These are my thoughts about today's age on how internet dependency has changed us.
When my internet went down
Introduction
It
has been long since I started using a computer. I remember my first computer,
it was a 486 machine which had an embedded memory and also a big floppy disk. I
also remember the first time I used internet on a dial-up connection which was
super slow. At that time the excitement of having to communicate or see what
other people in world do or leave their lives, was amazing.
I
remember the first thing I wanted to search was images of Soccer players like
Maradona, Romario and also some American musicians. We heard about Americans
but we never saw them in person. That was because Africa and South Africa was
still recovering from the oppression regime which colonized the continent. We
were fortunate because the life changing inventions when it comes to technology
came into action in the early 90’s and by that time we were near the end of
oppression.
We
had an opportunity to learn technology when it was introduced than trying to catch-up. Not all of us jumped into
technology, some were scared of something they don’t know, and others like me,
jumped into the boat and learn and mastered different technologies.
Today for some reason my Internet router stopped working. Before I check the reason behind its behavior, I thought I should share with you how it was when the internet age was new or in non-existence. The reason I wrote this is to try to open your eyes on the events that might happen if my internet or the whole world stopped the interaction via internet. Three questions that came to my mind.
1) What will happen if the
internet could stop working?
2)
What will I loose?
3) What will I gain and how will I continue to do software Development?
What will happen if the Internet
could stop working?
I
have developers who are working in foreign countries that I have never been to
and the first thing I will loose is the money i invested in these developers.
Projects that I financed and never completed because of lack of internet. Imagine the number of transactions that take
place or waiting to happen daily in banks. It is more than one can imagine. Billions
of transactions taking place in the stock markets or Forex market. imagine if
all this can end , it means some people will die immediately when that happens
, some will realize that they have lost more than they have gain, some would
not have withdrawn their foreign investment and there will be no way to get
hold of the profits.
Is this what we want?
Are we not too depended on something that
is out of our control?
Should we allow something we don’t
have control over, to run our lives?
Many
developers spend too much time away from their families, the age of internet
has taken over their lives and also their fear of being behind has filled their
hearts with energy that keeps them away from their loved ones.
Some
of you people will loose your Jobs because there won’t be a need for them to be
around. This is what could happen if the internet decide to stop working. The
possibility of this happening is 1%.
Well one might say if there is 1% then there is a possibility that it
could happen, well it is true. It is
always good to think of the opposite side of things every time.
What will I loose?
My next question, was “What will I loose”. As I stated above
I will loose of money, my paid subscription to websites which made life easier
for developers, all third party controls that we purchase to make life easier
for us as developers will be lost. Instant news, Online Share Trading profits
that one accumulated, valuable friendship with friends from other part of the
world will be lost, my online hosted databases, my unity assets that I bought
for my project and dropbox files that are valuable to me. As you can see, I
will loose a lot things. Maybe your loss is worse than mine.
I am getting older and there are things that I actually don’t
worry about anymore because of the experience I gain from Life, but a person
younger than me would actually have a list which differs from what I have. I am more concern about things that can make
me gain financially than things that can amuse me. I know that there are a lot
of people who are addicted to social media, instant messaging like whatsup, Facebook
and other popular platforms. Well if I forget my phone at home driving to the
office , I don’t turn back to get the phone because my phone will never run my
life and also if there is someone who is urgently looking for me, they will
find a way to get hold of me if God permits them. I don’t get worried. I still
have a small percentage of sanity even though I am like everyone who is diving
in the techno dependency.
What will I gain and how will I
continue to do software Development?
The first thing is that I will save money, gain sanity and also be free from negative news that I can’t directly change, get to spend more time with my family, get a chance to be a better man.
These days we are surrounded by news and all other information that is overloading us. We struggle to know which information is good for us and which information is not good for us. With the internet out of the picture, one have time and peace of mind to make the right decision.
In this case it does not mean software development is dead, but we will be now stepping away from web development and back to windows development, but still the intranet can continue to embrace web, but that will be on a minimal basis. The Desktop application will rise again. This will bring painful days that developers who are coming from my age who have endured the pain of desktop applications, Days when developers could think and develop without help of the internet, when developers put their mind to what they did.
The purpose of a technology is to make life easier, but not to make people to stop thinking. Developers today have stopped thinking, if they encounter a problem, the first place to start solving the problem is the internet. Well I am also guilty of this. Lately I was working on Kinect for Windows V2 project. As you know this is a new technology so the internet will barely help you. I could feel the pain of trying to do something many times and getting a breakthrough after 4 hours of trying to get a solution on my own. Every time I get stuck I knew no one has come across this and there was no way I could get the answer from the net because of the uncommon requirements i was working on.
Conclusion
It is a choice that we are free to make to move away from dependency. I still want a face
to face conversation with someone than a whatsup communication or Skype communication. I have recently stopped using whatsup because it’s a door to
many things, some are good and some are bad. I also realized that people have
lost their morals grounds because they can now communicate with someone without
looking them in their eyes. Many families are broken today because of that,
many companies lost their client because of instant messaging. What is important
to remember is we all can choose to walk away because if you convince yourself
that you will be discipline and never deviate, you are addicted and you have
blinded.
This
is was my thoughts when my internet went down, if you see this article online, you
then know that my internet router came back to life.