June, 2016
www.us-
tech.com The Day the Internet Broke By Philip Stoten (@philipstoten) I
often go to a coffee shop to write. I feel that I need a change of scenery and a chance to spend an hour or two without the constant interrup-
tion of Skype, LinkedIn, we-chat, iMessage, and email. A flight works just as well, but when I’m at home, my local coffee shop provides that tempo- rary bubble. As with every other coffee shop in London,
and indeed the civilized world, my local one pro- vides free WiFi and is full of bright young things on laptops and smartphones creating music, web- sites and all kinds of other mischief. This day was no exception; the sound of keyboards tapping mixed with the faint bass from headphones was the only noise, aside from the coffee machine and conversations of the staff as customers ordered their skinny caramel lattes. I had ar- rived around 11:30, thinking I’d knock off a few hundred words before lunch and proofread later. Around noon, the world changed.
The first thing I noticed was the sound of people talking. Not on YouTube, but real people talking to each other! I looked up from my computer and gazed around at my fellow “users” who had their heads up like Meerkats, and were engaged in what I can only de- scribe as conversation — not the norm in today’s Central London. Next, I no- ticed that outside people seemed to be looking at where they were going and at the sights around them, rather than at the obligatory smartphone held just far enough in front of them to focus on. A few brave souls had broken
ranks and asked the barista to reset the Internet. I’m pretty sure they meant reset the modem or router. It seems unlikely that a barista on Bermondsey Street, SE1 would be trusted with the on/off controls to the World Wide Web, even if he can make leaves and hearts in your milk foam. Suddenly a young girl burst through the door, and with panic on
in and we’d all be back online. Resigning myself to this blip in connectivity
as a small inconvenience, I strolled to a little seafood spot in the Borough Market for a few oys-
Suddenly a young girl burst through the door and with panic on her face and uttered words that rocked our world: “The Internet’s broken!”
ters and perhaps a glass of wine. After all, if the day was going to be a write-off work-wise I might as well relax and enjoy London. Today the bar was busy as always, but in- stead of people on devices staring at screens, some
had turned to their neighbors and struck up con- versations. Families and couples at tables were chatting with each other rather than being glued to their phones, and no one seemed to be taking pictures of food to post on Facebook, presumably because Facebook was broken too. Perhaps it was all those selfies and pictures of food that had pushed the Internet over the edge, filling the cloud, or even all the clouds, with pointless images that somehow never get deleted. My usual rushed, thirty-minute lunch turned
into a two-hour affair, during which I met an Uber driver who had stopped working because Uber was broken, and a nice French couple who needed direc- tions to sights around town, having previously de-
Continued on page 29
Page 21
Philip Stoten is an internation- ally recognized EMS industry expert. Known for his skills as an inter viewer, reporter and
panel moderator, Philip is a fea- tured multi-media contributor to U.S. Tech on a regular basis.
her face akin to sharing the news that the Titanic had hit an iceberg, uttered words that rocked the world: “The In- ternet’s broken!” Initially, everyone was confused and dismayed, surely this couldn’t happen, surely you can’t break the Internet! After some soul searching we admitted that none of us really knew what the Internet was, or where it was, and indeed whether it could be broken or not. Maybe somewhere, possibly at
NASA, someone really smart had tripped on a cable, pulled the plug out of a wall socket and turned off the In- ternet. When they noticed, which they would soon, they’d plug it back
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