Since the advent of the world wide web or most commonly known as the “internet”, more than two-thirds of the world’s population have been hooked. A day will not pass without a “netizen” logging in and surfing the internet. The “netizen” is a modern-day jargon just recently invented to call a person who is using the internet.
The internet is used for communicating, learning, archiving, disseminating information, news and weather updates, blogging (like what I am doing right now) and almost for anything under the sun. A word has been added to the English dictionary to denote an action that means “looking for information using Google” — the word Google, which is the name of a popular internet and search engine company, has now become an English word. What else will be added to the English dictionary that will emanate from the use of the internet?
Emails have become the most common form of communication, including messenger services. With the invention of smart phones, the internet has become portable and mobile. You no longer need to be in your office to access your emails. They are directly pushed to our smart phones nowadays.
Even voice calls can be made via internet using “VOIP” (voice over IP) like what Skype and Yahoo Messaging services are providing their users… And it is not limited to voice only, video calls can also be made.
Movies, music, photos, and books can be procured online in digital format. “Online” is a term used for being “virtually present” on the internet… As if just by “logging in” is already equivalent to entering a room where your friends and acquaintances are. Then by “chatting” online, it makes you feel that you are actually with your friend having a conversation. And all of these are done by sending electrical signals through wires and cables hooking you up to the internet.
What will happen if, for one day, the internet shuts down? For one day, no one can use the internet… And for one day, no one is online?
No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram, no Google, no Yahoo, no Skype, no Youtube, no Pinterest, no blogging, no emails, nothing… Nothing from the internet. Your computer boots up, you opened your favorite web explorer… Nothing is showing up! You open your smartphone’s web explorer… And the same thing happens, nothing is showing up!
The executives and the office workers, without any emails, have started to use their phones to talk to each other. Those without a company phone have started seeing the person they want to talk to. Some may say, “This is the first time I heard your voice…” while others will say, “It’s the first time I saw you in person…”. Looking around the office, you will begin to observe that people are no longer confined in their cubicles. They have started to “socialize”… To be in deep conversation by using their “mouths and lips” instead of “keyboards and mouses”.
You also started talking to and seeing your friends… Getting together in malls, restaurants, and bars. You started feeling their presence “for real”… Their faces when they laugh, instead of just the three-letter word “LOL” or by an emoticon that combined “:” and “)”. And for the first time in the past uncountable years, you heard the sound of their laughter again! Yes, it was fun… To be “offline”, and yet together, with your “online” friends!
The day when the world wide web stops and became inaccessible… Will not be a day of catastrophe and social deluge to how mankind lives and interacts.
The day when the world wide web stops will be remembered as the day humanity will regain its human touch!
