#internetban

Life without the World Wide Web seems nearly unimaginable, but a number of people would be affected if it were to go out. Globally, only about half of the world has internet access; however, in the U.S. less than 1% of the population doesn’t have an internet connection,

Over the past few years, the internet has become woven into the fabric of our society. Everything from banks and hospitals to the military and utility systems relies on the internet in some way, shape or form.

Take a moment to imagine with us: What would happen if the internet went down for a day?

If the entire internet shut down at once? One imaginative stumbling block, in playing out the implications of that scenario, was how something like that could happen in the first place. And so—without advocating any of the methods described below, or strongly suggesting that hundreds or thousands of like-minded heroes band together to take this sucker down once and for all— we’ve asked a number of cybersecurity experts how exactly one would go about shutting down the entire internet.

Who relies on the internet today?

Nearly everyone in the United States uses the internet, and our reliance on it grows every day.

“Many of those who founded or invented the early conceptions of the internet did not anticipate how reliant society would become on digital networks,” William H. Dutton, a Senior Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and author of Society and the Internet: How Networks of Information and Communication are Changing Our Lives.

“Many were focused on sharing information among academics, and did not imagine everyday banking and shopping moving online as it has.”