How long could you cope without the internet?

OhEsEcks said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops
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Looks like an interesting read!


AmTechFox said:
A Day?
A Week?
A Month?
A Year?

Briefly read about Paul Miller on The Verge 'disconnecting' for a year in some sort of social experiment.

I'm not sure what he expects to gain during this year long absence from the internet considering he works for a tech blogging site but it got me thinking if I could disconnect.

Frankly its a big clear NO, I could & have for a week or so but thats if I was away on holiday where its a break from your normal everyday life, you relax, you read more.

To disconnect without anything changing dramatically in your life then it would be extremely hard. For someone like me who doesn't have a social life worth mentioning, or a busy career to focus on, the internet is my only tool to the outside world, it brings me entertainment, tv shows, movies and pictures of cats!...(not forgetting pr0n ;)).

I would clearly read more, I hardly read the news paper or watch the news because I get it that online. I'd have to call and talk direct to people instead of FB/MSN (...also no smartphone, just a simple txt/talk dumbphone :eek:), and I'd play all the single player games on my xbox I could afford to buy, listen to music more....but ultimately I think I'd cave after a week at the most if I was pushed to try it.

Now could you do it, disconnect for a year or would a week seem like a lifetime without the net?
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This is something I've wondered about, vaguely. If I'm up late doing stuff, and the internet cuts out, I'm screwed. If I'm doing uni work, I'll need the internet at some point because Lancaster (and I believe most unis nowadays) use "Virtual Learning Environments" like Domino or Blackboard. Failing that, I use metalib for most of my readings (often only available through the VLE).

Beyond doing work, if I'm faffing about and facebook/reddit/OcUK konks out, I'm doomed too.

Then there's the fact that my 2 terabyte HDD died, and as it was in its death throes I uploaded my entire music library to google music. I also ripped any DVDs I had, ages ago, and sold the hard copies, they were on the 2TB drive too. I replaced it with an SSD to actually have a computer to do my final year work on, and I can't afford a new 2TB HDD yet :p So no media at all, relying on iplayer, google music, etc etc etc. Internet dies? No entertainment either.

Oh, also, inb4 "go and talk to your housemates/go to the library/go outside and play"... I'm talking about at night when everyone else is in bed :p At the moment, staring down the barrel at my final year finals, whilst trying to launch a business with a fellow student, and also grad scheme interviews to prep for (gotta keep the options open!)... I couldn't go a day without the internet.

If I didn't have so much on? Still probably only last about a week. Email, facebook, skype... it's just how we all communicate nowadays - at least my age group.

What this guy is doing will be very interesting. And I bet it'll be really quite difficult. So much depends on the internet nowadays; you need internet access to do allsorts. Banking, communication and organisation, catching up with friends at other unis or back home. Sure, you can get stuff done in person if needs be, but everyone does it the easy way, over the internet.

Sorta similar, but a mate of mine back home recently suspended his facebook account so he wasn't distracted from essays, revision and so on. Took a few days for people to even notice he'd 'gone', so to speak. He caved about a week ago, lasted what, 3 weeks at most? Thinking about it, the idea that if someone deletes their facebook, they're 'gone', is pretty weird.

Maybe it stands out to me because of my circumstances at the moment, but yeah. I think we're getting worryingly dependent on the internet.
 
cheets64 said:
This

I dont need the internet, it just just there, on demand, when it was 56k it was a lot different, it was there but it was a hassle and slow, Take me back to my youth, no mobile phone, no facebook, multiplayer gaming by going around to peoples houses and playing split screen :eek:

If the internet went down tomorrow, I would miss it for about 2-3 weeks then life would resume!
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The 56k days were the best days of the internet. Truly magical days. The internet was so revolutionary back then. Being able to go into a chatroom like Lycos or the globe and talk to random people al over the world.

Edit lets not even go into playing Q2 and HL over 56k :)
 
> Hate the internet
> Claim you don't need the internet
> Visit a computer forum an make thousands of posts.

Makes sense! Several people seem to enjoying this trend.
 
magick said:
The 56k days were the best days of the internet. Truly magical days. The internet was so revolutionary back then. Being able to go into a chatroom like Lycos or the globe and talk to random people al over the world.

Edit lets not even go into playing Q2 and HL over 56k :)
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The 56k days sucked. It took forever to download anything. Pages were badly made HTML with embedded midi. Porn was confined to badly compressed jpegs. Gaming was impossible because you'd get booted from servers for having a high ping...

The internet today is still amazing. Things can be accessed instantly. Web pages have become interactive. We can watch video online.

