Dear diary - the web is no more...

 

"Image generated by DALL-E through OpenAI's ChatGPT platform."

 Dear diary, 

The web has gone.

 How would you react if the internet was turned off?

Would you be delighted, thrilled, thankful? 'Oh thank goodness that ghastly thing has gone at last. People are talking to each other instead of staring at their wretched screens.'

Or would you be worried, scared, terrified! At how the world would cope without this web that can appear as beautiful as spider's covered in early morning dew or as dark and disturbing as Shelob's lair keeping us all stuck like fat juicy flies. 

This is my next challenge with Alpha writers, the online writers group that I'm part of. To write a diary entry on the day that the internet is turned off.

To begin with, would it be that bad? It would depend on the context. Just checking your emails or browsing the web or social media, it would be an inconvenience. Working from home, it would be annoying and infuriating. But if you are traveling somewhere, or due a medical appointment, then it gets a lot more serious. We all know how much people's lives were affected by the Microsoft blue screen nightmare.

So much of our lives depends on the web. How many of us use cash any more to pay for anything, preferring to use our phones or even watches. Even if we reverted to cash, would the ATM stop working if it couldn't connect with the internet?

Shops wouldn't be able to connect with their suppliers, drivers would be lost without their Sat Nav.

We would lose access to instant non-stop news. No one would know what was going on. Who would we ask? Who could we trust? How long would it be till social unrest began to happen?

How long did it take for us to become so reliant on updates at our fingertips? And unless we look at reliable sources how much can we trust those updates? 

For years I lived without the web, and many of us have, so surely we'd cope without it, but how much chaos would ensure first and would life be significantly better for it being gone for ever? 

Here's a powerful case of why the internet should have an off switch by the Guardian TV critic Lucy Mangan.

And for us writers, as long as we'd have paper and something to write with, we'd be happy, wouldn't we? 

Martin is a writer, baker, photographer and storyteller. He's been published in the ACW Christmas anthology and Lent devotional. He's currently honing his craft at flash fiction and you can find him on Twitter here.