What if the Internet Went Down … and Didn't Come Back Up?

Imagine, if you will, a world with no Internet. No email. No e-commerce. And no BlackBerrys. Email would be supplanted by snail mail; cellphones by landlines. Now imagine what the future would look like. Futurists say virtual business services of all sorts, accounting, payroll and even sales would come to a halt, as would many companies. This immediately made me think of E. M. Forster’s disturbing tale ” The Machine Stops.” Written in 1909, it describes the downfall of a civilization that had wrapped itself in the cocoon of an automated life-support system. But people began to think of the Machine as an infallible deity, and lived in their individual mechanical wombs, communicating and doing business only through the Machine.

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