The only downside is it's become accessible to more people. And if people start "I remember back when the internet used to be good" they are internet hipsters. The internet has always been good. You can get the internet in your pocket on your phone. All my phone used to have was snake. If I wanted a custom ringtone I had to type it in manually after finding a badly made webpage with embedded midi that told me how.
 
OhEsEcks said:
The 56k days sucked. It took forever to download anything. Pages were badly made HTML with embedded midi. Porn was confined to badly compressed jpegs. Gaming was impossible because you'd get booted from servers for having a high ping...

The internet today is still amazing. Things can be accessed instantly. Web pages have become interactive. We can watch video online.

The only downside is it's become accessible to more people. And if people start "I remember back when the internet used to be good" they are internet hipsters. The internet has always been good. You can get the internet in your pocket on your phone. All my phone used to have was snake. If I wanted a custom ringtone I had to type it in manually after finding a badly made webpage with embedded midi that told me how.
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Back in 96/97/98 I use to have 6 people come round my flat and there jaws were at the floor that you could type hello into a computer and some bird/guy in the US/Canada/Singapore would type hello back and you could have a conversation.

I don't know maybe its just nostalaga
 
of course it's nostalgia. It's no different than people who say "in my day kids were seen and not heard" blah blah blah. As the song says;

you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize
that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
noble and children respected their elders
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Edit: Here's some web pages from back in the 90s...
 
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Septym said:
The internet is slowly killing the social aspect of humans.
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Interesting concept, but I could (and did) write a full essay on how the internet can aide in human socialising.

I can't really be bothered to go into the full detail, but basically it boils down to 'Social Capital' from an economic perspective.

It's all about people's sociability as such, and how that creates links, and they can build upon that link, and increase their capital stock of Social links to help increase their job prospects, decrease their search frictions, and generally help to improve their life. Generally speaking most forms of social capital are good forms of social capital. Bonding is the only bad form.

The Internet on the whole is absolutely great at building social capital, and reducing the rate of natural depreciation of social capital. I keep in touch with friends much longer now than perhaps I would have done before because of the concept of Facebook and the such like. Not to mention the fact that a new member joins LinkedIn every second, and Facebook if it were a country would be the world's third largest. Take into the account that China don't allow Facebook, and you start to realise just how high the penetration of Facebook, and it's ability to increase people's ability to socialise truly is.

If you think the internet is a bad thing for people's ability to socialise, you're not using it correctly.

kd
 
I coped for 31 years without the internet. Then i built my 1st PC in 2002. It's got to a point now that when i watch someone on the TV i Google search on my HTC Desire HD to find out how old the people on TV are , it's actually quite fun and educational at the same time ...
 
FosterK said:
Looks like an interesting read!





This is something I've wondered about, vaguely. If I'm up late doing stuff, and the internet cuts out, I'm screwed. If I'm doing uni work, I'll need the internet at some point because Lancaster (and I believe most unis nowadays) use "Virtual Learning Environments" like Domino or Blackboard. Failing that, I use metalib for most of my readings (often only available through the VLE).

Beyond doing work, if I'm faffing about and facebook/reddit/OcUK konks out, I'm doomed too.

Then there's the fact that my 2 terabyte HDD died, and as it was in its death throes I uploaded my entire music library to google music. I also ripped any DVDs I had, ages ago, and sold the hard copies, they were on the 2TB drive too. I replaced it with an SSD to actually have a computer to do my final year work on, and I can't afford a new 2TB HDD yet :p So no media at all, relying on iplayer, google music, etc etc etc. Internet dies? No entertainment either.

Oh, also, inb4 "go and talk to your housemates/go to the library/go outside and play"... I'm talking about at night when everyone else is in bed :p At the moment, staring down the barrel at my final year finals, whilst trying to launch a business with a fellow student, and also grad scheme interviews to prep for (gotta keep the options open!)... I couldn't go a day without the internet.

If I didn't have so much on? Still probably only last about a week. Email, facebook, skype... it's just how we all communicate nowadays - at least my age group.

What this guy is doing will be very interesting. And I bet it'll be really quite difficult. So much depends on the internet nowadays; you need internet access to do allsorts. Banking, communication and organisation, catching up with friends at other unis or back home. Sure, you can get stuff done in person if needs be, but everyone does it the easy way, over the internet.

Sorta similar, but a mate of mine back home recently suspended his facebook account so he wasn't distracted from essays, revision and so on. Took a few days for people to even notice he'd 'gone', so to speak. He caved about a week ago, lasted what, 3 weeks at most? Thinking about it, the idea that if someone deletes their facebook, they're 'gone', is pretty weird.

