"Internet just as important as air" or "the world just might end in 2012"

Saw this on the windows gadget sitting on the desktop - Internet just as important as air, says future generation.
How it starts -
"In the latest survey to make you reflexively quit your job and start an off-the-grid alpaca farm with your lover in Vermont, "one in three college students and young professionals considers the Internet to be as important as fundamental human resources like air, water, food and shelter."

This updated hierarchy of needs comes courtesy of the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report, which polled 2,800 college students and young professionals in their 20s in 14 countries. "More than half of the study's respondents say they could not live without the Internet and cite it as an integral part of their lives' — in some cases more integral than cars, dating, and partying." .......and so on.

My first thought? I am so going to use characters based directly on the kids who responded to this survey in my end of the world story. Or rather expand on that theme; I already have a very similar character nicknamed "wet napkin" as that describes his survival skills but he is an ace on PS3/Xbox, etc.

 

This topic right here is another goddamned reason I feel old at 40.

I sincerely hope most of the polled kids were being tongue-in-cheek.

 

Well hopefully they were taking the p@ss but I will be honest I would be lost without the internet these days, it has taken over the life to a scary amount.

 

As the internet and online video games may serve as a substitute for sex in some cases (I'm not talking porn), it might explain why sex wasn't offered in the list of fundamental needs.

I lived most of life with out it (the internet, not sex) and could live without it again. I just don't want to.

I wonder what would happen if it suddenly no longer existed? Would it be something like the rapture? Would college students all over the world suddenly drop to the ground and expire?

They're all so dramatic anyway.

 

The Internet has become an essential service, much like other utilities (power, water, gas).

In the 20th century, much of America's boom was facilitated by a growth in highways that interconnected the nation, allowing goods,services and people, to flow with greater ease.

In the 21st century, the global economy relies heavily on the Internet to facilitate the exchange of goods and services.

I work in media, and can very safely say that my business has been greatly influenced by the advent of the Internet. Without it's connectivity, much of what we do would be impossible or vastly more expensive.

 

My first reaction to this poll was influenced by the story that is one of the more prominent ones I am "working on" (I use the term loosely) these days. I would love to try capture the environment that would ensue when the internet, cellular service , and other forms of modern communication are all dead; even the updated version of The Stand Stephen King did in 1990 was before those were so prevalent. But it will be probably a few years before that is anywhere near publishable form.
Along the lines of what Joniemack said I have lived a good portion of my life without the internet or a cell phone and could do so again, but would want not to find to out how that would be. I think I was 18 when my parents got their first cell phone and internet to me was a dialup modem for many years starting at the 1200 baud rate.

 

Sure, the individual use of the Internet, could disappear and the impact would create ripples but wouldn't kill culture. Again, it's not the everyday use of mobile phones and downloading porn that would be the problem, it's the impact that the loss of the Internet would have on our modern economy that would cripple us.

Businesses rely heavily on the inter-connectivity that the Internet provides.

 

Some of the most revolutionary inventions/creations are only recognised as such in hindsight. The automobile was a curiousity for years. Imagine our world without it now. But if you were to suggest you had an invention that would literally change society, but would kill 40,000 people a year because of it's misuse, you'd never get to implement it.

The internet grew much more rapidly into world-wide acceptance, but still was an oddity until the 1990's. Then it just took off into what it is today. But if you were to have suggested back then that it would allow pedophiles all over the world to unite and produce incredible quantities of sick child pornography, or that it would allow teenagers to bully others to the point of suicide, people might have thought twice about it.

Cell phones... great convenience, but kids sending naked pictures of themselves to each other? My son would die without his phone to text with.

Is the internet as important as air? No, but it might well be up there with the automobile and phone.