life without internet and technology essay

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Imagine What Life Would Be Like Without The Internet

• Categories: Impact of Technology Internet World Wide Web

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Words: 1509 |

Published: Oct 17, 2018

Words: 1509 | Pages: 3 | 8 min read

Table of contents

How would having no internet affect the general personal user, life without internet-communication, life without the internet – effects on business, access to information & resources cut, a life without internet: impossible or not, works cited.

You may also be interested Free Online Conclusion Generator

• For getting Information
• Communication is another way to use the internet.
• People use various mail services like Gmail, Yahoo mail, AOL, and Hotmail etc to send files.
• There is a very close relation of the internet to entertainment. It’s watching videos on YouTube, playing live games, or downloading movies
• People can make money online by using the internet.
• Internet marketers use the internet to sell products.
• Online education
• Adner, R. (2006). Match your innovation strategy to your innovation ecosystem. Harvard Business Review, 84(4), 98-107.
• Castells, M. (2001). The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford University Press.
• Chaffey, D. (2019). Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. Pearson.
• Evans, P. (2012). The Internet of Things: How the Next Evolution of the Internet Is Changing Everything. CISCO IBSG.
• O'Reilly, T. (2005). What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. O'Reilly Media.
• Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. MIT Press.
• Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. Penguin Books.
• Tapscott, D., & Williams, A. D. (2008). Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Portfolio.
• Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books.
• van Dijck, J. (2013). The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford University Press.

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Short Essay on Life Without Technology [100, 200, 400 Words] With PDF 

In today’s session, you will learn to write short essays on the topic of Life Without Technology. There will be three sets of essays covering different word limits. 

Short Essay on Life Without Technology in 100 Words 

Today, technology has become an important part of our daily lives. Mobile phones, tablets and computers have made connecting with people around the world an easy task. We can send and receive pictures, videos and documents over the internet. Technologically advanced machines like automatic washing machines, dishwashers, cleaning robots, smart televisions and various smart appliances have made life very comfortable for people.

However, these appliances have also made people lazy. People today have lost the connection with nature, with real people, with their friends and families. They hardly need to do their day-to-day work by themselves and have become physically unfit. Life without technology seems impossible today, but one must make sure to strike a balance between depending on technology and doing their work themselves. 

Short Essay on Life Without Technology in 200 Words 

There is no doubt that technology has made life easier for people. A hundred years ago, people wouldn’t have imagined that today, we will have so many gadgets to help us with our daily life. 

Today, mobile phones, tablets and computers have made connecting with people around the world an easy task. We can send and receive pictures, videos and documents over the internet. Technologically advanced machines like automatic washing machines, dishwashers, cleaning robots, smart televisions and various smart appliances have made life very comfortable for people. Even students are now dependent on online platforms to learn and understand their subjects better. If we want to travel, we do not use physical maps anymore but depend on GPS. 

However, these appliances and applications have also made people lazy. People today have lost the connection with nature, with real people, with their friends and families. They hardly need to do their day-to-day work by themselves and have become physically unfit. If someone loses their mobile phone, it feels as if they have lost an organ. Life without technology seems impossible today, but one must make sure to strike a balance between depending on technology and doing their work themselves. Only then, technology will prove to be a boon and not a bane for us. 

Short Essay on Life Without Technology in 400 Words

Today, technology has changed the way we conduct our lives and it is hard to imagine getting through the day without help from one or the other type of gadget. 

Today, mobile phones, tablets and computers have made connecting with people around the world an easy task. We can send and receive pictures, videos and documents over the internet. Technologically advanced machines like automatic washing machines, dishwashers, cleaning robots, smart televisions and various smart appliances have made life very comfortable for people.

Even students are now dependent on online platforms to learn and understand their subjects better. For their research and assignments, they need the help of the internet. If we want to travel, we do not use physical maps anymore but depend on GPS. One needs so many gadgets in the office like desktops, printers, xerox machines, fax machines, et cetera. Even in the kitchen, one needs mixer-grinders, food processors, microwave ovens and refrigerators. If we want to go somewhere and need to book train, bus or flight tickets for the same, we still use the internet. 

However, these gadgets, appliances and applications have also made people lazy. People today have lost the connection with nature, with real people, with their friends and families. They are always glued to their phone screens, happy in their virtual world and dislike going out. They hardly need to do their day-to-day work by themselves and have become physically unfit. If one wants some information, instead of thoroughly reading about it and understanding the topic completely, they can just search on the internet and get a short, concise answer.

All this has slowed down our brains and made us lose our creativity. Our lives have become entirely dependent on technology and gadgets. One cannot survive without mobile phones today. Be it an office employee or a school student, everyone needs a phone to stay connected with their family, friends, work and school. If someone loses their mobile phone, it feels as if they have lost an organ. 

A hundred years ago, people wouldn’t have imagined that today, we will have so many gadgets to help us with our daily life. Life without technology seems impossible today, but one must make sure to strike a balance between depending on technology and doing their work themselves. Only when things are well-balanced, technology will prove to be a boon and not a bane for us. Otherwise, it wouldn’t take long for us to lose ourselves in gadgets and the virtual world and destroy our health and peace of mind. 

In today’s session, I have written these sample essays with a very simplistic approach for a better understanding of all kinds of students. If you still have any doubts regarding this topic, kindly, keep me informed through some quick comments. I’ll try to answer all your queries to the best of my ability. To read more such essays on various other important topics, keep browsing our website. 

Thank you for being with us. Have a great day.

Could you live without the internet? People in these countries say they can’t imagine it

82% of Indians surveyed said they couldn’t imagine an offline life Image:  REUTERS/Mike Segar

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Stay up to date:, internet governance.

Given the amount of time we spend on our smartphones, tablets and computers, an unconnected world would be anathema to many of us.

Estimates place the number of internet users worldwide in the region of 3.6 billion – around half the world’s population – while Facebook has more than 2 billion active monthly users .

Ipsos surveyed more than 18,000 people across 23 countries and two thirds said they couldn’t imagine life without the internet.

However, some nationalities appear to be especially reliant on the internet – 82% of Indians surveyed said they couldn’t imagine an offline life. India has the second highest number of internet users worldwide by headcount, although at 635.8 million this accounts for only 26% of the population .

The UK, while having fewer internet users than more populous countries such as India, China, the US and Brazil, was placed second, with 78% unable to contemplate getting by without it.

China, which has the highest number of internet users of any country – 731 million as of March 2017 – is third, with 77%.

Digital downtime

Millennials and the post-millennial generation are more connected than any other age group, but the rise of social media has coincided with increased levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness among young people .

In the UK adults now spend an average of 25 hours online per week, up from nine hours in 2005. This figure increased to 29 hours for young people aged 16-24, according to a survey by the country’s communications regulator Ofcom .

The study found that more than a third of UK internet users did a “digital detox” at some point last year, and the age group most likely to take a break were 16 to 24 year olds.

As a result of their digital detox, more than a third said they felt more productive, almost a third found it liberating and a quarter enjoyed life more. Although 16% said they experienced a “fear of missing out”, known as FOMO, and 15% felt lost and 14% cut off.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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How Would Your Life Be Different if You Didn’t Have Wi-Fi and Cellular Service?

Green Bank, W.Va., is home to a telescope so large that it requires near radio silence to operate, a technological restriction that has created a unique kind of modern childhood. Do you think your life would be better if you lived in a quiet zone like Green Bank?

By Shannon Doyne

Find all our Student Opinion questions here.

Imagine if you lived in a place where you couldn’t use Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook on your phone. You couldn’t text your friends. You couldn’t even watch YouTube videos, unless you were watching on a broadband-wired computer. Why? Because you lived in a quiet zone, where Wi-Fi is both unavailable and banned and where cellphone signals are nonexistent.

Welcome to Green Bank, W.Va., home to the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope, which requires near radio silence.

How do you think your life would be different? Would it be better in some ways? Worse in others?

In “ No Cell Phone, No Wi-Fi, No Problem. Growing Up Inside America’s ‘Quiet Zone ,’” Dan Levin writes:

GREEN BANK, W.Va. — Viral dance memes and dance challenges on TikTok largely bypass Green Bank, W.Va. So do viral sensations like augmented reality filters on Snapchat and Instagram. And when a Facebook fad had people all over the globe dumping ice water on their heads a few summers ago, Charity Warder, now a senior at Pocahontas County High School, was late to the game. Sure, Charity has an iPhone, but she uses it mostly as a clock and a calculator. She makes phone calls from a landline, and she rarely texts her friends. Texting and driving? “It’s not a thing here,” she said. When Charity wants to get online at home, she sits at her family’s desktop computer, which has a broadband connection that is so sluggish, it takes minutes to load a YouTube video. “We fight over the computer,” said Charity, 18. “That’s actually a thing here.”

