Serious "What If" Question
If you could snap your fingers and make the internet: • Cease to exist
• All memory of it vanishes
• No modems either
• Software is sold and moved primarily using thumbdrives
Would you do it?
I was curious to see if there was anyone out there who actually believed the internet was a mistake
From the poll results, it sounds like there are, but not very many of them. :3
"Timmy? Where did you get that counterculture...?"
@mawr Interestingly, while I was likely to vote "no, but" anyhow... the really visceral moment of NOPE came when you said "including modems."
For me, no BBS culture means no Steve Jackson Games, no left-libertarian phase, no Principia Discordia, and no early contact with left-leaning rationalist nerds. No polite, well-deserved smackdowns for my adolescent social habits. And no opportunity to learn how to roleplay—and all the social give-and-take that requires—early on.
Plus, I would've never seen that post about the Stormgate Aerie BBS, which means no furries. Er, OK, these days I can take or leave that one really. ;) But it was an early glimpse of "Wow, adults are still allowed to play Let's Pretend? With OTHER people?"
I would have not only likely still been a fundamentalist Christian, I would have been about five times the sullen P.I.T.A. that I am now. :>
I think the problem isn't that the Internet came to exist, but that the people we were trying to flee figured out how to use it, too. And they did the same thing to this world that they did to the "real" one that we came here to get away from. ;p
