We turn on the computer and unless it malfunctions we open a door to the world. What would the world be like today without the internet? Whom would its absence affect most drastically and why?

Hi Rosie, it would definitely affect me.  How would I ever find Ebay again?

But if tomorrow there was no internet, a lot of jobs would be lost.  They say there's 18.5 million software developers alone.  No Facebook, no Microsoft no Mac's and no Amazon.  What you once purchased online, you would be shopping for in the stores instead. Or you could wait for the store coupons to arrive in the mail to see what's on sale, never knowing if that item was cheaper elsewhere. Or we could go back to the old fashioned way of calling each store and asking for prices.  We would have to walk into the bank to get cash or transfer money or to let them know there were fraudulent transactions on our checking account statements that just arrived in the mail.  If looking for work, we'd be back to reading the newspapers, typing our resumes and hitting the pavement going from business to business. Paying bills would require writing checks, addressing the envelope then realizing you ran out of stamps.  No Google means we would have to go to the library to find out facts and we'd be back to writing letters or calling when we wanted to keep in touch with family or friends thousands of miles away.   With no internet, we would get our information from the evening news or we'd read the morning newspaper or listen to the radio. If you wanted to do a DIY project, you might find the junior college offers evening classes on the subject.  On the other hand, there would be no hackers stealing our information or money.  There would be no online predators, no online dating sites.  We would be finding our soul mates at the bar downtown or at church or the produce aisle at Safeway. And I'd be back to reading maps, which I never could do, and getting lost trying to find places I've never been before. And no cybersex???!!!!  And if you tweeted all day long, they just might put you in the psych ward.  All this would entail a lot more time, money, energy and a lot of manual work.  So it looks like it would affect the majority of us and not in a good way.  Looks like I was just on a roll huh?  And if there was no internet, there wouldn't be an  "Add Reply" button to click.

Wow! Thank you for a very comprehensive analysis in response to my question PC. I believe you covered everything. You know I'm 78 right? A great deal of what you say would disappear would not affect me at all. I get bank statemens. I write checks. I do nothing on line of a financial nature. I go to City Hall each month to pay out water/sewer bill. Why? Because I like the small-town feel of Hemet and I do that wherever I can. I have never even visited eBay let alone purchased  anything there. I am a hands-on gal and I want to see what I'm going by in person first before I decide whether I like it or not. I do use Mapquest and we also have a GPS.  I look up the weather each morning but we also subscribe to a newspaper. Newspapers are dying out because there aren't many like me who enjoying reading them in 3-dimension. Same with books. I have never tweeted or texted and guess what? I'm fine. Of course I don't know what I'm missing but I do know I am not one of those billions of  people who are mesmerized and capitivated by a tiny machine they hold in their hand as if it is a lifeline for them. Different strokes. It could be an age thing although I'm sure there are many tech-savvy old folks who stand in l ine to get the newest state-of-the-art electronic thingy because they like to be first.  I am very old -fashioned.  I miss things that are not here anymore. Libraries are different today than they were when I was a kid. Bookstores? If they still exist they are different too. People buy books from Amazon and download them and  I suppose download the download the Kindle and walk around with a metal device rather than a book with pages you can turn. Had I born in this day and age I would be a different person . I wouldn't know anything else. But I wasn't. I remember carbon paper and manual typewriters and handwritten lengthy letters and 3-dimensional cards, not e-cards. They are part of who I am.  There is much this is useful  and perhaps even fascinating in what is available today versus yesterday. But I didn't mind dialing a phone number. It wasn't a huge imposition. I like going to the bank. In the grocery line I'm usually the only person writing a check. Everyone slides a card  to debit an account I expect. I have never done that in a grocery store.  I live in the present physically but I relish a lot of the past. I  think I'm lucky to have experienced what I did way back then. Today's kids have no clue about how things used to be. I do. On Saturdays my mom and sis and I used to go "downtown" to department stores and do some shopping. Then have lunch, see a movie and come home. On the bus or streetcar. Do today's kids even know what a streetcar is? I sincerely hope I didn't offend you. If I did I apologize! Happy Friday to thee!   :)