The article continues:

Nearly 15 million Americans live in sparsely populated communities where there is no broadband internet service at all, a stark digital divide across America between those with access to uber-fast connections and those with none. But in Green Bank, where the restrictions are mandatory, the quiet zone has in many ways created a time warp in the mountainous region. Phone booths loom near barns and stand guard on rural roads. Paper maps are still common. Here, people are less distracted by the technologies that have come to dominate 21st-century American life. At a time when nearly 60 percent of American teens say they have been bullied or harassed online , and studies have found links between social media use and teen mental health problems , the digital limitations around Green Bank have created a unique kind of modern childhood, providing a glimpse into what it means to grow up without the constant buzz of texting and social media. The quiet, too, has given young people here a greater appreciation for fostering in-real-life connections, the great outdoors and personal privacy. Even teenagers who are able to use Wi-Fi at home — in the quiet zone but outside its 10-mile core — said they spend less time online than most people their ages, and those who have moved to the quiet zone said they have discovered a newfound sense of adventure. Although Charity received an iPhone 6 for Christmas two years ago, she said she rarely looked at it. She makes plans with friends the old-fashioned way: on a landline or in person. After school, instead of being glued to social media, she usually goes running before tending to her family’s goats, chickens and ducks. Then she typically makes dinner with her mother. The family’s computer is helpful for homework — but not much else. On a recent evening, Charity sat in the family’s cozy living room, chatting with her boyfriend and parents. Undistracted by technology, they laughed and maintained eye contact, a domestic scene they recognize as somewhat rare. “It kind of makes us old-school,” Charity said. “My parents would kill me if I was staring at my phone and not listening to them.”

The article ends with anecdotes about a family who recently moved from Connecticut to Green Bank. The 13-year-old daughter reflects on how her life has changed:

Now home-schooled by her mother, Jenna said she did not miss her phone, Instagram or really anything else about her old life. Instead, she likes to spend her time reading in a neighbor’s vast library and riding her family’s six-wheel all-terrain vehicle across the fields. Occasionally, when she is able to connect to Wi-Fi, she will scroll through social media or watch YouTube videos on her phone. But, she said one evening, “it just doesn’t feel real anymore.” “Back in Connecticut, that was all I had to do,” she said. “Now I’m like, why am I doing this when I could be climbing a tree?”

Students, read the entire article, then tell us:

Would you want to live in or visit a quiet zone like Green Bank? Why or why not? What would you miss — and not miss — about not having Wi-Fi and cellular service?

After Jenna Baxter moved to Green Bank and experienced life without social media and YouTube for several months, she commented that they didn’t “feel real anymore.” Can you relate? Have you ever been away from your phone and computer for a while, perhaps while traveling or away at camp? How did you feel at the time?

If you — and everyone else in your community — didn’t have access to texting, social media and online videos, how do you think you would spend your time? Do you think you would miss your online life?

How much do you rely on the internet for school-related tasks like submitting homework and doing research? How would this change if you lived in a place where internet speeds were slow? How do you think school would be different? What about assignments?

Some of the teenagers quoted in the article mention certain expectations their parents have for them, such as maintaining eye contact during conversations and spending time together. How does that compare with life in your house? Are the adults you live with on their phones and computers just as much as you are? How would your parents cope with life in a place like Green Bank?

What, if anything, do you think the young people who live in Green Bank are missing out on by not having access to certain technology-related experiences?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

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Life without Internet (Essay/Paper Sample)

Table of Contents

Introduction

What would everyday life be like if there was no internet? We have gotten used to living online for such a long time that staying offline permanently is such an alien concept.

This essay example explores the tough question, “Is it possible to live without the Internet?” And if it is, is it something we would want to experience in this generation?

If you want to write your own opinion on this topic through an essay, contact our essay service so that we can match you with a writer who can help you piece your thoughts together on this topic.

Everyday Life without the Internet

Let’s face it: the internet has become one of, if not the most important invention in the modern world. It is difficult to imagine how life would be in the absence of it.

As going online has completely revolutionized communication, it is possible to accomplish so many things online. There is something on the internet that everyone can benefit from. But believe it or not, there are people who have lived without wi-fi to this very day. Have you ever thought about what their lives look like?

This essay seeks to imagine what life would look like without any internet connection, and whether or not the alternative reality seems equally attractive.

Reimagining Work Life without the World Wide Web

In the absence of going online, simple and speedy communication would no longer exist. Relaying and receiving messages would be a lot slower, so business transactions would definitely be affected. People would have to resort to traditional communication channels such as telephones and snail-mail. We all know how tedious both of these are. Business decisions will take longer to make, and ordering and delivering products will have longer lead times.

Without the Internet, digital media and marketing would no longer exist. Again, marketers would have to go back to older means of promoting products, such as direct marketing. Holding meetings would go back to physical spaces as video conferencing will no longer be possible without going online.

Yes, all of these methods are of a much slower pace, but surely people would adjust. They were able to thrive using those methods in the past before the internet was born, so they can do it again.

No Internet, Slower-Paced Relationships

In terms of relationships and socialization, the non-existence of the internet means the disappearance of social media sites. Instead of searching for and adding old acquaintances, people would have to go the longer route of checking the phone directory to find them. Keeping in touch with friends across the globe will likely be as difficult, as people would rely on snail-mail to reconnect and have conversations. Without social media, keeping up with people’s lives will be close to impossible.

Having said that, going online is a double-edged sword. While its pros and benefits are undeniable, there is much to be said about negative exposure. Young people gain access to a host of data that may not be appropriate. Pornography is a profitable business, thanks to the World Wide Web. Also, cyber-bullying emerged as one of the top issues young kids and young people alike face. It’s true that the internet connects people, but it also disconnects them, depending on how it is used.

One could say that a life without going online could be more peaceful. Without unnecessary exposure to information, you may not even need to know, you could enjoy life in your personal bubble. You won’t have to obsess over something that’s not relevant to you.

However, with the internet, need-to-know news is made readily available to you. When something important is happening across the world, you won’t have to wait for your relatives from that country to send you an update through the post. You’ll be notified of all related news items the moment you are online. You could say that it’s the pace and speed of the arrival of information that gives the internet an edge.

At the end of the day, with today’s hustle and bustle, we have learned to treat the internet as an essential tool for going about our days. Taking that convenience away would definitely slow things down. While this sounds unattractive to some, there is an opportunity here to innovate and to come up with other ways to speed things up without going online. People would have to relearn new ways to shop, bank, and work on relationships. At the same time, brands will be challenged to meet people where they are when these changes occur. They have to be ready with an alternative experience that’s just as appealing.

Have you ever thought about what life without your favorite apps and websites would look like? Are you the kind of person who would easily thrive without them?

Short Essay On Life Without Internet

As one of the most important inventions of this century, going online has become such an essential part of our daily lives that living without it doesn’t make much sense. But if you think about it, many generations before us have managed to thrive without this connection to the world. Have you wondered how you would fare without something to connect to?

Perhaps the biggest impact on our generation would be the loss of search engines and social networks. We have gotten used to accessing information in just mere seconds. Life before this required the use of phone books and directories, which could take quite a long time and plenty of finger-skimming through pages. It would also be hard to make friends outside our sphere without social media. The closest thing we could have would be pen pals. But since the internet has robbed us of patience to wait for messages to arrive, we may easily give up on such an idea.

Just the loss of these two technologies is already enough to make an internet-savvy person wince. Off-line living just doesn’t seem to be as exciting, and could take time to adjust to.

Advantages Of A Life Without the Internet 

What aspects of life could be positively changed without the internet? For one, people would actually spend time talking to each other in person. We would find plenty of families and groups of friends making the effort to meet up personally once again. Students would make use of school and public libraries once again. They would get to physically open a book and appreciate the smell of its pages as they look for the information they need. Loved ones from different parts of the world would find ways to connect by writing to each other. They would once again feel the anticipation of seeing letters in the mail from people who mean a lot to them.

Disadvantages Of A Life Without Internet

The biggest downside of living without the internet is slower access to information. We would lose the benefits of getting updates on the latest news events that could transform mankind’s history at the click of a mouse. It would be difficult to know on the spot what’s been happening in other areas of the world. Communication during crises would prove challenging. We may have to wait for months on end to hear back from family and friends who are hit by calamities or political events. Bank and retail transactions would go back to brick-and-mortar structures, so the risk of experiencing long lines is high. Businesses would lose their online presence, as the website as we know it would cease to exist.

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What Would a World Without Internet Look Like?

A thought experiment

Not long ago, browsing the Internet, I happened to stumble on a list titled, "The Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time, According to the Internet."   Like most lists of its kind, it was subjective and far from definitive, but still, it represented an interesting challenge. As someone who reads for pleasure as much as for job security, I decided to finish as many of the titles as I could handle.

After completing over a dozen (and taking in many of the film adaptations) the following occurred to me: Not one of these acclaimed futuristic stories—at least none of the many I was exposed to—took place in a world with any version of the Internet. All instances of published media, daily communication, romance—all offline.

In part, this has to do with the constraints of narrative writing, explains the technology writer Clive Thompson. “A lot of science fiction was primarily focused on moving people and things around in exciting ways,” he says. “These forward-thinkers were using flashy visuals to hook their readers, while understandably overlooking non-sexy things such as inaudible conversations.”

And inaudible conversations are the bread and butter of the world wide web. As Jon Stewart once put it, the Internet today “is just a world passing around notes in a classroom.”

But my experience led me to an interesting thought experiment: How might we live without the world’s largest note exchange? Or, in other words, what would the world be like today if the Internet ceased to exist?

