Comments on: What Are You Going to Do When the Internet’s Gone?

By: Sathya

Sathya — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 12:09:46 +0000

Hi Dave,

Interesting post. I really enjoyed reading your thoughts.

Here’s my POV. Over a period of time computing have become more of a utility and so has internet. As with any other utility, the cost of this service have come down. The internet as a service is dependent on many other industries like energy, telecom etc. So more than the death of the internet, we are probably talking about the ability of mankind to produce energy resources or transmit communications effectively and cheaply. So, for eg: if there is no reliable and affordable source of energy available then most of the world will anyway come to a standstill. Then we might not be worrying about internet.

Coming back to the internet, what we will see is the decline is free resources as you mentioned. As we have seen with cable, news is becoming less and opinions are more seen and heard. So also with internet most of the ‘free to browse’ things will be opinions, while the news outlets will put a fence around what they spend money to produce. That will be a big loss, indeed.

Regards
Sathya

By: David Harmon

David Harmon — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:14:41 +0000

It’s worth noting that the Internet can easily *downgrade* to a much smaller resource base. Text is much cheaper than images, which in turn are much cheaper than audio and video. E-mail and USENET (yes, it’s still around) are still primarily text-based, and they don’t depend on continuous connections. Even the Web can be browsed in text-only mode. Also, you speak of “when our civilization collapses” — but it’s *America’s* civilization that’s most precarious and least sustainable! I think Europe will be a lot more resilient, while parts of Asia are likely to have their own advantages. (Africa may lose the yoke of the West, but I’m afraid global warming is likely to hurt them worst of all.)

By: Maartje Bouwsma

Maartje Bouwsma — Fri, 28 May 2010 09:33:09 +0000

What am I going to do when the Internet is gone?
Even though I consider myself as a regular, and thankful, bright green Internet user…. my first reaction to this excellent question was:
” breath”
(aufatmen) … in the sense of get some oxygen in the real world out there and slow-down.

Being a mother of 2 young kids and one in the making, one does have the advantage of still being attached to the real world. But even I get drawn to and drowned by the sheer superfluency and attraction of this information medium. For my studies, it is (most of the time) an opportunity of having access to a global library (where even then, loads of information stay hidden). But is does complicate and slow up the research, in fact.

So yeah, on one side, I would be happy to see Internet disappear …. on the other hand, I wouldn’t have had this reflection triggered by somebody out there in the virtual who posted “a” question, which was quoted by a newsletter brought to me by…. use your imagination ;-)

By: Bill Seitz

Bill Seitz — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:21:58 +0000

See Cory Doctorow’s “When sysadmins ruled the earth”
http://baens-universe.com/articles/when_sysadmins_ruled_the_earth

By: Trotzendorff | Blog | Delicious Links

Trotzendorff | Blog | Delicious Links — Sun, 16 May 2010 19:01:49 +0000

[...] »What Are You Going to Do When the Internet’s Gone?« — 11/05/2010 — Nicht ganz zu unrecht fragt sich Dave Pollard, was passiert, wenn das Internet nicht mehr funktioniert. Was fangen wir an mit all der Zeit, die wir dann nicht mehr im Netz verbringen können? Und obwohl sich niemand ernsthaft traut, über diese Frage nachzudenken, hat Pollard Antworten. »Instead of porn… well, use your imagination« [...]

By: router

router — Sun, 16 May 2010 01:39:46 +0000

“Instead of playing online games, organize a real-space scavenger hunt, eco-walk, or bicycle rallye.”

Or play board games, of course:

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/01/gaming-unplugge.html

By: Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:55:37 +0000

With the collapse of big there’s going to be a lot of small.

My internet in the world of small is self-powered, uses recycled parts, and connects peer-to-peer as part of a mesh.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 10 May 2010 02:06:08 +0000

I have always assumed that this was too good to last, and have been blogging accordingly as if my life depended on it. My post-internet plan is to build an anagama, find a good local source of clay, and switch to publishing poems on pottery tablets like the Sumerians.

By: Paris

Paris — Sun, 09 May 2010 16:04:21 +0000

When I can no longer have a job (Internet based), nor spend time online discovering amazing stuff…
I will move away somewhere I can have a small house and big garden, then I’ll stay home pregnant, breasfeeding, washing cloth diappers, growing fruit/veggies, raising poultry, etc…
No more time for philosophy, sociology, biology, and ‘what-not-logy’, merely DOING.

By: Jon Husband

Jon Husband — Sun, 09 May 2010 14:37:56 +0000

I think that the vast positive potential of / for the Internet has already been lost, mainly to commercial ‘pollution’, and I think most aspects of its slide into mundanity have analogues in most other areas of human activity where great promise has been dulled and then beaten into shape by the prevailing mental models and societal-control mechanisms.

I think there will still be astounding uses we can and will discover, but few if any will ever scale or remain unimpeded to the point where that can / do create real and sustainable positive change for large numbers of people.