Maybe it stands out to me because of my circumstances at the moment, but yeah. I think we're getting worryingly dependent on the internet.
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Are you for real, people built the nuclear bomb without the internet, you are **** if you think the internet is needed to enhance civilization, its holding it back. Diluting peoples mind! Libraries are one thing to die, goverment is shutting them down due to not being usedm, but once they are shut, they are gone and will never be reopened, land will be sold and houses/buinsess will be built.

I would use my local library as a kid all the time, it is up for closrue! would go up and get book, no internet! no where else to learn, I would read books and books as a kid, encyclopedias etc. anything to learn info, now we are almost at the mercy of the internet!

I was listening to 5live last week and they had discussion on productivity and certain jobs and someone the on the show said some inventor said "in the 1930s the year 2000 we would be working less and less and man would be spending 16 hours at work a week while the machines did everything"

Its rubbish Britain has something like an average working week of 47 hours, email, mobile phone, texts messages on tap, crazy how people are so use to being contactable now, like it is a right.
 
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cheets64 said:
Are you for real, people built the nuclear bomb without the internet, you are **** if you think the internet is needed to enhance civilization, its holding it back. Diluting peoples mind! Libraries are one thing to die, goverment is shutting them down due to not being usedm, but once they are shut, they are gone and will never be reopened, land will be sold and houses/buinsess will be built.
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:confused:

I don't get what you're arguing, I didn't suggest that. I was saying that the growth of the use of the internet is pretty weird, because everyone uses it to do so much, which is a bit worrying when you think about it. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that it's not the be all and end all, we've managed an awful lot without the internet. But, actually, we've also done a lot thanks to the internet!

I would use my local library as a kid all the time, it is up for closrue! would go up and get book, no internet! no where else to learn, I would read books and books as a kid, encyclopedias etc. anything to learn info, now we are almost at the mercy of the internet!

I was listening to 5live last week and they had discussion on productivity and certain jobs and someone the on the show said some inventor said "in the 1930s the year 2000 we would be working less and less and man would be spending 16 hours at work a week while the machines did everything"

Its rubbish Britain has something like an average working week of 47 hours, email, mobile phone, texts messages on tap, crazy how people are so use to being contactable now, like it is a right.
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Well that's what I mean. That's what normal means to you, you grew up without the internet. Younger generations use the internet more than the older ones, particularly for social networking. I try not to use facebook too much, but I still do. Makes you wonder what kids born today will be like when they're 21.

I mean, sure, I read books as a kid - but as I got to about 7, the internet was coming in. Since then it's come a hell of a long way, and a lot of infrastructure is now based on it, including social infrastructure. We can manage without it, yeah, but no-one can say that if the internet were to suddenly disappear across the planet, everything would just be fine and dandy :p
 
Not long, my income would run dry... I am dependant of it for my income.

Though, if money is no problem and I can find a family member or a mate to take over busisness for a while, then I could easily manage without.

Are you for real, people built the nuclear bomb without the internet, you are **** if you think the internet is needed to enhance civilization, its holding it back.
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Are you an idiot ?

Internet means information/data can travel at the speed of light around the globe, it gives anyone a way to learn anything, it allows people to work from home rather than waste their time commuting. It equalizes prices of various goods. It's a place to trade. It eliminates the ''middle man'' who should not have existed in the first place for many services/applications/goods.
You are a **** if you think learning the exact same thing from a library is better than from the net, for one you don't waste time and energy ( as in petrol) to travel to the library. 2: If backwards people would embrace the net more, all books would have e-book versions of them. And you would have e-library's, I'd be the first one for pay for something like that. Just like with music services like spotify now which are far more consumer friendly and superior to trash like physical media.

Saying internet (or any other form of infrastructure) is holding civilization back is quite frankly retarded. Do you think roads and railroads held back your country too ? Or phone lines ?

You don't bloody live in 1980...
 
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I'd be able to do it, but why would I want to? Although I used to post a lot on here, and browse the net for info and have become used to use it as a research tool. It's now just part of life really isn't it - I don't have to have my nose in it all the time. Even whilst at home/work I've gone the week without using the 'net or facebook once - but that's because I was busy, and books I wanted to finish reading. I think if I didn't have email I would struggle though.
 
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Just over a week because some ***** scum stole the cables from the exchange.

It was the summer holiday too, ended up just sleeping in then sitting outside for hours.
 
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