I’ve been watching Scorpions on Net.flix and one of the storylines ahs the internet being sabotaged.
The group of geniuses manage to fix things and catch the baddy but it did get me thinking.
If someone threw the big switch, how would folk cope?
One factor will be your own involvement with the web.
Generally, younger people, especially those born in the 90’s and later have a greater dependence online.
A teacher used to challenge his class to go offline for a weekend. Most found it refreshing and a little uncomfortable but coped with real socialisation, reading and hobbies etc.
He tried it more recently and faced a revolt. School work uses the internet so classes would suffer. They protested that the forced lack of socialisation and contact would be inhuman.
As parents we’ve tried to find a balance. The kids have a lot of books to hand and can all grab drawing stuff and wile away a few hours. Equally they can go goggle eyed for hours and need to be forceably disconnected sometimes.
Silver surfers abound now but there will still be some folk, like my Mum, who are either disiclined to “web up” or simply don’t understand it. They won’t suffer.
Personally, the internet is just a habit to me. I like to blog and addicitively catch up on social media when I can. Net.flix needs the internet as does Spot.ify for music and TV IPlayers (unless I’ve downloaded). I listen to podcasts but they’d run out pretty quickly with t’internet.
My shift patterns leave mornings free but these are spent getting the hoard out of the door, doing chores with Gill and completing errands. I can go online but the chances are few.
Most of my email is rubbish I’ve subscribed to but I do still use it for prompting the local council to sort things out, talk to teachers and heads of departments at my kids’ schools and using ama.zon generates a heap of mail.
We shop online a lot, so that would have to change. But we’d cope.
I do pity the children though and by that I mean anyone under thirty. These sad souls who wander around, head down, flicking, pinching, swiping, liking and catching up on the banal events of each others lives. They will have to go through a period of cold turkey beginning with long gutteral screams and continuing with whimpers and whines. Who knows, maybe a new dawn will rise as heads slowly lift and they all look into each others eyes and begin to talk….. proabably about how’s there’s no internet and how it’s like so totally unfair and how, like they are so offended. <grumpyface> #sounjustdude