Hi Rosie, offend me? Not hardly. I really enjoyed hearing all the things you still do "manually". Lol I was quite surprised that you've never texted. I thought all mankind has texted. I remember being at work when everyone got their own computer. I resisted and told them I didn't want one. I resisted getting internet on my cell. I didn't think I'd need it or use it. I bought, for crying out loud, can't people wait till they get home to check their emails. Boy was I wrong. I remember when ATM's started popping up, I wasn't anxious about using them and I knew people that refused. Hey,do you remember the mimeograph machine and using razor blades to correct our errors on the carbon sheets, then having to r-type the correction on a manual typewriter, making sure it was perfectly lined up. and you could only print so many copies then you'd have to re-type it. Ahhh, the memories.

I do remember all of that sweetie! I do. Fondly. Thanks for being such a swell Answermug friend. I appreciate that a lot! ((Hugs))  I have NEVER used an ATM. I don't have a cell phone but Jim does and he is always playing with it. His oldest son David gifted him with it. I have no interest in it but I certainly do appreciate being able to contact him when he is away from home if I need to do so. I am a landline gal. We have an answering machine on which people can leave messages and we can get back to them. So we have experienced similar things thee and me but you moved into the now and I'm still resisting it!  :)                                                                                                             

Wow Rosie, never an ATM? Is it because you don't trust them, or think people can hack into your account, or that you could get mugged on the way to your car. I'd rather do my banking in a few minutes online just because I'm too lazy to drive to the bank. Because then I'd have to put my makeup on in case I ran into someone I know.

I remember one experience at an ATM one day. As I pulled up to the bank, I noticed a close male friend of mine waiting his turn in the ATM line. He's a jokester so I thought I'd catch him by surprise. I snuck up behind him and put my arms around his belly and gave him a big ole bear hug, burying my boobies in his back. When I finally let go, he turned around and I realized I had just buried my boobies into the back of a complete stranger. All I could say at the time was oh shit, you aren't Rickie. I was mortified, apologized profusely and made a beeline for my car. Thank goodness he wasn't upset. He just smiled and said "Oh, it was no problem at all". I couldn't get out of there quick enough, and without my money. Can you still say we've experienced the same things. ;)

It would be like how it was before the internet. What's the difficulty in remembering that?

Because we take things for granted sometimes.  Like they're always going to be there.  It's not till you don't have what you utilize the most that you know how much you miss it.  

I've never done that PC. I never hugged a stranger thinking it was someone I knew. I hug strangers all the time though. I always ask permission first. As a result I am on a hugging basis with lots of people that I see regularly when Jim and I are out and about...guards/cashiers/grocery store employees/bank employees/nurses and all my doctors I get to know them and chat with them about their families. I like having someone's eyes light up and smile when I show up. Being recognized and having an identity doesn't always happen when you're old. You would be amazed at how many people just look right through old people and never "see" them. That's the charm of living in a small town. I have said hello to someone I thought I  knew and called him by name and it wasn't him. That's kinda mortifying.  With regard to your ATM question.  At the bank the tellers are always suggesting that I do my banking online. I will tell you what I tell them. "If I did that I would be deprived of having the pleasure of seeing you and chatting with you". They always smile and that's that. I like people-to-people encounters. People-to-machine encounters not as much. Of course I LOVE the internet because as I said once I turn it on providing it's working properly I can go anywhere in the world and investigate anything I want at any hour. From the comfort of my home. It beats waiting for the library to open and go there and spend hours researching and not being able to bring the books home because they are research sources for everyone and cannot be checked out. I did that a lot in the olden golden good old days. When I go to the market I pay by check. Walmart allows you to write the check for $20 more and Winco allows you to write the check for $40 more than your purchase. That's how I get my cash. I go into the bank only when I have deposits which I prefer to do in person and get a  receipt  for on it on the spot. I like having proof of payment. My cancelled checks serve as proof of payment as do receipts. If one does  everything online where is the paper trail? Further and more importantly if heaven forbid the internet goes down where does that leave  you vis a vis any online financial transactions?  The internet does go down locally on rare occasions for repair and maintenance. What if we were attacked and hacked and the entire internet system were damaged for weeks? What would you do?  What is Plan B and how would it be enacted/implemented? Thank you for your reply and Happy Saturday to thee PC! :) Oh. I never wear makeup. I gave up doing that  April 9, 1999. The day I retired! Freedom from having to wear it is sweet! :)

