After watching the series Ancient Apocalypse I had some thoughts I just want to get down before they drive me mad.
A friend commented in a group online that their entire school district’s internet has been knocked out by an 18-wheeler hitting the source. I joked that they’d have to do analog teaching as we did when I was a kid/teen. Internet became widely available when I was about 14/15, and even in the last few years of schooling I didn’t use it much. Definitely not for schooling. I finished at home, actually, as my introverted (and very autistic, though not recognized yet) self was having a very hard time dealing with being in such an enclosed environment with my peers. I finished the last 1.5 years at home via correspondence, having to do the schoolwork on paper and send it via snail mail for evaluation. Schooling wasn’t online, it was all in books and on true paper.
When the internet goes down, as it has several times in Texas in the past few years due to ice storms our grid isn’t equipped to handle, I have had no struggle whatsoever as I’ve hundreds of books in my home just waiting to be devoured. Going “analog” or back to paper hasn’t been an issue. But we store SO VERY MUCH in the good ol’ cloud that is all digital now. Important documents, entire jobs are based online, our communication with others all depends on having the internet at the ready. Hardly anyone has a true home phone anymore, and rely on their pocket devices. If everything crashed for weeks people would be stranded and hopeless.
The online maps people depend on solely, Ebooks, travel, communication, all of it would be down, and anyone who relies on digital information to get about their daily lives would be completely without resources. I collect books, I collect paper maps, I collect paper and pens and stamps for this very reason. Most people wouldn’t even know how to send a letter these days without looking up online how to send one.
What if there WAS another highly developed society in the past before the last ice age ended? What if they all had a similar system and depended only on similarly “online” documents, communication, etc? What if it all crashed irrevocably and there was no recovery? Could that contribute to the fact there is very little evidence that they existed? How much evidence would there be that we existed if the same happened and our society had developed to the stage where they no longer used paper or tangible documents at all? When it went down what would be out there to prove that we even existed in a few thousand years?
So very many interesting questions…and it only contributes highly to my determination to ensure my writings all exist somewhere on paper and not solely digitally. So I shall continue to write and journal and ensure there is some evidence I even existed, instead of it disappearing completely when the internet goes down.
A Burd in Flight 