Weekend Open Forum: What if the Internet didn't exist?

What if there is no internet?

Hmmm well, i wouldn't be able to type in "FIRST" in the comments

Al Gore's claim would be merely puzzling.

I've worked in Dell for the last 17 years and without the internet Dell would probably not have grown as big as it did and I may have never have worked for them

The world would implode!

we would still have to get up at 6am and drive to a building to attend our jobs every day =_=

There would be a whole lot of bored people to deal with.

And we all know what happens when a lot of people get bored, right?

If the internet didn't exist something equivalent would have been invented.

A new addictive drug perhaps - HTTP?

Internet never really influenced my career so I would still be doing exactly the same things in exactly the same sequence.

Now that out of the way, I think without internet

a) world's population growth rate would have been umm far greater
b) we would still be playing games like Prince of Persia / Pac Man (and the likes)
c) securing computers would not have been an issue like it is today
d) we wouldn't have any open source stuff
e) we wouldn't have facecook
f) we (probably) wouldn't have any malware + spyware
g) and importantly Obama would never have been able to become president :grinthumb

Hint1: Just ask people who lived in the 80s.

Hint2: Its not anything like the dark ages.

Add in Some FaceBook Pills, And MMORPG on Veins.!

World would have been saved from Justin Bieber

Without the internet, I'd be so stupid.

Guys would still know what a telefax is.
Girls would still be told the virtue of making short telephone calls.
Aliens would still think we're all *****s.

without the internet... i'd have hobbies such as cycling, playing the guitar, wood crafting, metal fabrication...

now all i do is learn **** and play with computers... what good will this do me in life?! hahahah

Easy, there would be someone else.
cmolinap.

Without the internet, I'd be stupid - I use the internet for like 90% of my research.

When I think "the world without internet," I think broadband-internet. Before the broadband era, it really wasn't the internet as we know it today. It was an expensive, pay per minute luxury that few people could afford and only people who really needed it for job purposes had an internet connection. Gamers were still gathering for LAN parties at this point. Nobody I know does that anymore, apart from these massive anual events. I could say I remember a time when nobody knew what the internet was, but I can't say I remember it well. I was born in 1979, and I didn't get internet until around 2000 when broadband got big in Norway. Before that, it was all about the LAN parties. I got my first apartment when I was 19 and my friends lived at my place for weeks at a time. I was buying computer-magazines with attached discs to get patches for games. That's the world without internet. Lots of hazzle + squatters. If the internet never existed, I'd still have friends living at my place and we'd all still be virgins.

i agree with most people here. and then console and split-screen games would be popular.