What If The Internet Never Existed?
As a millennial, it is hard for me to imagine life without the internet.
From Baby Boomers and beyond, the internet has begun to infiltrate all corners of our
lives and minds.
The elderly may be the last generation alive to have known a life without the free flowing
digital communication we have today.
The world has changed so much since the internet began to evolve in 1983Öbut what would life
be like without it?
Hello and welcome back to Lifeís Biggest Questions, I am Rebecca Felgate and today
weíre asking the rather terrifying question of What if The Internet Never Existed.
The concept is almost so vast and adverse to everything we know now; itís hard to get
your head around it.
Technology would have advanced but just without the internet, so the world would have moved
on from what we knew in the 90sÖ
One word.
Paper.
So much paper.
No more emails, no more computerized letters or ecardsÖ instead people would still be
sending actual letters on a much vaster scale than they do now.
Can you even imagine not being able to share information via emailÖno DropboxÖnothingÖhowever,
in the years before the dawn of the internet, the world felt the desire to become more fast
paced.
Pneumatic tubes were becoming a thing ñ fast paced tube networks that would deliver paper
around buildings.
Maybe we would have expanded on that and developed fast tube networks to cross streets, cities,
or maybe even countries?
These days, we havenít had the need to quicken up our sluggish mail service, but if thatís
all we had, perhaps we would have.
So it is pretty much looking like paper would be our main form of communication without
the easy sharing of the digital word.
The digitalization era arguably effected the world of Broadcast more than anything else,
so without the internet, it may be fair to say that people would still very much rely
on newspapers and television for our daily news, which may be detrimental.
Now, breaking news can be received in an instant, from several sources, not just news publications,
which we all know have their own biases.
So far it sound like the world without the internet could be very paper orientated, so
weíd need to step up our recycling game.
That being said, deforestation and excess paper was becoming an issue in the 90s before
the world began their journey to paperless.
Perhaps we would have found a way to utilize digital word without being able to share it
over the internet, for example, book shops ñ which would be thriving by the way ñ may
instead sell USB sticks with information on them, which could then be plugged into a screen
or an electronic reader, much like kindles and ipads of todayÖbut with no internet function.
Anyone remember teletext ñ it was text based TV channel that shared news in simple text
and shape format in a rolling screen.
This was how we used to check sports scores and TV times without the internetÖI am guessing
that Teletext would have upped its game, and we would have a breadth of TV channels that
offered rolling text services for immediate news readingÖ.like a very very crude google
with very very limited possibilities.
When 9/11 happened and the internet was still not yet fully formed, many news pages crashed
due to high visitor rates, but good old teletext kept going strong.
Speaking of TVÖ.
EeshÖcan you imagine a world without Netflix and other streaming services?
While I am sure we would have upped our Television recording game, we couldnít have as many
shows as we wanted at our finger tips and piracy would be crude USB sharing!
For entertainment, we would be forced to watch what was available to us, so lets hope show
distribution was kind and we would all be able to watch Game of Thrones at the same
time, rather than the tapes, or whatever they may be, having to be sent over to America
and Vice versa as with old TV shows!
Although, of course, the upside is that life would be spoiler free!
GuysÖblockbuster might even still be a thing!
The music industry would perhaps enjoy more record sales, but how could we watch Taylor
Swifts Look What You Made Me Do on repeatÖunless television responded to our needs and started
widening its channel optionsÖheres hoping in a world without internet, there would be
a TV channel for everything.
I am pretty sure we would still have iPodsÖremember how long they took to sync!
Imagine a world with no social media?
Its easy if you tryÖ.no liking photos, no arty snaps of your eyeÖ.imagine all the peopleÖ.living
for todayÖ.yoouuÖhoo.
Seriously though?
No Youtube, no social media stars, no instagram stars, no bloggersÖwhile it may be good for
vanity, It would be terrible for the self-made entrepreneur.
The internet allowed us a platform to broadcast ourselves and choose our celebrities, who
were previously handed to us by movies and television only.
Without the internet, self discovery and independent learning would take a huge blow.
I am sure libraries would have upped their game, maybe weíd even have hologram projections
to learn from, but knowledge would no longer be at the touch of a buttonÖyou would have
to seek it and I canít imagine that ever being a good thing.
We may not have internet, but we would still have mobile phones, they would just be tiny!
Phone were getting smaller before they were internet capable, they only got big again
when we started using the screens for browsing the net.
Texting would still be huge, with phone companies capitalizing on that.
Our main source of global communication would be texting, perhaps broadcast outlets would
have sign up text service so you could receive headlines that way, who knows.
The main effect we would see on the world without internet is a change in social interaction.
The internet extends our sphere of communication, allowing us to talk to more people than ever
before.
Without it, we would lose touch with people far away, but on the plus side, we would be
forced to talk more to our neighbours.
Again, on the downsideÖwe would have to go to more painful lengths to find friends and
partnersÖif you can find a soul mate in your own back yard then great, but I for one think
the internet is a beautiful thing in allowing us to connect with people we may have otherwise
never have found.
Oh my..I could continue but I had better stop thereÖthis question is so vastÖwe are so
far down the digital rabbit hole it is hard to imagine what would have happened had we
taken a different turn!
What do you think the world would be like if the internet never existedÖlet me know
in the comments below.
For now..I am glad its here so we can continue to research and bring you many more Lifeís
Biggest Questions.