While we don't have forests of paper, we have pocket-sized computers that can talk peer to peer and store practically infinite amounts of transactions.
We don't have squadrons of clerks but we have software that can collate transactions locally.
The internet is certainly a useful tool for quick connectivity but there are definitely ways to do things without the internet and without reverting all the way back to cash/check and paper ledgers.
Grocery stores and bars used to let local trusted customers pay their accumulated purchases once per week or month, or accept personal checks from them without any means of verifying whether they were covered.
Today? It’s essentially cash or credit card, and no more mechanisms for local/decentralized credit decisions whatsoever, even if a checkout clerk might personally know a customer.
Because of ubiquitous connectivity, we have greatly increased, but also centralized trust. Local trust isn’t restored quickly, especially during an emergency when tensions are high anyway.
Ie: maybe I trust a mechanism by Google/Apple where tap becomes powered locally and the phone/device itself carries a balance.
It’s true that these solutions don’t exist today but they are not far away with the amount of pressure we are talking about by losing the internet.
Also, credit cards used to work in a similar way to checks. The information would be recorded and the transaction would be finalized later.
I came across a pre-magnetic-strip credit card years ago… it’s pretty fascinating how currency has evolved in the last half-century. There is no reason for me to think that it will stop where we are at today.
That's something I'd definitely love to see, but it doesn't exist at the moment (in the US, at least; in Japan, there are stored-value cards in Apple Wallet that can support two-side offline transactions).
> Also, credit cards used to work in a similar way to checks. The information would be recorded and the transaction would be finalized later.
They used to, but they don't anymore. Almost all terminals and many cards won't let you do an offline transaction these days, for both credit and debit cards.
> it’s pretty fascinating how currency has evolved in the last half-century. There is no reason for me to think that it will stop where we are at today.
True, but unfortunately as far as I can see, it's all been moving towards a more centralized/connection-dependent system. That's great for when everything is working as expected, but raises some concerns about resilience.
1. ATM machines may stop working.
2. Your local bank branch may have issues knowing how much money you have on your account, making it hard to manually give you cash.
Both can be great issues, but can be worked around with a bit of time to prepare. Do you see other issues?
> but can be worked around with a bit of time to prepare
The prompt was "the Internet goes away tomorrow", and I highly doubt that we'd be able to resurrect branch-based "offline" banking in a single day.
It's not that long ago that software was distributed on CD and tutorials in printed books. The internet adds a lot of convenience and productivity, but it's hardly a requirement.
You will be unable to communicate except through face to face meetings. There is no more POTS(plain old telephone system), the entire world routes phone calls over the internet. There's no IM, the physical mail system will at least become dramatically backlogged if not fail entirely due to infrastructure failure internally and the new increased demand.
In my country is it not just that there isn't a POTS system, there isn't even copper. You have a FTTH(fiber to the home) link or a mobile connection. To my knowledge even in the US fiber terminates at the distribution point and your cable supply is last mile only.
I don't know what even will cause a global internet outage at the scale but it will be global panic.
A coordinated attack on key infrastructure (eg: root DNS servers) could do it. Much of the internet is held together with duct tape and bubble gum. The reason it stays alive is because there are a lot of duct tape and bubble gum specialists :)
There are still a lot of ways to communicate without the internet over large distances (eg: radio, satellite, plane, drone, etc...) and there are different considerations/requirements for them. They are still an ultimate backup to the world we have created but shopping on Amazon via ham-radio would be quite painful!
i do beleive though that it would be only a temporary thing.
on a local level you can likely still enable a lot of stuff. the internet would most likely die due to a decision to disable it rather than mass equipment failure. also very unlikely, as a ton of people must disable it at the same time, knowing all full well the result of doing so...
if they do that so u can try to get a radio broadcast up with some equipment thats strapped to houses and appartment buildings eveywhere these days. see if some antennas can be enabled for telephony locally etc. get the spark going for getting a network back up. for isp equipment the same. you can enable and if needed reprogram/configure a lot of field equipment and enable local networks. perhaps depending on your locality even more (internet exchange and isp data centers are close to some people atleast).
quite sure it would be up and running again in no time locally. at some point networks would merge and an internet would form again...
all in all there's really not a lot anyone can do about it if people want to use these existing networks and equipment. unless they start cutting power to very large areas etc. etc., remove the equipment everywhere, or ourposefuly destroy it... - this line of thought is extremely unrealistic.
And how do we know that someone's pocket computer doesn't contain a forged list of transactions that never happened, or is missing some transactions that did happen?
