Can we survive without the Internet

I have heard rumors about the Internet crashing and I have even heard prophecy about it but I really didn't give it a whole lot of thought until I experienced it for real today.

How we have come to depend on the Internet. One day from 8:35am to 4:35pm without the Internet and I didn't seem to know what to do. I logged on to the computer to check my Hub Pages stats and the Internet would not come up. Now many thoughts came to my mind...did I pay the bill was the first one? I checked my organized bill clutter and no it wasn't due to be paid yet so we were good there.

My husband and I share a network, his working and mine mostly pleasure and some work. His computer is the 'charge' computer or the 'main' computer so I had to travel down to the downstairs office to check and see what was unplugged or what needed reset. His Internet was down also so the next thing to do was unplug cords and plug them back in to reset the dumb thing. I went through the power cords and Ethernet cords and still nothing.

Being the take charge woman that I am I immediately got on the phone and called the repair department to get this fixed right away. Much to my surprise ...snicker...I didn't talk to a person but a machine which told me the Internet was experiencing problems and they were aware of it and the technicians were on it and would have the problem resolved as soon as possible. They also shared that this was a problem that encompassed a good sized area in the state. Well, that is strange I said to myself but no big deal.

I decided no problem I will just check things on my I-phone. No Pandora radio, no Hub Pages, no Facebook now this is getting pretty serious.

I am on my third day of vacation and planned to write a few Hubs and just relax and enjoy and all the things I took for granted were crashed. I thought no problem I will just study the Word a little as I hadn't done that yet so I sat down with the Bible and a study book and remembered about my radio on the I-Phone and thought I would listen to some heavenly music to get me in the right state of mind... oh yeah... Internet is down.

By this time I am thinking do cell phones work with out Internet? I call my husband who is out working and the number I dialed was not in service...I checked and yes I had dialed the right number. I dialed it a different way considering maybe I just confused the phone. It dialed the number but I got some other message about service. At this point I am telling myself do not panic the world is not coming to an end at this moment you can survive without connections for heavens sake. You still have a land line phone so no problem.

I decided to try another way to dial, this is just not happening, I went to my contacts and pushed on the number to my husbands phone and sure enough it dialed and he answered. Whew, I sighed I have life I am connected to someone and I hear a voice on the other end. Funny when I told him the Internet was down he commented ' really, huh '. Now there's a huge response.

I could see I was getting a little miffed by his response or lack there of so I said well I am really busy gotta go. I hung up the phone and put a load of laundry in the wash and put on my running shoes and decided to get in a little exercise. Once again I grabbed my I-Phone..you guessed it the Pandora radio was still not working. Now what. Oh yeah, I have an IPod on my phone. I worked up a pretty good sweat and couldn't stop thinking about my Internet.

You know you have an addiction when you can't go one hour of the day without thinking about the thing that you want and you try everything electronic in the house just to get it to work. It made me remember when I used to smoke and I would run out of cigarettes and it was late so I didn't want to get out and go to the store. I would check every ashtray...yuck..and look for an extra long butt to smoke a little bit more of. Glad that habit is gone.

Every single hour of the morning I checked my I-Phone to see if the Internet was back on again. It kept messing with me I would get that familiar ding telling me I had an e-mail and I would grab the phone thinking awesome it is back. I would have an e-mail or two that had come through the sludge and so then I clicked on the Hub Pages icon and nothing. This went on through the lunch hour and into a big share of the day until finally I decided to get a grip and move on. Time inched on and I found I had plenty of things to do around the house.

I contemplated all the people and business that would be affected by the lack of Internet and it was mind boggling. Most companies use programs that are Internet based and supplied. Without the Internet there would be no uploading information, no updates, no online fix and repair when needed. Without the Internet many small business owners would be in trouble. That is where they shop for supplies, parts, and most use programs such as Intuit etc. to compile their tax information. It would be far more costly to hire employees to do all the bookwork by hand which takes hours and hours on the computer.

Most business today has accelerated their market field by using Internet sales expanding their ability to reach the world in a matter of seconds. Online shopping and social networking has exploded for most retailers, home business, artists by trade, personal business and the list goes on and on. Companies have built big business in add programs boosting sales off the chart using social networks such as HubPages, Facebook, and Twitter just to name a few.

The introduction of routers enabled small and large companies alike to network locally and globally at the same time changing communication of the business world in way that was never thought possible prior to the 1980's. Corporations depend on the Internet from the ground up linking their operations through the Internet and the Web to conduct the simplest of business tasks. Without the Internet I would venture to guess many multi-billion corporations would be non existent or brought to their knees.

It is amazing really to think how many of us have stripped outselves of bulky hard copy information replacing it with CD's, DVD's,External Drives etc. packed full of information much of which was derived from the Internet. Companies depending on Web accounts to virtually market their product would be brought to a standstill without the Internet and would probably not fully recover enough to economically equip themselves with the ability to reach all the people they reach through the Internet.

Seriously, when you contemplate all the business that is owned and operated by Internet alone it is amazing how our world would change without it.