If the internet stopped working, could it lead to an economic crisis?
Internet came as a
globalization tool, its rapid overcrowding allow millions of people have easy
and immediate access to an extensive and diverse amount of information online.
In previous years the possibilities of obtaining internet service were limited,
since only people from the upper social classes could access and pay for the
use of this computer network, while low-income people found it difficult to pay
for the service due to its high price at the time or in the worst case the
individuals had no idea of the existence of this website. According to the
globalization of the internet, more people were acquiring the benefit and at
present any person who has an electronic device at their fingertips has access
to the network.
Internet. It is a global
phenomenon closely linked to communication but which greatly influences almost
all areas of society. Little could their creators imagine that in 20 years it
would be an invention as essential as the telephone to television. In
principle, the main purpose of the internet was communication that would allow
the human being a barrier-free communication that does not take into account
space, borders, distances or societies.
The history of humanity is full of
advances and discoveries of new communication channels that have changed its
future. The writing itself was undoubtedly one of the greatest because it was
no longer necessary for the sender and receiver to be in the same place to
communicate by eliminating time as a frontier to transmit knowledge.
The invention of computers and
their dissemination gave rise to the next step, the creation of media that
allowed the transfer of computer data taking advantage of all the existing
advances, from this simple need, the Internet emerged, first from the need of
young researchers who wanted to communicate their computers with each other but
after, humanity's own need to share and communicate not only in the scientific
or business field has revolutionized the internet. New possibilities have been
opened with the use of messaging snapshot and social networks, chats, anyone
who has something to say can do so and to whoever he wants.
Another area in
which it has caused great impact is in the educational side. The network allows
that the mind is freed from having to retain a huge amount of information, it
is only necessary to understand the concepts about the dynamics of the
processes in which information is framed, this allows to use pedagogical
methods with which the student can learn more and better in a year what
required three.
In 1971 the first email was
sent by Ray Tomlinson. Two
years later the word “internet” was first used in a protocol control
transmission marking the history of
humanity.
On August 23, 1991 when the World Wide Web (WWW) was first opened to the
public, created and developed by British researcher Tim Berners-Lee.
It was a network in which the informatics had been working within the
European Center for Particle Physics (CERN), used to connect to several
computers in order to share information and data internally.
In 1994 yahoo appears and only one year later Microsoft launches
Internet Explorer.
A very important year that marked the history of the Internet is 1998.
In the first place Google is born (eventually it would end up being known as
the search giant) and the number of Internet users reaches one million and
increasing. In 2001 appears the largest collective encyclopedia “Wikipedia”.
And so with the passage of time and the advancement of technology, different
pages of information, social networks, communication, etc.
Taking into account the
evolution of the internet and the importance that it has for our daily needs
and the advancement of new technologies, it is not impossible or at least very
difficult to imagine in a life without this network. what if we wake up to an
unexpected internet breakdown?
As the network has grown, so
has our dependence on it. The Internet is a robust system that does not depend
on a single machine or a single cable, connections expand through all the
streets below the oceans, above us and in outer space. Therefore, it would not
be that easy to break down, a large part of it could fall due to natural
disasters or maybe a war but the only way for the entire internet to sag from
one second to another is to collapse, services such as text messages would not
be available, also Pay TV and satellite lines would be out of operation,
logically you could not connect to any social network, you would lose all
contact with relatives or acquaintances who live far from your city and all this
would be reduced to a communication through paper letters, the fast access to
the information we have today would be lost, so libraries would be the only
option.
Thousands of traffic accidents
would begin to occur every second due to the poor administration of traffic
lights, many means of transport would stop serving the public because their
operation is strictly governed by smart computers managed thanks to the
internet and how are predictable millions of citizens throughout the planet
they would panic and take advantage to wreak havoc for the cities since
communication between the government and the population would be prevented by
the lack of both satellite and web connection.
