sigh of relief, a breath of fresh air. The world's largest library and a major source of instant gratification gone, all of a sudden? It would be earth-shattering for some, those of use whose dependence on the internet borders on unhealthy. But (re)learning how to use time, engage with other media-technologies (including human bodies), reading a book (for goodness sake! - and NOT on a Kindle [I get Kindle spam from Amazon like everyday...it's starting to kind of piss me off]) might do us good.

Inspired by the situation in Egypt, I tried to imagine what an internet blackout might look for me, you, it, us. Below is a feeble semi-literate (I was gonna say semi-literary, but it comes across as more semi-literate) sci-media-fi imagining of such a scenario.
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You're sitting in your cubicle at 10:39, gchatting with Beth two rows down.

Beth Johnson says:

did you see the latest duck-trapped-in-a-coal-mine meme?

its hillllarious

ILMAO!!!


What would people do without the internet? I'll tell you what they'd do - they'd go insane! If people didn't have enough incentive to take to the streets and depose our government after it started an unnecessary war, imagine that all the computer screens in all the offices of America suddenly went blank. "Can't get any work done here, so let's take the day off." People would be jumping for joy, clicking their heels in the air... "No work today, the internet's gone away!" On the commute home, you try to tweet about it, but Twitter's down, too. "The heck with it," you'd say, "maybe I'll just start a conversation with someone next to me on the bus..."

"Twitter's down. Can you believe it?"
"I know, I tried to access my facebook an hour ago. I can't even get Farmville to work on my iPad!"

Maybe you'd swap stories about your days at work, learn about each others' professions and go out for a drink to celebrate your day off. You decide to duck into the local sports bar, because, as fate would have it, you both live in the same neighborhood and you're both baseball fans. Who woulda thunk?

In the bar, you make a shocking discovery: the TV has been shut down, too. The bartender checks the plug. The lights are working fine, what the hell could be wrong? The whole Comcastic media conglomerate must be down. He flips through all 800 channels, hope growing dimmer with each flick. Instead of the crisp, HD hews of warm static electric reds greens and blues, a cold dark screen stares back, more like a black hole sucking in your fantasy football dreams.

Another drink? Sure. Why not substitute one addiction with another? When you get home, Lauren is pissed off that you've been out so late.

"Are you drunk? It's only 7:30!"
"Didn't you hear, hon? The internet's down! It was cause for celebration. Plus I met one of our neighbors, Pat. He's an IT guy for..."

"You know you still have to put the kids to bed."

"OK."

"Hey daddy, we couldn't watch TV tonight. Could you tell us a story?"

"Once upon a time..." The words struggle to come out at first, but soon you're lost in a maze of characters and plot twists and triumphant endings. But the kids are asleep before you can finish. "Maybe I should write that down..." And just as you contemplate taking pen to paper for the first time since college, Lauren entices you to snuggle. And you forget that second life, that other skin of video, wire and cold metal hard drives, as you drift into deeply contented dream-filled sleep, thankful for your family and the warmth of your cozy cuddle buddy.