What would it be like if the Internet suddenly went dark?
The world is troublingly dependent on technology, an issue Tim Maughan explores in his sci-fi books Infinite Detail and Ghost Hardware.
There’s nothing quite like being cut off from the grid to remind oneself how dependent one is on digital infrastructure.
A tropical storm barreled up the coast while Fortune closed its latest magazine issue on Tuesday. As I was sending an email laden with edits, the power flickered—once, twice, three times before everything went dead. I lost Internet, electricity, and, quite surprisingly, cell service. I suppose Isaias knocked over a cell tower with the same force it used to split a gigantic old oak tree onto my neighbor’s house.
Once the winds died down, I sought refuge at my parents’ house on Long Island, where I am writing and sending today’s Data Sheet newsletter. (Forgive its tardiness.)
As someone who covers cybersecurity, I wonder often what it might be like if the Internet suddenly were to go dark. My childhood self remembers the before-times; I’m of the last generation in the U.S. that grew up right as the commercial web was taking off. I am—or was, rather—America Offline.
These days, having that vital communications network wrenched away—especially hours before a feature story is shipping to printer—is jarring. Dear reader, I would not recommend it.
Have you ever wondered about life in an Internet-severed world? If not, no worries: Tim Maughan, a British novelist, has done it for us. His 2019 book, Infinite Detail, named last year by the Guardian as “sci-fi book of the year,” envisions such an unhappy place. While I have not yet read the work, I did catch an interview the blog OneZero recently conducted with Maughan.
Maughan imagines a world populated with people who wear “spex,” augmented reality glasses that are as integral to his near-future as iPhones are to this one. What I like most is his description of his goal in writing dystopian fiction: to reveal what’s wrong with society’s tech obsessions and make known the hidden consequences of things like pervasive corporate surveillance. As he put it:
“It’s very easy to fall into that kind of Black Mirror trap of saying, here’s an example of when surveillance went particularly bad and the wrong person was killed or the wrong person was implicated, or a stalker was following you, your nemesis or your ex-boyfriend was stalking you on social media….
“You don’t want to fall into that thing of writing a thriller about someone that gets stalked through their Alexa. I’m unfortunately taking on the task of trying to write fiction about the real implications of technology like that. It’s an incredibly stupid, foolhardy thing to do.“
It sounds neither stupid nor foolhardy to me. I plan to check out a copy of his book—and his new collection of stories, Ghost Hardware—once I’m able to recharge my Kindle and download the e-book.
Till then, I’ll be preparing meals of newly unrefrigerated, hopefully unspoiled food by candlelight.
Robert Hackett
Twitter: @rhhackett
Email: robert.hackett@fortune.com