The attacks, the looting of the
stores and the destruction of measures would begin and this would cause the
police to be replaced by the military and severe measures would begin until every person would be asked to lock himself in his house and not to go
out and having nothing to be informed about what is happening we would be
living in a real apocalypse. A very important part of the web is made up of
pornography and since there is no more, the commercialization of cassettes and
CDs with highly punishable content will increase dramatically and in the worst
case it can cause the violations.
The financial situation would
plummet because the banks could not attend correctly since all their
transaction systems would be disabled. No one could take money from the ATMs
which would cause you to sooner or later run out of money which means you would
not have access to food and without food nobody can live. Millions of companies
would lose their way of promoting their products due to the lack of media. All
companies operating only through the Internet would be harmed and therefore thousands
of employees will be thrown out due to the lack of payments remaining on the
street.
The economy with financial data generally stored on a server banking
services largely depend on the internet each transfer would be impossible, your
credit card and debit card will become a useless piece of plastic.
On top of that, large companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon would go
out of business losing their combined revenue of almost four hundred and forty billion dollars with Google
itself having 80,000 full-time staff, hundreds of thousands of people would be
left unemployed. Hundreds of companies withdrawing or cutting staff, the market would be
flooded with people who need a job.
According to the US Census Bureau, in the US, the electronic commerce accounted
for 35 percent of all shipments in the manufacturing industry in 2007. That
equals more than $ 1.8 billion for that industry alone. When you extrapolate
those numbers to all industries around the world, you will see that Internet
commerce is big business. If the Internet collapsed, multiple industries would
experience an instant recession.
Countries would suffer at different levels, the more developed nations would face serious economic crises as entire industrial sectors
disappeared, they would fight to stay as long as possible but the devastating
losses could not be avoided. Others, may not feel the lack of the
Internet with the same intention, they may not be so affected, but these
countries would also suffer as trade and aid would not reach them because of the partner countries they depend on.
Television companies that rely solely on the Internet as a means of
advertising would be affected, industrialized countries would lose entire
industries and face an economic crisis, what about countries with little
Internet presence? They would be affected because international trade depends
on the Internet.
So is the world transit? Without internet access between airports,
airplanes, ships, trains and commercial trucks we'd go back to tracking goods
on paper. This would increase the market value of transported products, since
it would be more complicated to deliver products to stores. At least, you can
still travel. Wonder if the Internet shutdown is even possible. The Internet is
a global network of many other computer networks, it does not depend on a single
machine, even if a part of it is disconnected, others will remain functional.
The internet has also been
used for political media between countries, as used to gather information and
spy on others. Intelligence agencies would suffer from this situation, and
there is a risk that some governments may react to such a problem abruptly or
in the worst case, these events could become a conflict.
In the event that world
leaders can maintain order and resist the need to generate conflagrations,
other problems will arise. Internet has become an important part of many
educational programs. The loss of the Internet would leave a gap that other
resources would have to fill. Resources cost money, something that would be
scarce as markets around the world try to recover from astounding losses.
A total Internet collapse
would be almost impossible, it has no on or off button, nor is it a physical
thing. It is a collection of physical things and is constantly changing.
Internet is not the same entity from one moment to another. For this scenario
to be possible, it would have an asteroid or meteorite that would destroy
practically most of the satellites in order to end the internet's
infrastructure, and in the end it would end almost all life on the planet, in
these types of situations nobody would even think to login on facebook.
To conclude, if internest collapsed, it could
lead to an economic crisis that will
gradually adapt to the new conditions. In the hypothetical case that
no government or human being tried to re-enable this source of
knowledge as wide as cyberspace is, with the passing of the days or even years
later, everything would return to “normal”, accepting the new living conditions, it will take time and
it will not be easy to cope with a new lifestyle in such a sudden way, but
the human being, as usual, adapts to their environment, to the state of life that
our ancestors carried and everything would be the same as hundreds of years
ago.
“ The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of
tomorrow”
-Bill Gates-
By: Heidi Rico and
Maria Camila
Pinzón, Step 10.
