When Worlds Wobble….

 

 

Ah, that old prefix ‘www.” It’s so reminiscent of a more innocent time, when computers didn’t exist as a means of making a trainwreck out of life.

As I was nosing around the interwebs, looking for something like pie dough recipes, I found this link on another blog.  http://voxday.blogspot.com/2021/01/uatv-update.html

I did take the time to read through it, but the gist of it shows up in the beginning of the blogger’s article.

From the article:  UPDATE by Markku: There are some signs of things moving very fast and I believe there is a real chance of the internet really going down soon. We have discussed how this would most likely be done with the llk techies already, and it would be incredibly risky for them to try doing it at the IP level. There are so many critical services depending on IP.

What is much more likely is poisoning the world’s DNS servers by Google, after which all the sites are still there, but you can’t see them, except ones that are specifically allowed by Google. The nice thing about this is that you can work around it, if you act before it happens. You need to store the necessary information locally, where Google can’t get at it. (N.B.: He means a back-up on an adequate SSD that you can unplug from your PC.)

There is just one step that you need to do right now, before the internet goes down. How to do it depends on your operating system. – article

Now, while I do not doubt that the owner of that blog is a bit freaked or spooked by something, and got spooked by something he found (mostly likely speculation), the thing he fails to take into consideration is what it will – not would  – really take to shut down the entire worldwide internet web, which is now http/s. (Remember that www dot whatever prefix?) At this point, it is so complex and so strung out all over the globe and into space that shutting it down completely will – not would – take weeks and weeks of work by hackers and programmers.

Anyone ever use dial-up computer service? Anyone? Bueller? I mean, really, when you really think about it, Wang wasn’t all that bad, was it? Lotus was easy to use. WordPerfect was just typing without a typewriter.

The real logistics of shutting off the internet include “telecom” with satellites, air traffic, rail lines, ships at sea (all kinds), financial markets, medical centers, supercomputing stations like those in Iceland where Bitcoin resides… and gosh and golly durn, the list is literally endless, isn’t it? All those GPS systems that people use, instead of their brains, will be shut off so if you can’t figure out how to get home from the grocery store because your GPS master is down, you’re stuck in that store parking lot, even if you don’t have groceries, and you likely won’t be rescued by a sympathetic cop. They’ll have enough to do directing traffic and intersections because the traffic lights are all out of order.

I mean, really, truckers would have to go back to CB radios and hope the ceiling is high enough for someone in Indiana to reach Wyoming, right? Why not smartphones? They’re uplinked to the whole wireless system, which is run by gigantic supercomputers. Yottabytes is not a foreign language word. And the satellites that transmit your call from you to a distant destination like Beijing simply won’t go through. You might not even get an automaton’s response to your call. And landlines? They’re all run by big computer systems, too, with all the switching done by electronic signal jiggling, instead of Hooman operators pulling phone jacks out of their spots and pushing them into place.

And wouldn’t it make Bitcoin really worthless, never mind how much money Xi Jinping has squirreled away in his private pot of gold? Fella’s gotta have something set aside for retirement, right? But if Bitcoin is buzzing electrons and switches instead of hard currency and people have invested everything in that, then that silly old man down the block who keeps a secret wad of cash might be king (or something) for a day or two.

The only real treat in this could be that China and Zuckerberg and Gates and those other smarmy dorks who had a bright idea and followed it would be out of business until it all got “fixed”…. But that might take weeks…. or months…. or maybe even years.

How would you like to go to the drive-up ATM, stick your card into the slot, and get the screen readout “NO ACCESS”. Then you have to get out of your car, go into the bank, ask what’s going on and you find out that, as with your WiFi TV which doesn’t work, either, that all the bank’s computers are down, they’re working on it, do you know what your balance is? And then you go to the store to pick up a few things and no, their entire computer-based checkout system is not working but someone was clever enough to get an adding machine and can do the total on your groceries for you… except that if there’s no price list at the checkout register, you’re screwed. And then, your car, because it’s got a chip in the starter board, no longer recognizes your key because that signal isn’t transferring any more to the car’s CPU, and you’re stuck in the parking lot with about 500 other people whose lives suddenly were came to a screeching halt.

Well, computer world was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?

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