What if the Internet went down?

[Dani]

If the Internet went down globally for one whole month, what would happen? Complete economic collapse? World War III?

[Reverend Jim]

I doubt it would cause World War 3, but I expect the economic cost would be enormous. I wouldn't shed a tear if an internet outage cost Bezos or Zuck a few billion, and I wouldn't miss the incessant Facebook/Twitter/"Truth" Social posts and reposts, but I expect supply chains would be completely disrupted causing massive shortages of goods. And the social cost for some would be extreme. Based on the following excerpt (RE Spottify) I wonder how a particular generation would survive.

Likely just as appealing as gleaning deeper personal insights, though, users could also potentially build Al tools to compare listening habits with their friends. That could lead to nearly endless fun for the most invested music fans, where Al could be tapped to assess all kinds of random data points, like whose breakup playlists are more intense or who really spends the most time listening to a shared favorite artist.

I see way too many people who can't get their faces out of their devices and seemingly cannot exist if disconnected from the digital world.

We could be one massive solar flare away from the collapse of a house of cards.

[Dani]

I see way too many people who can't get their faces out of their devices and seemingly cannot exist if disconnected from the digital world.

I'm one of them. :-P

[Reverend Jim]

I have my face in my computer for hours per day as well but the only social media I have ever participated in is right here. If you don;t include

1. reading books
2. watching shows/movies
3. coding

then my actual time on my computer goes way down. I prefer reading on the computer because I can pick a font size that is comfortable.

[Salem]

• scammers will starve, unable to send messages to millions just to catch the few vulnerable to their BS.
• cryptos will whine alone that their 'coins' are all now $0 to anyone else.
• Governments, TLAs and FAANGs can't spy on the population wholesale.