The easiest starting point may be to just look back at life before 1990—a time of landline telephones, 9-to-5 work schedules, and VHS-rental stores. But that historical reality doesn’t really answer the question, because in an alternate history, we wouldn’t have known what we were missing. “The Internet has so permeated our lives that its influence is becoming impossible to see,” says the philosopher Clay Shirky . “Imagining today minus the Net is as content-free an exercise as imagining London in the 1840s with no steam power, New York in the 1930s with no elevators, or L.A. in the 1970s with no cars. After a while, the trellis so shapes the vine that you can’t separate the two.”

For the sake of this exercise, though, let’s try. As an example, let’s look at the life of Brian Lam, the former editorial director of the technology site Gizmodo . In 2011, Lam quit and moved to Hawaii to found the gadget-review blog The Wirecutter , a move that redefined his professional relationship to the Internet.

“As a business owner, I couldn’t do what I do today without the Internet,” Lam says. “My team and I would be forced to live in a big market, probably New York. Consequently, I’d have less access to the outdoors, no access to the global talent I currently employ, and a narrower perspective.”

But in some cases, he acknowledges, the digital age hasn’t been as kind to workers. Rather than use the Internet to offer their employees more flexibility, some employers may use it to more easily exploit them, demanding more work or longer days without paying overtime.

In addition to blurring (or obliterating) the lines between work and home life, the Internet has dramatically changed our cultural conception of patience. “Without it, we wouldn’t expect instant gratification as often as we do,” notes Michael Calore, a senior editor at Wired magazine. “Not just the ability to get an online answer immediately, or same-day delivery. Because of the Internet, the anticipation of waiting for things is largely gone.”

When Steve Case co-founded America Online 30 years ago, just 3 percent of Americans were online (mostly academics). Before the web was invented, these early adopters spent less than an hour a week online (mostly email). Today, 85 percent of Americans use the Internet.

“We designed it to connect people with shared interests and ideas, to produce more durable offline relationships,” says Case, who’s now the CEO of the investment firm Revolution LLC. “We tried to level the playing field by reducing the cost to communicate and increasing efficiencies so that more voices and greater perspective could be found.”

How have those voices and perspectives changed, though? In a recent column in The New York Times , Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor who researches online behavior, argued that having the Internet in our pocket has fundamentally altered how we form relationships. She pointed to a recent University of Michigan paper that reviewed past studies on empathy in college students, and found a 40 percent decline over 30 years, with most of the drop-off taking place after 2000.

“Across generations, technology is implicated in this assault on empathy,” Turkle wrote. “We have found ways around conversation that is open-ended and spontaneous, in which we play with ideas and allow ourselves to be fully present and vulnerable.”

Lam has mixed feelings. “I wouldn’t be happy without the Internet,” he says, “but it does make me miserable at times.”

But antisocial behavior existed well before the Internet did. Thompson believes the ills of compulsive Internet use have been greatly exaggerated. “I’m not convinced it’s the epidemic it’s made out to be,” he says. “It’s called frequency illusion. In this case, seemingly obsessive phone use understandably annoys us, so we notice more than it actually occurs.”

“Truth is, we had this same argument with the telephone.” he reminds me. “That it would reduce total social encounters when, in fact, it facilitated more of them.”

Shirky, meanwhile, believes any attempt to separate the Internet from everyday life is futile. “The only credible post-Internet visions are all tied to civilizational collapse: zombie apocalypses, global pandemics, nuclear catastrophes,” he says. “The hidden message in all of those scenarios is that if the only way to convincingly imagine a world without an Internet is to imagine a world without civilization, then to a first approximation, the Internet has become our civilization.”

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Offline: day one of life without internet

Paul miller describes his first 24 hours away from the internet..

By Paul Miller

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Dear Diary,

I just spent 24 hours entirely without the internet for the first time I can remember in my adult life.

I think there are two kinds of people who live with technology constantly in their face: people who freak out when they're forcefully separated from their devices or connectivity, as if their arm has been cut off, and people who feel really chill when they're forcefully separated from their devices or connectivity, as if they've been let out of prison. I've spoken to many of both kinds as I've prepared for leaving the internet, and thankfully I fall in the latter camp.

I've lost my phone for weeks at a time before (in my pre-iPhone days), and let my current dumbphone run out of charge numerous times, and I always feel at peace knowing nobody can call me and demand anything of me. I know it's really frustrating for people who do want to reach me, and I'm always in danger of missing out on a party or failing to make a rendezvous, but overall I feel like it's a positive.

I felt like school was out for the summer

The moment I reached down and unplugged the ethernet cable from my computer, I felt like school was out for the summer, and the simultaneous relief and boredom that last bell brings. I stood up, and I realized that I'd been anticipating this moment for ages, but for some reason I hadn't made any plans. It was a stark contrast to the hectic day I'd just experienced, which had culminated in a 3-hour, ultra-insane livestream of myself playing StarCraft and Minecraft simultaneously while Skyping with friends and playing jams in Turntable.fm.

I stood up, stretched, and then played local-multiplayer video games in the office for a couple hours, naturally. All that was missing was a beanbag and string cheese and I would've been 12 again.

To get my PC rig home I took a cab. Since Jordan, one of our video producers, was following me with a camera, recording this momentous evening, my cab driver asked me what we were shooting.

"Oh, I'm leaving the internet for a year," I said.

"Why?" he asked.

It was a good question, and he didn't seem to find my answer very interesting. Our conversation ended there.

I deleted the app, tweets unseen

At home I listened to records with my roommate and the peaceful boredom continued. I found myself really engaging in the moment, asking questions and listening closely, even more than if I'd just closed my computer or locked my phone, because I knew neither of those things could demand anything of me. Not tonight, and not for another 364 nights.

My first major temptation came the next morning, when I pulled out my iPad. I had forgotten to turn my iPad's Wi-Fi off for about five minutes after midnight, so I knew there were post-disconnect tweets cached on there. They'd be about me. They would stoke my ego, or maybe deflate it. I was very curious.

I deleted the app, tweets unseen. In fact, I've been keeping my internet-reliant apps in a folder on my iPad, so I deleted all of those. Twitch.tv: I'll miss you most of all.

I went into the office a couple times for various errands, and heard snippets of news, but didn't stay long. I'll let the second-hand information stream start some other day. I heard something about a "BlackBerry 10" and something about Diet Coke that I plan on searching for in the next issue of my daily paper. More interesting to me was hearing Joshua Kopstein talk about some of his first-hand experiences that day with the Occupy Wall Street crowd. I guess I'm a bit of a first-hand fanboy right now.

It's almost intimidating to have someone be that attentive to you

I spent much of the day catching up with a friend from out of town. He's actually a major authority on limiting phone-based distraction. He doesn't text, and his phone is often off. While I had to field a bunch of calls the whole time we were hanging out, he wasn't interrupted a single time by any of his gadgets. It's almost intimidating to have someone be that attentive to you.

The whole day was really refreshing. All my internet-based social engagement the day before had been about how what I was doing was "brave" or "insane" or "inspirational" or a "publicity stunt" or "stupid" or "a waste of everyone's time," as if I was planning on going on a hunger strike or basejumping off the Empire State Building. But while hanging out with a fellow Luddite, it felt like my undertaking is the perfectly natural thing.

I haven't settled into a rhythm yet. In fact, I haven't even made a new schedule for myself. I've done a little writing, a little reading, and a lot of chilling. I don't really know what the next days and weeks are going to look like. All I know is that so far I'm loving it.

Paul Miller will regularly be posting dispatches from the disconnected world on The Verge during his year away from the internet . He won't be reading your comments, but he'll be here in spirit.

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Two students find security bug that could let millions do laundry for free, microsoft’s surface and windows ai event live blog: it’s arm time, the ai assistants are getting better fast, what to expect from microsoft’s surface event today.

More from this stream Paul Miller: Offline

Offline: how to use the internet, offline: boiling it down to the essentials, offline: making music and fighting my computer, offline: love, loss, and dating without facebook.

Essay on Life Without Internet

Students are often asked to write an essay on Life Without Internet in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Life Without Internet

Introduction.

Life without internet may seem unimaginable today. However, just a few decades ago, it was the norm.

Communication

Without internet, communication would be slower. We’d rely on letters, phone calls, and face-to-face conversations.

Information Access

Finding information would involve visiting libraries and reading books, rather than quick Google searches.

Entertainment

For entertainment, we’d play outdoor games, read books, or watch TV, instead of online gaming or streaming.

Life without internet would be different, slower but perhaps, simpler. It would foster more personal interactions and self-reliance.

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• Paragraph on Life Without Internet

250 Words Essay on Life Without Internet

The unimaginable: a life without internet.

In our hyper-connected world, the idea of a life without internet seems inconceivable. The internet has become a ubiquitous presence, shaping our social interactions, economic transactions, and knowledge acquisition.

The Impact on Communication

Without the internet, communication would return to its traditional forms: face-to-face interactions, letters, and phone calls. The immediacy of email, social media, and instant messaging would be lost, slowing down global conversations and making the world feel larger.

Changes in Information Access

Access to information would be drastically altered. Without the internet, we’d have to rely on libraries, newspapers, and television for news and knowledge. The democratizing effect of the internet, offering information access to all, would be lost.

