What Happen if The Internet Not Working For One Day - Information Technology

What Happen if The Internet not working For One Day

How would your life be impacted if starting right now, the internet stopped for a whole day? You might panic and think that it would be a complete nightmare, not being able to do work or complete assignments for school, and worrying about how your friends and family were doing. Just think, 22 years ago, less than 1% of the world was online, and now, it’s difficult to imagine a time when we didn’t have the internet; a time when we went about our lives without having to constantly look at our screens. According to the Pew Research Centre nearly 1/5th of Americans report that they use the internet “almost constantly”. Over the years, the internet has made the world a much smaller place. Information has been put in a place that anyone can access at anytime with just the touch of a button or the swipe of a screen. It has undeniably brought us wonders and made life easier in many regards. However, it comes as no surprise that many of us have taken this marvel of the modern world for granted. But what if we wake up one morning, and as we reach for our smartphones to see what’s new in the world and our social circles, discovered that the internet just doesn’t work anymore? We’re not talking about router troubles at home. We’re talking about the internet completely stopping in every corner of the globe for 24 hours. While in this day and age there are multiple fail-safe systems in place to prevent this event from happening, in this article, we’re going to explore three possible events that could happen in the event that the internet really does break down and leaves us all in the dark. 

1. FINANCIAL CHAOS AND STOCK MARKET MELTDOWN Obviously, one of the first institutions to be hit by an internet collapse would be finance – and the US stock market will be hit the hardest. The stock market would likely be closed, credit transactions for purchases would stop. Bank to bank transactions such as wiring money or paying bills would come to a halt. This could be a nightmare scenario for everyone, but the much larger repercussion would be felt on the trading floor of stock markets across the globe. While it may take days or even weeks of internet shutdown for this effect to be felt in larger institutions, let’s say that it did happen. Without any capability of accessing financial or stock information from an online database, it would be extremely difficult to predict market trends and create transactions. Share prices, for example, may experience a slow decline and would ultimately prevent anyone from selling or buying shares. Volume and traffic will also be an issue since it has been decades since people have traded using the telephone or physically trading in person. Being unable to handle or manage the volume of trades would lead to disastrous financial ends. To give you an even bigger picture: publicly-held companies such as Google, eBay, Samsung, and Apple that rely on the internet for hardware and software sales as well as generating market revenue are considered among the heavy hitters and cornerstones of the US and International Stock markets. Any halt in their trade due to a global internet shutdown would bring economies around the world into a tailspin, causing serious financial panic and distress. 

2. COMMERCIAL & BUSINESS IMPACT With almost all major retailers in the Western Hemisphere relying on the internet to boost their sales, everything could be sent tumbling down in the event of the internet stopping. While it may seem like it wouldn’t make a big dent in their sales since retailers still maintain a brick and mortar store, what could hurt them badly is filling up inventories and fulfilling orders. Sites such as Amazon and eBay that rely heavily on their websites would be hit the hardest. The problem may seem trivial but at the very least, this could turn out to be a nightmare in terms of logistics and communication, since people these days opt for the convenience of sending their information via email. But in terms of actual work getting done, the consequences really wouldn’t be as severe as you might think. A study led by Scott Borg at the United States Cyber Consequences Unit, found that instead of doing nothing, employees might actually be more productive with a temporary internet shut-down and do tasks that they’ve been putting off, such as paperwork. 

3. INFORMATION BLACKOUT We’ve all woken up in the morning and checked our phones before even getting out of bed. It’s a bad habit but it’s also one of the most important things that access to the internet has given us: information anytime we want it. Gone are the days that we have to peruse through pages and pages of the newspaper to find out what’s happening today in our city or on the other side of the world. We don’t even have to wait for the evening news to give us our daily roundup of breaking news in the world. It’s one of the luxuries that we take for granted given the fact that there are many countries whose access to information are still considerably monitored, restricted, or may even have deadly penalties attached to them. The whole world relies on the transfer of information for it to operate. Without it, how could governments, hospitals, schools, and businesses function? Similar to the case of what may happen to the stock market, when the internet shuts down it takes with it our ability to receive, send, and communicate information; crucial and sensitive information. Tweets, News Feeds, Stocks, and everything else will come to a screeching halt when the world loses the internet and we will all be, basically, plummeted into the proverbial darkness, not knowing what’s going on in the rest of the world...