Monday, April 06, 2009

Get out your black armbands


Did you know that the Internet is about to keel over? It's true! In preparation for an as-yet-to-gestate post, I discovered this story in The New York Times on the Net's imminent death:
The Internet death watch is in full dirge. According to the latest morbidity reports, national networks ... are crashing with increasing severity, packets of your precious bits are being scattered and lost throughout cyberspace, popular sites on the World Wide Web are being choked ... and overall service is degrading as hordes of tourists pile onto the Internet. ...

Even Wired magazine, known for panegyrics to the new information order, is hanging digital crepe these days. "Over the coming six to 12 months, computer users around the planet are likely to experience the Internet equivalent of the Great Blackout ...," the magazine reports in its current issue.

"These slowdowns will be more than a minor annoyance: they will challenge the future of the network," the article adds. "Businesses that depend on the Internet will find themselves cut off from their branch offices, their suppliers and their customers."

What will I do when the Internet crashes? How will I buy books when I can't reach Amazon? How will I keep up with Martha Stewart's Twitter posts? How will I remain in contact via Facebook with people I only dimly remember from high school? How will I ...

What? That Times story about the death of the Internet is from 1996? Really? The Internet is OK?

Whew! All right, then, back to work.

2 comments:

Gina said...

OMG -- what will I do at work to save me from boredom and having my mind numbed -- which really says something about my job if the black hole of the internet is more stimulating.

fermicat said...

Well, 1996 was about the time that AOL was pumping lots of internet newbies into cyberspace for the first time. To well seasoned academic users, it must have seemed like Armageddon. I remember it well.