The Economic Implications

Economically, the absence of the internet would dismantle the digital economy. Online shopping, digital marketing, and remote work would cease to exist, forcing a return to traditional brick-and-mortar businesses and office-based work.

Life without internet would be a drastic shift from our current reality. However, it would also remind us of the value of direct human interaction, the joy of anticipation in communication, and the importance of local community engagement. It’s a scenario that invites us to appreciate the conveniences of the digital age, while also recognizing the potential benefits of a slower, more grounded way of life.

500 Words Essay on Life Without Internet

The concept of life without internet.

In the digital age, it is almost unthinkable to envision a life without the internet. The World Wide Web has woven itself into the fabric of our daily lives, influencing every sphere, from communication and education to entertainment and commerce. However, it is crucial to ponder upon the hypothetical scenario of life without the internet to understand its profound impact on our existence.

Communication in a World Without Internet

In the absence of the internet, communication would revert to its traditional forms. Emails would be replaced by letters, and instant messaging would give way to phone calls and face-to-face conversations. This shift would undoubtedly slow down the pace of information exchange, but it could also foster more meaningful and personal interactions. Without the constant barrage of digital notifications, we might experience a deeper sense of presence in our conversations.

Education and Learning

Without the internet, the landscape of education and learning would undergo a dramatic transformation. The vast reservoir of online resources, e-books, and educational platforms would no longer be at our fingertips. Libraries would regain their lost significance as primary sources of knowledge. While this might limit the scope of learning to some extent, it could also encourage critical thinking and independent research, as students would no longer have ready answers available online.

Entertainment and Leisure

The absence of the internet would drastically change our leisure activities. Streaming platforms, social media, and online gaming would cease to exist, prompting us to rediscover traditional forms of entertainment like reading books, playing outdoor games, and engaging in creative pursuits. This change might lead to a healthier balance between digital and physical activities, reducing screen time and its associated health risks.

Commerce and Business

In a world without the internet, businesses would have to revert to traditional marketing strategies and brick-and-mortar stores. E-commerce, which has become a cornerstone of modern commerce, would disappear, making shopping a more tactile and personal experience. While this might limit the global reach of businesses, it could potentially foster local economies and encourage sustainable practices.

Life without the internet would indeed be challenging, considering our deep-seated reliance on it. However, this hypothetical scenario also presents a utopian vision of a slower, more mindful existence. It underlines the importance of striking a balance between our digital and real-world interactions, fostering deeper connections with our surroundings, and promoting sustainable practices. Despite the undeniable conveniences the internet provides, it is essential to occasionally unplug from the digital world and reconnect with our offline lives.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Influence of Internet on Children
• Essay on Computers and Internet
• Essay on Books vs. Internet

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Life Without Technology Essay For Students

Life without technology sounds like a fantasy novel, but that’s exactly what my family and I did this summer. My family owns a vacation home in northern Maine. It’s the kind of place where there is no internet, electricity or running water. We chose to be disconnected this summer, and while it was a good experiment, I must admit it wasn’t as hard as I anticipated.

Table of Contents

Essay On Life Without Technology With Examples

We spent the day packing up, cleaning, and getting ready for our internet-free life. Once all of the work was done, we said goodbye to civilization and headed north to Maine. Once we arrived at our destination it was time to get familiar with nature. The only technology we brought were two iPhones and one iPad. That iPad only had two apps on it: a map app to help us find our way around and the weather app to help us know when it was going to rain.

We intended to use the iPhones as a way to call for help in case of an emergency, but we quickly realized that we had no service. We were truly cut off from the world. At first it was weird not being able to check our email or social media, but after a few days it started to feel normal. We began to enjoy the simple things in life, like listening to the birds, fishing, swimming and hiking. We were only disconnected for three weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. I’m glad we did it and I would recommend it to anyone who is looking to disconnect from the world and reconnect with nature.

Mobile technology has become such an integral part of our lives that it’s hard to imagine life without it. We are constantly checking our email, social media, and texting our friends. We use our phones as alarm clocks, to take pictures, and to stay connected with the world. But what would happen if we didn’t have our phones? How would we function? I’m not sure we would function as well as we think we would. There are so many things that we rely on our phones for that we don’t even realize. For example, I use my phone to wake me up in the morning. I set an alarm and when it goes off, I reach for my phone to turn it off. But what if I didn’t have my phone? I would have to rely on an old-fashioned alarm clock, which would require me to get out of bed to turn it off. Then I would have to remember to turn it back on again the next morning . It’s a simple task, but it’s one that we don’t think about because we rely on our phones to do it for us.

Our dependency on mobile technology is so great that we even use it to entertain ourselves. When we’re bored, we pull out our phones and we are so used to having technology at our fingertips that it’s hard to imagine life without it. We are constantly checking our email, social media , and texting our friends. We use our phones as alarm clocks, to take pictures, and to stay connected with the world. But what would happen if we didn’t have our phones? How would we function? I’m not sure we would function as well as we think we would. There are so many things that we rely on our phones for that we don’t even realize.

If we were to suddenly lose our phones, we would be lost without them. We rely on them for so many things, from simple tasks like setting an alarm clock, to more complex ones like entertainment and communication. Our dependency on mobile technology is strong, and it would be hard to imagine life without it.

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My week without the internet

I t's hard to admit that you're a member of the "Facebook generation". A phrase constantly trotted out by the media, it suggests that anyone under the age of 25 spends their days crouched over a laptop, disengaged with reality.

Of course, that's an exaggeration. But once you have access to the internet and social media, it becomes difficult to unplug. With 82% of new university and college students owning a smartphone in the UK, young people use the internet for everything, from research to socialising.

I decided to go a week without internet to see how I'd cope. Would my social life suffer? How would I keep up-to-date with news and trends? And did this mean I'd have to find my real-life calculator?

I began to think of my week "unplugged" as a kind of retreat. In a world saturated with images, we feel a need to document our every action; just recently I caught myself Instagramming my bowl of morning porridge.

As the week progressed I found myself sleeping far better – simply because I wasn't lying in bed for hours double-checking my newsfeed.

Olivia Bright, a student at the University of Southhampton, described her five days without internet during her Gold Duke of Edinburgh expedition: "It was actually refreshing, which was something I didn't expect."

However, she also says she "didn't like being out of the loop". And while the week may have provided me an escape from both hypothermia and Kim Kardashian taking 1,200 selfies on holiday , it also proved to be a period of self-imposed social exile.

"Did you get a ticket for that show in freshers' week?" a friend texts me. "Think it's sold out." I hadn't, of course – it had been publicised on a university Facebook page.

I was also unable to Skype a friend studying in India over the summer. While some might complain that the internet renders real-life interaction null and void, for students it's a life-line: family, friends from home and friends on gap years or placements abroad are all just one click away.

It's not just socialising that students rely on the internet for. Alex, a student at the University of Bath, describes the internet as "an integral part of student research".

"I know loads of people who don't even use the (real-life) library," he says. "I'd even say the internet is now more necessary for students, if not now then it will be in a few years."

Alex is right: essay-submission facilities are becoming increasingly web-based, and lecturers and tutors now communicate with us through email rather than scraps of paper shoved in pigeon-holes.

I struggled with some of my set holiday reading without resources such as SparkNotes and JSTOR . Older relatives are always telling me how lucky our generation is; while I love stumbling across a book perfect for an upcoming essay, the internet allows us to condense hours of research in the library into minutes with just a few Google searches.

Did I reach any conclusions during my week without internet? Yes – as a student, it's virtually impossible to go without internet for a significant period of time. Not only do you miss out on social events, but your work suffers too. However, I'd also recommend logging off occasionally; even if just for a day or two.

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Short Essay: Life Without Technology

A couple of short essay examples on life without technology.

Table of Contents

Life Without Technology Example 1

Technology has become an integral part of our lives, and it is hard to imagine living without it. However, a life without technology is not entirely impossible. In this essay, we will explore what life would be like without technology. We will examine the significant adjustments in daily routines, the impact on various industries, and the potential benefits of living without technology.

Life without technology would require significant adjustments in daily routines, such as cooking, cleaning, and communication. Without technology, cooking would require more time, effort, and skill. People would have to cook over an open flame or a wood-burning stove, and food storage would require a root cellar or a smokehouse. Cleaning would also be more challenging without modern cleaning equipment, such as vacuum cleaners or washing machines. People would have to use brooms and washboards to clean their homes and clothes. Communication would also be drastically different without the use of smartphones, email, or social media. People would have to rely on face-to-face communication or written letters to keep in touch with friends and family.

Without technology, many industries such as healthcare and transportation would be severely impacted. In the healthcare industry, modern medical equipment such as MRI machines, X-ray machines, and ventilators would no longer be available. Doctors and nurses would have to rely on their knowledge and experience to diagnose and treat patients. In the transportation industry, cars, buses, and planes would no longer be available, and people would have to rely on walking or horse-drawn carriages for transportation. The shipping industry would also be affected, and goods would have to be transported by boats or on foot.

A life without technology could lead to a greater appreciation for nature and a simpler way of living. People would have to rely on natural resources for their daily needs, such as water from wells and food from farms. This way of life would require a deeper connection with nature, and people would have to rely on their own skills and knowledge to survive. The absence of technology would also lead to a simpler way of living, with fewer distractions and a focus on basic needs. People would have more time to spend with their families, pursue hobbies, and connect with their community.

