Imagine, if you will, a world with no Internet.
What would happen if the internet stopped for a day? Wait… we had a small taste of this on July 8. And the outcome was not pretty.
Or worse, what if the Internet were to cease working altogether? Could we function?
If the internet were to cease functioning, the effect would be similar for many people. They grew up with ubiquitous communication, information at their fingertips and shopping at the click of a mouse.
For the everyday person, some cell phone services and text messaging would be unavailable, all mobile apps and social networking sites would be down, cloud storage would be inaccessible, any pending electronic payments would fail, and more. No e-mail.
No e-commerce. And no smart phones. E-mail would be supplanted by snail mail; cell phones by land lines. No YouTube. No gaming.
And then there is television. Programming that is sent via broadcast towers would still be accessible via an antenna, but most digital channels would be lost. Any electrical grids that operate on a smart grid would fail, causing power outages on top of the internet outages.