Are We Killing Ourselves Through Internet Dependence?

I won't waste time with formalities, another beauty of blogging. Straight out:

Can you survive without the Internet?

Without the Internet, would you have a job? If you have a job, how would it be different without the Internet?

Can you feed yourself without the Internet? Would you know the first thing about feeding, housing, taking care of yourself, let alone a family?

Look at what is happening in the world today. Massive servers with almost unlimited memory. Millions and millions of computer users globally, many enticed to be slaves to a keyboard in one sense or another.

Lose that ability, lose your license to exist. As Gates and Google get richer and fatter, we become more and more dependent. It is conquering the human spirit and human drive without a fight.

Each day that goes by we are more and more dependent. Think about it. What if a massive power failure occurs in a major city that lasts for more than a few days? That city, or big portions of it, would die.

Look at New Orleans a year after Hurricane Katrina. There's your example. Now multiply that, say, by 100. Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, New York, Chicago, Miami ... If New Orleans is still pretty much of a dead pit without power, without the Internet, it's a fate that could surely meet other cities for other reasons. Earthquakes. Terror attacks. The World Trade Center no longer exists. What about other landmarks? Other incidents?

Even the new X-Men movie has San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge seriously mutilated. How symbolic is that? It might all be special effects now, but reality is never far away.

Sure they might be able to patch the levees around New Orleans. Sure they rebuilt the pancaked Nimitz Freeway death trap after the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 in the San Francsico Bay Area.

But think about life permanently without Internet access. Few of us, older people like myself in their 50s, are the only ones around who remember life without computers, without the Internet.