In conclusion, a life without technology would require significant adjustments in daily routines, impact various industries, and lead to a greater appreciation for nature and a simpler way of living. While it may seem impossible to live without technology in today’s world, it is important to remember that humans have survived for thousands of years without it. Perhaps a simpler way of living without the constant distractions of technology could lead to a happier, more fulfilling life.

Life Without Technology Example 2

Technology has become an integral part of our lives, from the way we communicate to how we entertain ourselves. But have you ever wondered what life would be like without technology? A life without technology would mean going back to basics, relying on manual labor for everyday tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and transportation. Communication would be limited to face-to-face interactions, written letters, and landline telephones. Entertainment options would be more limited, with fewer options for streaming music and video and no social media platforms. In this essay, we will explore what life without technology would be like, focusing on the limited communication, entertainment, and reliance on manual labor.

If technology were to disappear from our lives, we would have to rely on manual labor for everyday tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and transportation. Cooking would require us to light a fire, and then manually prepare the ingredients. Cleaning would require us to sweep, mop, and wash dishes by hand. Transportation would require us to walk or ride horses, which would take a lot more time and effort than driving a car. A life without technology would be physically demanding, but it would also be more rewarding. We would have a greater appreciation for the work that goes into everyday tasks, and we would be more connected to our environment.

Communication would be limited without technology. We would not have access to instant messaging or social media platforms, and we would have to rely on face-to-face interactions, written letters, and landline telephones. Written letters would take days or even weeks to arrive, and landline telephones would be the only way to make long-distance calls. We would have to be more intentional with our communication, and we would have to make an effort to stay in touch with family and friends who live far away. However, this would also give us the opportunity to have more meaningful conversations and to connect on a deeper level.

Entertainment options would be limited without technology. We would not have access to streaming services or social media platforms, and we would have to find other ways to entertain ourselves. We could read books, play board games, or go for a walk in nature. We would have to be more creative with our entertainment, but we would also have more time to pursue hobbies and spend time with loved ones. A life without technology would be simpler, but it would also be more fulfilling.

In conclusion, a life without technology would be vastly different from the one we live today. We would have to rely on manual labor for everyday tasks, communication would be limited to face-to-face interactions and written letters, and entertainment options would be more limited. However, it would also be a more rewarding and fulfilling life, where we would have a greater appreciation for the work that goes into everyday tasks, and we would be more connected to our environment and the people around us.

Life Without Technology Example 3

Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives, and it is hard to imagine a world without it. From the smartphones that we use to communicate with others to the cars that we drive, technology is everywhere. However, have you ever thought about what life would be like without technology? In this essay, I will discuss how life without technology would impact agriculture, communication, and entertainment.

If technology were to disappear, we would have to rely on manual labor for agriculture and manufacturing. Farmers would have to use traditional methods for plowing fields, planting, and harvesting crops. This would be a time-consuming process, and it would require more people to work on the fields. Similarly, factories would have to rely on manual labor for manufacturing goods. The production time would increase, and the quality of the products might decrease. This would ultimately lead to a rise in the cost of goods.

Communication would be limited to face-to-face interactions and written letters. Without smartphones and social media, people would have to meet each other in person to communicate. This would be a positive change in some ways, as people would have more meaningful conversations with their loved ones. However, it would also mean that people would have to travel more to meet others, which would be time-consuming and expensive. Written letters would be the only way to communicate with people who live far away. This would be a slow process, and it would take days or even weeks for a letter to reach its destination.

Entertainment options would be limited to activities such as reading, playing games, and outdoor sports. Without technology, people would have to find other ways to entertain themselves. Reading books would be one of the most popular pastimes. Board games, card games, and puzzles would become popular once again. Outdoor sports such as football, basketball, and cricket would be the only way to play games. However, this would be limited to daylight hours, and people would have to deal with weather conditions.

In conclusion, life without technology would be challenging, but it would also have its benefits. It would force us to rely on manual labor, which would create more job opportunities. Communication would be more meaningful, but it would also be time-consuming. Entertainment options would be limited, but it would encourage people to spend more time outdoors. Overall, it is important to appreciate the benefits of technology, but we should also be prepared for a life without it.

About Mr. Greg

Mr. Greg is an English teacher from Edinburgh, Scotland, currently based in Hong Kong. He has over 5 years teaching experience and recently completed his PGCE at the University of Essex Online. In 2013, he graduated from Edinburgh Napier University with a BEng(Hons) in Computing, with a focus on social media.

Mr. Greg’s English Cloud was created in 2020 during the pandemic, aiming to provide students and parents with resources to help facilitate their learning at home.

Whatsapp: +85259609792

[email protected]

Essay On Internet for Students and Children

500+ words essay on internet.

We live in the age of the internet. Also, it has become an important part of our life that we can’t live without it. Besides, the internet is an invention of high-end science and modern technology . Apart from that, we are connected to internet 24×7. Also, we can send big and small messages and information faster than ever. In this essay on the Internet, we are going to discuss various things related to the internet.

Reach of Internet

It is very difficult to estimate the area that the internet cover. Also, every second million people remain connected to it with any problem or issue. Apart from that, just like all the things the internet also has some good and bad effect on the life of people. So the first thing which we have to do is learn about the good and bad effect of the internet.

Good effects of the internet mean all those things that the internet make possible. Also, these things make our life easier and safer.

Bad effects of the internet mean all those things that we can no longer do because of the internet. Also, these things cause trouble for oneself and others too.

You can access in any corner of the world. Also, it is very easy to use and manage. In today’s world, we cannot imagine our life without it.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Uses Of Internet

From the time it first came into existence until now the internet has completed a long journey. Also, during this journey, the internet has adopted many things and became more user-friendly and interactive. Besides, every big and small things are available on internet and article or material that you require can be obtainable from internet.

Tim Berners-Lee can be called one of the main father of internet as he invented/discovered the WWW (World Wide Web) which is used on every website. Also, there are millions of pages and website on the internet that it will take you years to go through all of them.

The Internet can be used to do different things like you can learn, teach, research, write, share, receive, e-mail , explore, and surf the internet.

Read Essay on Technology here

Convenience Due To Internet

Because of internet, our lives have become more convenient as compared to the times when we don’t have internet. Earlier, we have to stand in queues to send mails (letters), for withdrawing or depositing money, to book tickets, etc. but after the dawn of the internet, all these things become quite easy. Also, we do not have to waste our precious time standing in queues.

Also, the internet has contributed a lot to the environment as much of the offices (government and private), school and colleges have become digital that saves countless paper.

Although, there is no doubt that the internet had made our life easier and convenient but we can’t leave the fact that it has caused many bigger problems in the past. And with the speed, we are becoming addict to it a day in will come when it will become our basic necessity.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [ { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What are the limitation of internet?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Although internet can help you with anything but there are certain limitation to it. First of it does not have a physical appearance. Secondly, it does not have emotions and thirdly, it can’t send you to a place where you can’t go (physically).” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is the ideal age for using internet?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Nowadays everybody from small kids to adult is internet addicts. So it is difficult to decide an ideal age for using internet. However, according to researches using internet from an early age can cause problems in the child so internet usage of small children should be controlled or banned.” } } ] }

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A for and against essay about the internet.

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• 12 May 2024

Is the Internet bad for you? Huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being

• Carissa Wong

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People who had access to the Internet scored higher on measures of life satisfaction in a global survey. Credit: Ute Grabowsky/Photothek via Getty

A global, 16-year study 1 of 2.4 million people has found that Internet use might boost measures of well-being, such as life satisfaction and sense of purpose — challenging the commonly held idea that Internet use has negative effects on people’s welfare.

US TikTok ban: how the looming restriction is affecting scientists on the app

“It’s an important piece of the puzzle on digital-media use and mental health,” says psychologist Markus Appel at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “If social media and Internet and mobile-phone use is really such a devastating force in our society, we should see it on this bird’s-eye view [study] — but we don’t.” Such concerns are typically related to behaviours linked to social-media use, such as cyberbullying, social-media addiction and body-image issues. But the best studies have so far shown small negative effects, if any 2 , 3 , of Internet use on well-being, says Appel.

The authors of the latest study, published on 13 May in Technology, Mind and Behaviour , sought to capture a more global picture of the Internet’s effects than did previous research. “While the Internet is global, the study of it is not,” said Andrew Przybylski, a researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, who studies how technology affects well-being, in a press briefing on 9 May. “More than 90% of data sets come from a handful of English-speaking countries” that are mostly in the global north, he said. Previous studies have also focused on young people, he added.

To address this research gap, Pryzbylski and his colleagues analysed data on how Internet access was related to eight measures of well-being from the Gallup World Poll , conducted by analytics company Gallup, based in Washington DC. The data were collected annually from 2006 to 2021 from 1,000 people, aged 15 and above, in 168 countries, through phone or in-person interviews. The researchers controlled for factors that might affect Internet use and welfare, including income level, employment status, education level and health problems.

Like a walk in nature

The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment with their social life, compared with people who lacked web access. Online activities can help people to learn new things and make friends, and this could contribute to the beneficial effects, suggests Appel.

The positive effect is similar to the well-being benefit associated with taking a walk in nature, says Przybylski.

