Quote:
Originally Posted by wizwor
A lot of people and institutions would rather the internet had never come to be. Wal-Mart, for instance, could probably do without Amazon and there is no Amazon without the internet. I'm guessing Border Books would vote against an internet as well.
I also agree that it is not very important. Some tend to make it more important than it should be, but a week without the internet can be cathartic. It's inconvenient, but it's not the end of the world.
My little town loses utilities almost annually for a week or so. No electricity, no cable, no internet. When the snow stops, we pull out our generators and grills and make the best of things. When one ventures out for food and gasoline, the stores are dark, but they are open. Employees stand at the door tabulating orders and making change.
I'm pretty confident that the world would recover from whatever iCatastrophe comes along. In the mean time, the internet has spawned a lot of ideas that have led to goods and services that make out lives easier and more entertaining.
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Ah, but could Wal-Mart do without the internet? When you buy something it's scanned out and deducted from the store's inventory and I wager that re-ordering products for any given Wal-Mart store is done via the internet as well. For that matter some of Wal-Mart's business is now via the net. I bought a refurbished desktop (Win7) from Wal-Mart not long ago and the whole transaction was accomplished via the internet.