C – Computer malfunction…BIG TIME!

Catastrophe!

What if…all computers shut down?

Have you ever forgotten to put your watch on and discover it missing while you are away from home? Similarly, ever forgot your phone?  How did that day go for you? How about going away camping where there was no electricity or television? Did you go through withdrawal? Could you do it?

My niece once asked me, am I ever without my iPad? And the answer was, for the most part, no. So this past weekend I forgot to pack my iPad when I was visiting my son. Did I survive? I did. But I have to say that I did have my iPhone and I also had my computer. What I did discover was how much I relied on my iPad. I use it all of the time. When I’m teaching, I always carry it with me. I can pull up an app to demonstrate some concept I’m working on to a student, or open up my e-reader to continue a book I’m reading. I love learning new things, so I’m constantly looking things up on the web. I also use it to play some word games. Having my computer with me helped, but it was limited to about 3 hours before I had to recharge it. My iPhone worked too, but it has a very small screen, which made it more difficult, especially if I wanted to do something that involved writing, like this blog. So I managed to survive the 4 days I was without my iPad. I wasn’t very happy about it.

Let’s take that to a grander scale. Suppose there was some solar storm, worldwide blackout, super lightning strike or something like that, that shorted out computer power supplies. And to make this interesting,  your tablets and phones, once the battery drained, couldn’t  be recharged, so no longer worked. What would happen?

The biggest implication would not be whether or not you could handle the lack of computers, but the worldwide implication of what computers do to run our lives. Think of national defense, traffic control (both on the ground and in the air), many of our appliances, communication, as well as our electronic health records (which are mandated by law) use computer technology. These are issues that would be catastrophic. Our own little problems of having no computers would not be the problem, true survival might be the bigger issue.

So let’s scale back on our computer shutdown issue. Suppose all of the global things do work, it is only our personal devices that are affected. Could you live without them, and if so, for how long.

I have an advantage over the large population. I’m old enough to have lived quite a long time prior to all of these things being invented. I got my first computer (Apple //e) in 1983. I was 33 years old. So I have been able to survive without computers through some of my adulthood years. Things like writing and research and reading books, I would be able to do without much difficulty. I would definitely miss the speed and amount of information that I can retrieve and of not being able to have the books and writing I’ve done always at hand. I would probably take more walks outside and put more energy into things like writing and storytelling. Unfortunately most of my life I have been around televisions so I would still watch TV unless that was gone too. In that case, I might suffer a bit more withdrawal. But I think I could do it.

One could ask, that if I thought I could do it, would I be willing to go cold turkey for a length of time, such as a week to prove it. The answer would be, “No”. I have no need to prove myself.

What about the rest of you?  A large number of you have only known life with computers and technology. Your lives are built around its use. Unless you are living in some Amish country or anti-tech commune, your experiences without technology are very limited. What would you replace your gizmo’s with? How would you spend your time? Could you do it, for any length of time?

What’s interesting is that I’m not the only person to think about this topic. I googled the question, “ What would life be like without computers?” This is the number of hits Google got in 0.69 seconds: About 124,000,000 results.  Try it yourself.

And what if computers had never been invented, where would we be all today? Your guess is as good as mine.