However, women aged 15–24 who reported having used the Internet in the past week were, on average, less happy with the place they live, compared with people who didn’t use the web. This could be because people who do not feel welcome in their community spend more time online, said Przybylski. Further studies are needed to determine whether links between Internet use and well-being are causal or merely associations, he added.

The study comes at a time of discussion around the regulation of Internet and social-media use , especially among young people. “The study cannot contribute to the recent debate on whether or not social-media use is harmful, or whether or not smartphones should be banned at schools,” because the study was not designed to answer these questions, says Tobias Dienlin, who studies how social media affects well-being at the University of Vienna. “Different channels and uses of the Internet have vastly different effects on well-being outcomes,” he says.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01410-z

Vuorre, M. & Przybylski, A. K. Technol. Mind Behav . https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000127 (2024).

Article   Google Scholar  

Heffer, T. et al. Clin. Psychol. Sci. 7 , 462–470 (2018).

Coyne, S. M., Rogers, A. A., Zurcher, J. D., Stockdale, L. & Booth, M. Comput. Hum. Behav . 104 , 106160 (2020).

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Life without the Internet and Technology.

Introduction

Technology and the internet is arguably one of the greatest inventions of man since time immemorial. Modern technology has become a part and parcel of man’s everyday life and its impacts are immensely felt. Drastic changes in how people approach life have also been brought about by the prevalence of technology in today’s life. Modern technology has enabled people to freely and autonomously construct their lives through the different fields and structures that technology and the internet touches on. In the modern day life, it is quite difficult to separate man from technology because the society has become co-dependent on technology. Almost every aspect of life is codependent on the internet today. In the event of the internet and technology being wiped away, life would be very different. This is because the internet has become the medium through which information is received, perceived and distributed according to (Carr 89-94). While the internet is applauded for having enabled a quick and easy access to information that would otherwise take days and even weeks to find, it is also believed to have come with several negative influences on life. Carr argues that the internet and technology has greatly reduced people’ interest in reading and the capacity to think and perceive things in the sense that the internet shapes people’s thinking and ideas of the information they receive.

Costs/Benefits of Life without the Internet and Technology

Eradication of the internet would bring about a rich culture of reading among researchers, students and workers. This is because a person would be required to read deep through an entire book/article to gain the information needed as opposed to the current culture of surfing through short articles and stories from different websites to gather information from the internet. This would also affect the perception and understanding of readers in the sense that deep reading allows for a deep concentration and connection level to the material being read therefore bringing about a positive level of understanding. Another benefit that would be accrued in the absence of the internet and technology is that people would become authentic. According to Carr, people have become robots in that even our minds tend to be controlled by the internet and technology. In his view, people are no longer thinking independently but rather follow what the internet and technology deem normal.

A life without the internet would boost people’s level of intelligence and ability to grasp the knowledge gathered from reading. This would be made possible by the fact that the brain would be able to adopt to the fact that there would be no sites for the easy and fast access of the information and this would in turn allow people to exercise their memory and portray real wisdom rather than the quick knowledge obtained from surfing the internet. Intellectual laziness which has been brought about by the fact that information can be easily accessed by a mere click of a button would be replaced by a culture of studious people with a passion for deep reading and deep thinking which would in turn produce a society of people with intellectual and wisdom.

A life without the internet and technology would make it easy to adopt/shape the human brain into translating information and knowledge we gather from deep reading into intellectual knowledge and wisdom according to Mary Anne wolf. This would allow for free thinking as opposed to the internet and technology era in which the internet basically has all the influence in the forming of our thoughts. According to Gladwell, the internet is not as effective in bringing people together as it is believed to. Gladwell asserts that real changes especially historic meaningful changes took place at a time when the internet had not dominated the thinking of man or his actions. According to Gladwell, a life without the internet and technology would allow for strong meaningful ties amongst people. He explains this in the sense that these ties are more likely to be strong in that they are formed amongst people who are closely affiliated as opposed to the weak ties social media forms amongst strangers. The absence of the internet will allow people to come together and actually physically and mentally participate in matters affecting their society as opposed to the social media system of showing you participate in an issue by a mere click to like or comment on an issue behind a phone or a computer. The face to face meeting amongst people is more likely to bring about changes to the society and this can only be made possible in the absence of the social media.  The absence of social will be beneficial in the sense that it would allow for the traditional form of activism in instances where there is need for change in the society in that people would be able to come together and fully participate in such activism. (Gladwell)

In conclusion, Carr Nicholas and Malcolm Gladwell both agree that while the internet and technology are important sources of information in today’s society, they should however be tools that enhance/ allow for the traditional culture of deep reading/studying, deep thinking and authenticity in people, they should encourage the strong ties that are formed away from social media that allow for activism that brings about change in society and should not be viewed as substitutes for such face to face meetings. .

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education 107.2 (2008): 89-94. Web

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Small Change: Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”. New York times (2010): n. pag. Print.

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Technology to defeat Ebola

Mathematics for a sustainable world, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, what is the purpose of music, featured author, latest book, how the internet has changed everyday life, what happened.

The Internet has turned our existence upside down. It has revolutionized communications, to the extent that it is now our preferred medium of everyday communication. In almost everything we do, we use the Internet. Ordering a pizza, buying a television, sharing a moment with a friend, sending a picture over instant messaging. Before the Internet, if you wanted to keep up with the news, you had to walk down to the newsstand when it opened in the morning and buy a local edition reporting what had happened the previous day. But today a click or two is enough to read your local paper and any news source from anywhere in the world, updated up to the minute.

The Internet itself has been transformed. In its early days—which from a historical perspective are still relatively recent—it was a static network designed to shuttle a small freight of bytes or a short message between two terminals; it was a repository of information where content was published and maintained only by expert coders. Today, however, immense quantities of information are uploaded and downloaded over this electronic leviathan, and the content is very much our own, for now we are all commentators, publishers, and creators.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Internet widened in scope to encompass the IT capabilities of universities and research centers, and, later on, public entities, institutions, and private enterprises from around the world. The Internet underwent immense growth; it was no longer a state-controlled project, but the largest computer network in the world, comprising over 50,000 sub-networks, 4 million systems, and 70 million users.

The emergence of  web 2.0  in the first decade of the twenty-first century was itself a revolution in the short history of the Internet, fostering the rise of social media and other interactive, crowd-based communication tools.

The Internet was no longer concerned with information exchange alone: it was a sophisticated multidisciplinary tool enabling individuals to create content, communicate with one another, and even escape reality. Today, we can send data from one end of the world to the other in a matter of seconds, make online presentations, live in parallel “game worlds,” and use pictures, video, sound, and text to share our real lives, our genuine identity. Personal stories go public; local issues become global.

The rise of the Internet has sparked a debate about how online communication affects social relationships. The Internet frees us from geographic fetters and brings us together in topic-based communities that are not tied down to any specific place. Ours is a networked, globalized society connected by new technologies. The Internet is the tool we use to interact with one another, and accordingly poses new challenges to privacy and security.

Information technologies have wrought fundamental change throughout society, driving it forward from the industrial age to the networked era. In our world, global information networks are vital infrastructure—but in what ways has this changed human relations? The Internet has changed business, education, government, healthcare, and even the ways in which we interact with our loved ones—it has become one of the key drivers of social evolution.

The changes in social communication are of particular significance. Although analogue tools still have their place in some sectors, new technologies are continuing to gain ground every day, transforming our communication practices and possibilities—particularly among younger people. The Internet has removed all communication barriers. Online, the conventional constraints of space and time disappear and there is a dizzyingly wide range of communicative possibilities. The impact of social media applications has triggered discussion of the “new communication democracy.”

The development of the Internet today is being shaped predominantly by instant, mobile communications. The mobile Internet is a fresh revolution. Comprehensive Internet connectivity via smartphones and tablets is leading to an increasingly mobile reality: we are not tied to any single specific device, and everything is in the cloud.

People no longer spend hours gazing at a computer screen after work or class; instead, they use their mobile devices to stay online everywhere, all the time.

Anyone failing to keep abreast of this radical change is losing out on an opportunity.

Communication Opportunities Created by the Internet

The Internet has become embedded in every aspect of our day-to-day lives, changing the way we interact with others. This insight struck me when I started out in the world of social media. I created my first social network in 2005, when I was finishing college in the United States—it had a political theme. I could already see that social media were on the verge of changing our way of communicating, helping us to share information by opening up a new channel that cuts across conventional ones.

That first attempt did not work out, but I learned from the experience.I get the feeling that in many countries failure is punished too harshly—but the fact is, the only surefire way of avoiding failure is to do nothing at all. I firmly believe that mistakes help you improve; getting it wrong teaches you how to get it right. Creativity, hard work, and a positive attitude will let you achieve any goal.

In 2006, after I moved to Spain, I created Tuenti. Tuenti (which, contrary to widespread belief, has nothing to do with the number 20; it is short for “tu entidad,” the Spanish for “your entity”) is a social communication platform for genuine friends. From the outset, the idea was to keep it simple, relevant, and private. That’s the key to its success.

I think the real value of social media is that you can stay in touch from moment to moment with the people who really matter to you. Social media let you share experiences and information; they get people and ideas in touch instantly, without frontiers. Camaraderie, friendship, and solidarity—social phenomena that have been around for as long as humanity itself—have been freed from the conventional restrictions of space and time and can now thrive in a rich variety of ways.

