No Internet: Can we even live offline?

I’ll make my personal answer short: I can’t. I work online everyday and even the choices of where I live are dictated by the quality of the online connectivity there. I can’t imagine writing articles without the internet so I can do fact checking. I couldn’t upload my videos without the internet. The only problem is that now even the devices I’m using are starting to need the internet to even function.

Working with Youtube means watching Analytics, checking the trends, knowing what is happening. Then you have all communication tools starting with your personal Facebook and ending with tons of daily business mails. Using Google and Wikipedia is something you do many times a day that it actually starts making sense using tools like Chromebooks – being always online just makes sense.

But the correct question is, what happens when the internet is not working? If you really are dependent on it, you switch to your phone until it starts working again and you keep pestering your provider to get it working as soon as possible.
But what about data hangover for your devices? In previous times, when the internet wasn’t working you usually just started a singleplayer game. These days the amounts of games that require authentication or synchronization with an online server are fast growing. Even consoles require to be connected to the internet these days. At least occasionally.

The same situation is here with movies and series. We don’t have them on DVDs anymore. We just stream them and well, if the internet is not working, you’re out of luck. You may have some movies on your local disk, but how many do you have there and are they the ones you really want to watch?

These situations may seem stupid, so you can’t play a game or watch a movie. Then lets look at something potentially a bit more serious. Most of us these days have back-ups online. Just imagine you coming home from work where you created half of an important document, saved it online because you want to work on it from bed. Then you come home and the internet is not working. What will you do?

Under normal circumstances, when the data is flowing, living in an always connected world has many benefits. For many it brought the chance to work from home. It created jobs that never existed before. But whenever the internet is not working, we almost feel like were having a panic attack. It’s like part of us wasn’t allowed to exist when were not online. And making sure you can live and work even in situations when you’re not online is a good idea. Because you never know when the next time your internet will stop working will come.