I know this reply is not directed at me PC but I'm jumping in anyway if you don't mind.  I feel it most with people.  I wouldn't say I take them for granted necessarily but that I always expect them to be in my life. Maybe I depend on it and don't question it. Now sadly death has taken some of them away. That is part of life and we all experience the death of loved ones. But sometimes people leave your life because of other reasons...hurtful words, harmful arguments, misunderstandings. Those are the ones that hurt the most. Of course you hurt when a loved one dies but that wasn't a chosen path. When people leave it's because they chose to do so and sometimes you never know why. :(

it would be boring since i cant get work and getting on the net gives me something to do

My brain is too tired to answer your question Rosie
but it (the internet) IS pretty cool huh?
i can't imagine life without it. haha
... but when i lived in India long ago,
there was no internet, no radio, no TV, no cell phones...
no need... life was perfect. haha
...but if one is involved in the world
Totally necessary it is.

I did not know that you had lived in India m'dear. I expect you have seen the Taj Mahal in person. I have read that poverty is very bad in India and that there is a huge difference between how the wealthy live and those who aren't. Was the Caste system quite obvious? It is very strict/rigid there isn't it? Thank you for your reply. Tired brain or not it is a thoughtful and insightful answer Baba.  Happy Monday!  Will you be watching the debate?

It is a fine way to invest time because you can research anything, travel anywhere. Thank you for your reply pearl and Happy Monday! :)

One aspect I don't think has been mentioned is business efficiency. Here, the Internet and Intranets are two-edged swords.

When computers first became commonplace and compact enough for each employee to have one (instead of the company having one mainframe machine taking an entire room to itself) the pundits and computer-sellers all reckoned we'd soon have "paper-less offices".

You rarely hear that now. If anything the volume of paper used has increased.

Many people still prefer to read a lengthy document like a technical or business report on paper, as it is physically easier when you wish often to refer back to things, so that need still exists.

No-one has yet found a genuine, long-term archive format other than ink on paper: we can still read documents 300 years old, but try recovering anything from a floppy disc barely 30 years old!

Many people still want genuine signatures.

It is too easy to press "Print" and run off any number of copies without thinking of the real number needed; or to print vast amounts of waste because the print-selection controls are a faff to find and use. ('Excel' and e-mail programmes are among the worst for this.)

Prior to PC universality, time and space constrained businesses to produce only the documents and copies genuinely necessary; and common items like memos were on simple forms. There were no e-post exchanges for the hell of it; no-one assumed that sending a message guaranteed instant replies.

I think the computer has brought many benefits to business, but has also made many users a lot more wasteful and impatient.

The Internet has also created a strange myth, peddled less by the computer trade than by so-called "life-style" journalists (I use the noun loosely...). I call it The Family We-all.

"Now we-all shop on-line". "As more and more of us work on-line". "Now we are all on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn", etc.

Do we? Are we? it's true that some can work almost entirely at home; and others might sometimes work at rather than from home, e.g. when they need peace and privacy to complete something like a business report. Yet how does a bricklayer build a wall on-line? How does a surgeon perform a delicate operation from the comfort of his lounge? Or a bus-driver navigate a city's streets without being in the cab?

Yes I know the life-style writers tend to be rather narrow-minded, metro-centric bubble-habituees who can work from home, and would not deign to understand the brickie's, surgeon's or driver's work and life; but the genuine "we all" depend on a vast number and range of people who cannot possibly work merely by "confuser" (as a workshop supervisor I knew called the machine). 

I've used computers at work since about 1989, and at home for nearly that time; from MS-DOS and Amstrad's CP/M to Windows 7 (even a disastrous foray into the b++++y awful WIN 10) - but I refuse to worship computers, and this is about the only "social-media" site I use. Facebook and its ilk? I take the advice I once heard from a professor of internet security, know its real purpose, and refuse to use it outright.

The Internet has its place, and that place can be genuinely important or at least very useful; but it is only a service, a means to an end, and often the end is what counts, not the means.