If someone were to tell you today that tomorrow the Internet would cease to exist, what would you do? There would be catastrophic consequences that could leave the whole world in ruins. Some people would probably say that it would be for the best, but the fact is that everything you are using today, whether it is your car or the smartphone in your pocket, all use the Internet for something. There is probably not a single product that is globally successful that hasn’t been produced without a single email being sent. It’s simply the world we live in today, and the faster our Internet connections get, the more we will rely on the Internet for our daily news, weather reports, traffic reports, stock information, purchases and everything else we could possibly think of.
So what would the world be like without the Internet? Well, we have seen it before, and to compare the two worlds would make a very pale comparison. What would you do? How would you occupy your time? Would you have the same friends as you have today? Would you even be with the same person you love right now? As you might understand, a world without the Internet would have serious consequences that would leave a lot of people lost.
Today the Internet employs 1.2 million people directly in the US alone. It’s a staggering number that still feels a little low. With the number of people coming up with new websites and online ideas increasing rapidly, this number should really double in a couple of years or so. A new infographic from Online Education called The World Without The Internet outlines the differences between today and a day when the Internet never existed.
We all know about the SOPA bill that was widely debated and voted down a while back. It would have had infinitely crippled the growth of the Internet and would have created a ripple effect throughout the world. Luckily it wasn’t voted through, but there are bills like CISPA, ACTA and PIPA that are trying to pretty much achieve the same thing, but with a different approach. It has always surprised me how a world could build something as complex and perfect as the Internet really is, only for governments around the world to try and break it all down into pieces. It is funding our world as we know it, so why would we want to change it?
If you are not yet “employed” by the Internet, you can be certain that in the near future you will be. Everything is moving towards that, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of us will end up working in a virtual world creating virtual products that are purchased online, only to be 3D printed by the customer at home. It’s a scenario that may come true sooner than most people think. So the question remains, what would you do if the Internet never existed? What would your life be like?
Via: [Visual.ly]
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