Out of all the plethora of communication opportunities that the Internet has opened up, I would highlight the emergence of social media and the way they have intricately melded into our daily lives. Social media have changed our personal space, altering the way we interact with our loved ones, our friends, and our sexual partners; they have forced us to rethink even basic daily processes like studying and shopping; they have affected the economy by nurturing the business startup culture and electronic commerce; they have even given us new ways to form broad-based political movements.

The Internet and Education

The Internet has clearly impacted all levels of education by providing unbounded possibilities for learning. I believe the future of education is a networked future. People can use the Internet to create and share knowledge and develop new ways of teaching and learning that captivate and stimulate students’ imagination at any time, anywhere, using any device. By connecting and empowering students and educators, we can speed up economic growth and enhance the well-being of society throughout the world. We should work together, over a network, to build the global learning society.

The network of networks is an inexhaustible source of information. What’s more, the Internet has enabled users to move away from their former passive role as mere recipients of messages conveyed by conventional media to an active role, choosing what information to receive, how, and when. The information recipient even decides whether or not they want to stay informed.

We have moved on from scattergun mass communication to a pattern where the user proactively selects the information they need.

Students can work interactively with one another, unrestricted by physical or time constraints. Today, you can use the Internet to access libraries, encyclopedias, art galleries, news archives, and other information sources from anywhere in the world: I believe this is a key advantage in the education field. The web is a formidable resource for enhancing the process of building knowledge.

I also believe the Internet is a wonderful tool for learning and practicing other languages—this continues to be a critical issue in many countries, including Spain, and, in a globalized world, calls for special efforts to improve.

The Internet, in addition to its communicative purposes, has become a vital tool for exchanging knowledge and education; it is not just an information source, or a locus where results can be published, it is also a channel for cooperating with other people and groups who are working on related research topics.

The Internet and Privacy and Security

Another key issue surrounding Internet use is privacy. Internet users are becoming more sensitive to the insight that privacy is a must-have in our lives.

Privacy has risen near the top of the agenda in step with an increasing awareness of the implications of using social media. Much of the time, people started to use social media with no real idea of the dangers, and have wised up only through trial and error—sheer accident, snafus, and mistakes. Lately, inappropriate use of social media seems to hit the headlines every day. Celebrities posting inappropriate comments to their profiles, private pictures and tapes leaked to the Internet at large, companies displaying arrogance toward users, and even criminal activities involving private-data trafficking or social media exploitation.

All this shows that—contrary to what many people seem to have assumed—online security and privacy are critical, and, I believe, will become even more important going forward. And, although every user needs privacy, the issue is particularly sensitive for minors—despite attempts to raise their awareness, children still behave recklessly online.

I have always been highly concerned about privacy. On Tuenti, the default privacy setting on every user account is the highest available level of data protection. Only people the user has accepted as a “friend” can access their personal details, see their telephone number, or download their pictures. This means that, by default, user information is not accessible to third parties. In addition, users are supported by procedures for reporting abuse. Any user can report a profile or photograph that is abusive, inappropriate, or violates the terms of use: action is taken immediately. Security and privacy queries are resolved within 24 hours.

We need to be aware that different Internet platforms provide widely different privacy experiences. Some of them are entirely open and public; no steps whatsoever are taken to protect personal information, and all profiles are indexable by Internet search engines.

On the other hand, I think the debate about whether social media use should be subject to an age requirement is somewhat pointless, given that most globally active platforms operate without age restrictions. The European regulatory framework is quite different from the United States and Asian codes. Companies based in Europe are bound by rigorous policies on privacy and underage use of social media. This can become a competitive drawback when the ground rules do not apply equally to all players—our American and Japanese competitors, for instance, are not required to place any kind of age constraint on access.

Outside the scope of what the industry or regulators can do, it is vital that users themselves look after the privacy of their data. I believe the information is the user’s property, so the user is the only party entitled to control the collection, use, and disclosure of any information about him or herself. Some social networks seem to have forgotten this fact—they sell data, make it impossible to delete an account, or make it complex and difficult to manage one’s privacy settings. Everything should be a lot simpler and more transparent.

Social networks should continue to devote intense efforts to developing self-regulation mechanisms and guidelines for this new environment of online coexistence to ensure that user information is safe: the Internet should be a space for freedom, but also for trust. The main way of ensuring that social media are used appropriately is awareness. But awareness and user education will be of little use unless it becomes an absolute requirement that the privacy of the individual is treated as a universal value.

The Internet and Culture

As in the sphere of education, the development of information and communication technologies and the wide-ranging effects of globalization are changing what we are, and the meaning of cultural identity. Ours is a complex world in which cultural flows across borders are always on the rise. The concepts of space, time, and distance are losing their conventional meanings. Cultural globalization is here, and a global movement of cultural processes and initiatives is underway.

Again, in the cultural arena, vast fields of opportunity open up thanks to online tools. The possibilities are multiplied for disseminating a proposal, an item of knowledge, or a work of art. Against those doomsayers who warn that the Internet is harming culture, I am radically optimistic. The Internet is bringing culture closer to more people, making it more easily and quickly accessible; it is also nurturing the rise of new forms of expression for art and the spread of knowledge. Some would say, in fact, that the Internet is not just a technology, but a cultural artifact in its own right.

In addition to its impact on culture itself, the Internet is enormously beneficial for innovation, which brings progress in all fields of endeavor—the creation of new goods, services, and ideas, the advance of knowledge and society, and increasing well-being.

The Internet and Personal Relationships

The Internet has also changed the way we interact with our family, friends, and life partners. Now everyone is connected to everyone else in a simpler, more accessible, and more immediate way; we can conduct part of our personal relationships using our laptops, smart phones, and tablets.

The benefits of always-online immediate availability are highly significant. I would find a long-distance relationship with my life partner or my family unthinkable without the communication tools that the network of networks provides me with. I’m living in Madrid, but I can stay close to my brother in California. For me, that is the key plus of the Internet: keeping in touch with the people who really matter to me.

As we have seen, the Internet revolution is not just technological; it also operates at a personal level, and throughout the structure of society. The Internet makes it possible for an unlimited number of people to communicate with one another freely and easily, in an unrestricted way.

Just a century ago, this was unimaginable. An increasing number of couples come together, stay together, or break up with the aid—or even as a consequence—of social communication tools. There are even apps and social networks out there that are purposely designed to help people get together for sex.

Of course, when compared to face-to-face communication, online communication is severely limited in the sense impressions it can convey (an estimated 60 to 70 percent of human communication takes place nonverbally), which can lead to misunderstandings and embarrassing situations—no doubt quite a few relationships have floundered as a result. I think the key is to be genuine, honest, and real at all times, using all the social media tools and their many advantages. Let’s just remember that a liar and a cheat online is a liar and a cheat offline too.

The Internet and Social and Political Activism

Even before the emergence of social media, pioneering experiments took place in the political sphere—like  Essembly , a project I was involved in. We started to create a politically themed platform to encourage debate and provide a home for social and political causes; but the social networks that have later nurtured activism in a new way were not as yet in existence.

Research has shown that young people who voice their political opinions on the Internet are more inclined to take part in public affairs. The better informed a citizen is, the more likely they will step into the polling booth, and the better they will express their political liberties. The Internet has proved to be a decisive communication tool in the latest election campaigns. It is thanks to the Internet that causes in the social, welfare, ideological, and political arenas have been spoken up for and have won the support of other citizens sharing those values—in many cases, with a real impact on government decision making.

The Internet and Consumer Trends

New technologies increase the speed of information transfer, and this opens up the possibility of “bespoke” shopping. The Internet offers an immense wealth of possibilities for buying content, news, and leisure products, and all sorts of advantages arise from e-commerce, which has become a major distribution channel for goods and services. You can book airline tickets, get a T-shirt from Australia, or buy food at an online grocery store. New applications support secure business transactions and create new commercial opportunities.

In this setting, it is the consumer who gains the upper hand, and the conventional rules and methods of distribution and marketing break down. Consumers’ access to information multiplies, and their reviews of their experience with various products and services take center stage. Access to product comparisons and rankings, user reviews and comments, and recommendations from bloggers with large followings have shaped a new scenario for consumer behavior, retail trade, and the economy in general.

The Internet and the Economy

The Internet is one of the key factors driving today’s economy. No one can afford to be left behind. Even in a tough macroeconomic framework, the Internet can foster growth, coupled with enhanced productivity and competitiveness.

The Internet provides opportunities for strengthening the economy: How should we tackle them? While Europe—and Spain specifically—are making efforts to make the best possible use of the Internet, there are areas in which their approach needs to improve. Europe faces a major challenge, and risks serious failure if it lets the United States run ahead on its own. The European Commission, in its “Startup Manifesto,” suggests that the Old World be more entrepreneur-friendly—the proposal is backed by companies like Spotify and Tuenti. Europe lacks some of the necessary know-how. We need to improve in financial services and in data privacy, moving past the obsolete regulatory framework we now have and making a bid to achieve a well-connected continent with a single market for 4G mobile connections. We need to make it easier to hire talent outside each given country.

