The way we talk internetology, you’d think we believe the internet’s going to be around forever. The ways we use the cloud, our emails, social networks all point to our basic assumption of internet permanency.
But there are things we should consider that factor into the internet’s mortality:
Physical property
As of now, all internet connections end up in physical spacetime. The buck stops somewhere physical whether that be a cable, an adapter, or a router. StoriesbyWill (a fellow literator and frequent follower) shared a fascinating post on his blog about yet another attack on the African cable. Apparently some guys swam down to the ocean floor with an axe and attempted to put the entire continent of Africa in the dark. This sort of thing happens often, we just seldom hear of it, but an attack on the transatlantic cable could sever the London and Euro market from the Americas.
Power outage.
There’s a TV series that handles this concept better, albeit ridiculously, so I won’t belabor the point. Suffice to say that natural disaster or bombs can both us in the dark fairly quickly. The new Iron Man dabbled in this concept: what happens when the power goes out?
Political upheaval.
Ever been to a North Korean or Cuban website? No? I wonder why not…
Embargos and trade bans affect the internet as much or more than normal trade items simply because so much trade reroutes through the internet. Imagine another WWII naval blockade supplemented by URL bans. Yes, war would affect the internet as well.
New technology.
I talked to one of my best friends recently in a five-hour phone call. During that conversation, he said, “We’re gonna look back on the internet one day like our parents look at the Model T Ford.” He mentioned some possibilities of techs that could replace or consume the internet, all of them viable. Whatever the future, the internet itself will be an outdated thing. We’ll build on the concept, but we won’t be driving around in Model Ts any more.
New society.
Even if we scrap the ebb and flow of technology from this little treatise, the internet’s a sociological phenomenon – a language. We have not only invented words to explain actions and thoughts that happen on the internet, we invented entire programming languages to make the dang thing work. And “thing” describes the internet poorly as it works more like a “club.”
The internet is simply an interconnectivity of massive hard drives around the world. It’s a way of talking and thinking, and it’s extremely new… and extremely mortal. Think of it this way: who speaks dead languages these days? Only people studying specific dead languages and dead societies. We don’t use Latin except for a handful of phrases left over from Roman society. We’ve all but forgotten Greek except for medical and technical words we invented.
Whatever new society arises out of this old one, the language of internet will die and give birth to a new language, for language lives and adapts, molting old forms like snakes, birds, and snails.
Feel free to suggest other reasons for the internet’s mortality in the comments. I think we should orient our lives around those things that keep the internet going: new technology, better political ideology, but mainly we should reorient our focus toward creating new language, new ways of outwardly expressing relational thought. I think we should stay mindful of the internet’s mortality so that we can draw back now and again to exist in the world outside of the visual renderings of our digital selves. This helps foster real friends and real art, but such a change demands that we depend on diversifying our use of techs by rediscovering the old as we invent the new.
Typewriters? Vellum? Printed family photos? A conversation outside the confines of Facetime or Gchat? Sure, however you think internet mortality applies. Go knock yourself out.
I’m just saying, you might not be able to read this post forever…
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