Could You Survive Without Internet?

Digital technology has changed a lot over the past millennia, more than you probably realize. Sure, most people can acknowledge that we get updates to things every year. New phones, new gaming consoles, new PC parts, new TVs, new everything essentially. But do you realize that computers and the internet have only really existed for about six to eight decades? And the smaller more modernized computers as we know them have been around even shorter of a period, your WiFi? Mere seconds in comparison to how long the Earth has existed.

Technology was at one point, something only the government had access to. Although this was likely mostly because of the price, I mean could you afford a $7,000,000 computer setup? That is what it would have taken to build the 1945 version of a computer if it had the same currency value that we have today. It was estimated to take $150,000 to complete the original PC build, but it ended up taking $400,000. And that was for a computer the size of a room! I would love to have that much money to spend on a computer. I'm sure my boyfriend would too! He loves going onto PC building sites and adding new features to his dream builds. He even has setups that would probably put NASA's flight simulators to shame. (He loves his space games and wants to make his own cockpit essentially for when he goes flying his ships.)

Along the same basic principle, internet access and online databases were something created for the government. They needed to be able to access things other scientists were working on from far distances within minutes of one another rather than waiting for the horse and buggy to deliver schematics. In 1983, they eventually opened up the sourcing and made it so that others had access to the internet. WiFi didn't come into the picture until 1997. That makes most of my friends older than WiFi! I don't quite make that bar but I can still say that I am older than Google, which was started up in September of '98. 

The world has come to very much rely on modern technology and the internet. Parents have started giving their kids technology to hold their attention as young as two and three years old! When I was getting out of elementary school, there were kindergarteners that had smartphones and I didn't even have a flip phone yet at that point! My house didn't get internet access until I needed it to complete school work my junior and senior years of high school!

And now, sure, I could survive without the internet. I would probably go back to reading physical books more, spending more time doing things with my hands and crafting or drawing, trying new recipes, etc. But would I want to? Not really. At least not all the time. I enjoy being able to message people through Discord and have video chats with my boyfriend. I enjoy being able to play games with friends online from the comforts of our own homes. Having the ability to listen to music on Spotify? Golden. Looking up answers to random questions I have? Phenomenal. Being able to post and share with my growing community? A dream that many wish they could get the gusto to do. 

Could you do it? Even just for a day? If somebody offered you a thousand dollars to give it up for 24 hours? What if the sun flares became so bad they cut off technology for a month? Would you start to go insane? I am confident that we would all start to mellow out eventually and revert to old tendencies but what about those who do not have old tendencies to fall back on? What about the generation that is being raised on nothing but technology and the internet? Do you think they could entertain themselves?