The use of e-commerce should be encouraged among small and medium-sized enterprises so that growth opportunities can be exploited more intensely. Following the global trend of the Internet, companies should internalize their online business. And much more emphasis should be placed on new technologies training in the academic and business spheres.

Modern life is global, and Spain is competing against every other country in the world. I do not believe in defeatism or victim culture. Optimism should not translate into callousness, but I sincerely believe that if you think creatively, if you find a different angle, if you innovate with a positive attitude and without fear of failure, then you can change things for the better. Spain needs to seize the moment to reinvent itself, grasping the opportunities offered up by the online world. We need to act, take decisions, avoid “paralysis through analysis.” I sometimes feel we are too inclined to navel-gazing: Spain shuts itself off, fascinated with its own contradictions and local issues, and loses its sense of perspective. Spain should open up to the outside, use the crisis as an opportunity to do things differently, in a new way—creating value, underlining its strengths, aspiring to be something more.

In the United States, for instance, diving headfirst into a personal Internet-related startup is regarded as perfectly normal. I’m glad to see that this entrepreneurial spirit is beginning to take hold here as well. I believe in working hard, showing perseverance, keeping your goals in view, surrounding yourself with talent, and taking risks. No risk, no success. We live in an increasingly globalized world: of course you can have a Spain-based Internet startup, there are no frontiers.

We need to take risks and keep one step ahead of the future. It is precisely the most disruptive innovations that require radical changes in approach and product, which might not even find a market yet ready for them—these are the areas providing real opportunities to continue being relevant, to move forward and “earn” the future, creating value and maintaining leadership. It is the disruptive changes that enable a business, product, or service to revolutionize the market—and, particularly in the technology sector, such changes are a necessity.

The Future of Social Communications, Innovation, Mobile Technologies, and Total Connectivity in Our Lives

The future of social communications will be shaped by an  always-online  culture.  Always online  is already here and will set the trend going forward. Total connectivity, the Internet you can take with you wherever you go, is growing unstoppably. There is no turning back for global digitalization.

Innovation is the driving force of growth and progress, so we need to shake up entrenched processes, products, services, and industries, so that all of us together—including established businesses, reacting to their emerging competitors—can move forward together.

Innovation is shaping and will continue to shape the future of social communications. It is already a reality that Internet connections are increasingly mobile. A survey we conducted in early 2013 in partnership with Ipsos found that 94 percent of Tuenti users aged 16 to 35 owned cell phones, 84 percent of users connected to the Internet using their phones, and 47 percent had mobile data subscriptions for connecting to the Internet. A total of 74 percent of users reported connecting to the Internet from their phone on a daily basis, while 84 percent did so at least weekly. Only 13 percent did not use their phones to connect to the Internet, and that percentage is decreasing every day.

Mobile Internet use alters the pattern of device usage; the hitherto familiar ways of accessing the Internet are changing too. The smartphone activities taking up the most time (over three hours a day) include instant messaging (38%), social media use (35%), listening to music (24%), and web browsing (20%). The activities taking up the least time (under five minutes a day) are: SMS texting (51%), watching movies (43%), reading and writing e-mail (38%), and talking on the phone (32%). Things are still changing.

Smartphones are gaining ground in everyday life. Many of the purposes formerly served by other items now involve using our smartphones. Some 75 percent of young people reported having replaced their MP3 player with their phone, 74 percent use their phone as an alarm clock, 70 percent use it as their camera, and 67 percent use it as their watch.

We have been observing these shifts for a while, which is why we decided to reinvent ourselves by placing smartphones at the heart of our strategy. I want to use this example as a showcase of what is happening in the world of social communication and the Internet in general: mobile connectivity is bringing about a new revolution. Tuenti is no longer just a social network, and social media as a whole are becoming more than just websites. The new Tuenti provides native mobile apps for Android, iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Phone, as well as the Firefox OS app and the mobile version of the website, m.tuenti.com. Tuenti is now a cross-platform service that lets users connect with their friends and contacts from wherever they may be, using their device of choice. A user with a laptop can IM in real time with a user with a smartphone, and switch from one device to another without losing the thread of the conversation. The conversations are in the cloud, so data and contacts are preserved independently of the devices being used. This means the experience has to be made uniform across platforms, which sometimes involves paring down functionalities, given the processing and screen size limitations of mobile devices. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so on are all evolving to become increasingly cross-platform experiences. But Tuenti is the first social network that has also developed its own Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO)—the company is an Internet service provider over the mobile network. Tuenti is an MVNO with a social media angle, and this may be the future path of telecommunications.

Social media are evolving to become something more, and innovation must be their hallmark if they are to continue being relevant. Tuenti now embraces both social communications and telecom services provision, offering value added by letting you use the mobile app free of charge and without using up your data traffic allowance, even if you have no credit on your prepaid card—this is wholly revolutionary in the telecom sector. The convergence of social media with more traditional sectors is already bringing about a new context for innovation, a new arena for the development and growth of the Internet.

Just about everything in the world of the Internet still lies ahead of us, and mobile communications as we know them must be reinvented by making them more digital. The future will be shaped by innovation converging with the impact of mobility. This applies not just to social media but to the Internet in general, particularly in the social communications field. I feel that many people do not understand what we are doing and have no idea of the potential development of companies like ours at the global level. Right now, there may be somebody out there, in some corner of the world, developing the tool that will turn the Internet upside down all over again. The tool that will alter our day-to-day life once more. Creating more opportunities, providing new benefits to individuals, bringing more individual and collective well-being. Just ten years ago, social media did not exist; in the next ten years, something else radically new will emerge. There are many areas in which products, processes, and services can be improved or created afresh. The future is brimming with opportunities, and the future of the Internet has only just begun.

Related publications

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What is net neutrality? And why it’s vital to the future of the internet, Northeastern computer scientist explains

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It was on, then off , and now “net neutrality” is back on again.

In a 3-2 vote, the Federal Communications Commission last month adopted the internet accessibility policy that requires broadband providers to treat all traffic equally. 

Northeastern University computer scientist David Choffnes praised the vote, saying the policy is important for ensuring the internet’s independence and potential.

“It allows the internet to continue to be this playground of ideas where people can come up with new applications that can really change the world,” says Choffnes, an associate professor at Northeastern’s Khoury College of Computer Sciences and executive director and founding member of the university’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute.

“If we didn’t have this … it probably would have been too expensive for things like YouTube to take off or Facebook or TikTok or even things like Microsoft Teams,” Choffnes continues. “It would have made the internet much less accessible to people.”

Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.

Choffnes says the principle was — and remains — crucial to the development of the internet “that we know and love and pretty much can’t live without.” 

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But net neutrality hasn’t always had a smooth road.

The concept collided with the large — and often copyrighted — file-sharing capabilities of the early 2000s. In 2007, Comcast was sued for limiting traffic on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing network by reducing its allocated bandwidth. The FCC ruled against the telecom company in 2008 , and began to enforce open-access principles. 

Court battles ensued all the way up to 2016 when the D.C. Circuit Court affirmed net neutrality rules again. Then the rules were repealed by the FCC during the Trump administration as part of a deregulatory agenda.

“The telecoms, the internet providers, don’t like this,” Choffnes says, noting that telecom trade groups have been voicing concerns . “They don’t like being regulated at all, and so they generally vehemently oppose this kind of action.”

But now neutrality is coming back.

Choffnes says net neutrality is important in the age of 5G and streaming high-resolution movies, telemedicine, remote learning, or even watching TikTok videos. 

Choffnes’ research finds that every major U.S. cellular provider is giving less bandwidth or artificially limiting the bandwidth that video-streaming applications can get, thereby violating net neutrality principles.

Interestingly, the “throttling” of bandwidth generally wasn’t happening on fixed line networks like cable or FiOS, and the limitations were only for video streaming applications that the cellular providers can detect, Choffnes’ research shows. The research was cited over a dozen times in the proposed new rules that the FCC released in April.

This throttling impacts social equity, Choffnes says, as people who can’t afford fixed line networks get poorer video streaming service than their wealthier peers. With remote learning, telemedicine and video conferencing becoming increasingly common and popular, slower video streaming can also impact education and health.

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With the telecoms acting as “gatekeepers,” as Choffnes calls it, they could also charge independent applications for preferential access to bandwidth, or charge users for access to video or develop their own applications and charge users for access, Choffnes says. 

“As the internet evolves and as applications evolve, the threats still remain very potent that when networks can pick winners and losers, there’s going to be, unfortunately, people who suffer from those decisions,” Choffnes says. “The easiest way to avoid that is to just not pick, not to do the gatekeeping.”

“We’ve seen that before — when companies have been our gatekeepers, that gatekeeping authority can be abused,” Choffnes continues. 

But a few last potential complications exist.

The rules — which don’t go into effect until 60 days after the final order, released on Tuesday, goes into the Federal Register, Choffnes says — could still be held up by court battles. And if Donald Trump returns to the White House, Choffnes says net neutrality “is essentially dead in the water.”

Choffnes says this speaks to a need for legislation codifying net neutrality — something that surveys reveal around 80% of Americans support.

“It’s a bipartisan thing that gets bipartisan support from constituents,” Choffnes says. “It’s shocking to me that we still don’t have this law.”

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