 Hi, everybody. Hi, I'm Chris Leetham here with Think Tech Talks today. I'm sitting in for Jay Fidel. He's off island, and so I have the privilege of interviewing today's guest, which is Jamie Barnett from ConsumerAffairs.com. Jamie and I are going to be discussing without the internet, would or would our world cease to exist? That's sort of our topic today. So I just invite you to stay tuned and listen to some of the ideas that Jamie has. Welcome to the show, Jamie. Hi, it's nice to be with you guys. It would be nice if I were there on island with you. Well, you know, if it's any consolidation, we've had quite a bit of rain in the last few days, and I know that that would make you feel much better. Oh, it's raining here too. So I guess the weather would be the same. Next time we do the show with you, we'll have you come to Hawaii to do the show. That sounds excellent. Yes, I will sell my company on it. Okay, very good. Well, you know, Jamie, this is the issue of the internet. When Jay first asked me to do the show, I was sort of thinking about all the repercussions and how much we lean on the internet today. And here in Hawaii, especially because we're an island and we're sort of unattached, when we do business on a daily basis, we rely on the internet for a lot of the communication and transfer of information. So what made you decide to do an article on this topic? So at Consumer Affairs, we like to sort of look at things that we think would interest our consumers and then find some data points about them that aren't necessarily obvious and share those. And because we are an internet company, this seems like a pretty natural fit for us to fill people in about how we use the internet and what happens when we don't have it. Well, a lot of us are affected, you know, one of the things that we look at the internet today is our business models are reliant on the internet. But, you know, the internet is also this amazing source of revenue today. It is redefined competition in the marketplace in so many ways. And technology, of course, is eating everything. It doesn't really matter what industry you're in. So when we talk about the loss of the internet, we're not talking just about business, we're also talking about the social dynamics associated with people not having access to the internet. And I think a lot of the things that you wrote about your article related to that. Yeah, absolutely. We do think about business transactions and that certainly is something that is very scary when the internet goes down. You can't use your debit card necessarily or even go to the ATM and get cash. So in that way, as consumers, it's very concerning not to have the internet. Businesses lose a lot of money when they don't have access to the internet. But on just a more personal level, we've become so much more reliant on it as a way to communicate with one another. Now on Facebook, we see these messages come up. If someone is in an area that's been affected by a natural disaster or some sort of terrorist attack, Facebook can ask people who are in the area, are you safe? And then they can respond. Everyone that they know will instantly know they're okay. That's not something that we had the options to even five years ago. Well, we just had the 15th anniversary for 9-11. People were frantic at that point. They were trying to call loved ones to find out where they were. The system became overwhelmed. Texting was the only way to communicate, which of course is really internet reliant. So yeah, I can see that as an interesting scenario. And of course now we have some very interesting things going on. We have Kim Jong-un, for example, the new leader of Korea. And here's somebody who has nuclear warheads. Well, if one of those nuclear warheads were to go off, even close to us, the impact on our internet and all the systems that utilize or rely on the internet would probably fail. Even if nobody harmed physically, because maybe we shot it down, but it exploded up in upper atmosphere, that sends out a shockwave that we could imagine would damage a lot of our satellite systems. So yeah, quite a fascinating topic. Even when we think about, I think when we think about the internet, at least my mind instantly goes more to being able to send an email or get on social media. But increasingly, even our traditional landlines require, you know, they run on cyber-optic networks and voiceover internet protocols. And so that is, you know, you think, well, you can just go home and plug in your, you know, old phone and pick it up and be able to call 911. But if you've been without power for several days, that might not be the case. So when we think about those sort of disasters, it's not just the internet that gets knocked out. But if the power gets knocked out, the internet goes with it. Yeah, it doesn't matter how well your your phone holds a charge. Still not going to work well for you. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, you know, nothing to be done. So increasingly, I mean, the fiber optic technology is amazing. And it gives us so, it gives us a stronger connection and a faster connection. We can send more information. But it also, some of the, you know, the old copper lines could carry energy with them. So when those, now when we lose power, we also lose all communication if it's if the power is out for too long. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Of course, then that means we have to start talking to one another face to face. Yeah, we absolutely, absolutely need to. I think that because we can remain connected to our family of origin or our very close friends, when we go out into the world, we don't necessarily make as many connections. We're playing with our phones when we're on an elevator. We're not talking to our neighbors that just moved in across the hall. And if we lose the internet, it's going to be those people who are immediately around us that that we would rely on. So just the way we interact. Well, one of the things that's interesting too, you know, I and I'm a parent, and I have two daughters that I raised. And I raised them while they had cell phones. And they were very cell phone reliant. And I noticed that their personalities changed. Once I got them hiking, like we would go out or we go hiking and get them away from technology, they would turn into human beings again, which was an amazing transformation. And I don't know, I would sort of put a plug out there for parents who find themselves dealing with sassy, bratty teenagers. Maybe you should take your kids for a hike and you'd be surprised at the change or the shift in the way they communicate with you and they communicate with each other. Yeah. Well, one of the things that we found in looking at our research was that when people put down their devices, their style of communication with one another instantly changes. They're talking about topics that are more thoughtful and in-depth. They're using longer sentences. And then over time, our study looked at kids who were at a camp where no technology was allowed for five seats, as opposed to just general, the general average kid who's using their phone all the time. And the kids who had not had technology for that long were better able to read facial expressions and to pick up on body language clues about what was going on with a person. So I noticed that. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I mean, being able to pick up visual cues, then that's actually a huge huge part of communication. I think there's several books written. I think one was called How to Do with Neuro-Linguistic Programming, where they help people develop a heightened sense of visual cues from facial expressions and body language. And yeah, so those are, of course, important tools in communication today. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's easier for, you said that your kids can behave human again. Well, if they're paying attention to body language, then they're going to be much better able to respond to what's going on with you, or with their parents. Of course, I can always read their body language, because when I would talk to them, they would look up at the ceiling, cross their arms, and wait for the lecture to end. So I got their visual cues quite clearly. Yeah. So let's talk about some other repercussions from the internet. We talk about how would it affect our national security. Is there dialogue about that? Yeah, there's a lot of dialogue about that. And the FCC has a couple of groups that are devoted to not necessarily not devoted to national security, but devoted to looking at the way our telecommunications system operates and how secure they are. And so they actually, it's the, no, it is the communication, security, reliability, and inoperability council, that's a mouthful. Wow. But they just had their last meeting of this current council group a couple of days ago on Wednesday and came forward with a bunch of recommendations for things we need to be doing. And their reports, their written reports aren't out yet. I've only had time to watch a few of the working group's interviews. But when they last met, one of the big things that they talked about was the need for telecommunications companies to have some sort of agreement to work together during national disasters of all kinds, including national security issues. And have so that people can still communicate. Well, we're going to take a short commercial break. I'm going to go home and get two cans and a string and we'll be right back right here with Think Tech Hawaii. Stay tuned for more. Aloha. Hello, I'm Patrick Bratton. Please join me every Thursday at one o'clock for Global Connections where I talk to a variety of guests and range through many issues from contemporary, international, political events, things talking about national security, all sorts of international issues, and also more local issues, history, and so on. I look forward to having you join me and talking with some of my guests. Thank you. I pity the fool who ain't watching this show at 12 o'clock on Friday afternoon. Stan, the energy man, watch it. Welcome to Asia in the Wheel. Looking forward to see you next month on October 13, Thursday at 11 o'clock. We just had a great show here on Global Connections with Masi Ganjali talking about building bridges through the arts. Masi, thank you for being on the show. Thank you for having me. How did you find our time here? Oh, it's lovely. I really enjoy your programs. Oh, God, this is so hard. Hi, this is Chris Leetham with Think Tech Hawaii, a Tech Talks here. That's a little bit of a tongue twister for me today, but I think I figured it out. We are talking to Jamie Barnett from consumeraffairs.com. Jamie recently wrote an article on, without the internet, what would the world cease to exist? And Jamie, we were just talking a little bit about some of the sort of the weird and wonderful things that you were mentioning with the telephone companies now being sort of prodded to negotiate and work out ways to communicate with each other in case the internet were to fail. And we were talking about national security as well. Are there any other organizations out there addressing this issue? The SEC is doing a lot with it. Homeland security is working with them to do that as well. There are some areas where there's no clear person who would be in charge of something like this. So there are undersea cables that carry 99% of the traffic between Continent or two islands. And one of the SEC's working groups found that there's because of so many different groups involved, the federal government, even for cables that fall inside American territory, there's no one person that is in charge, one group that's in charge of monitoring those. Well, a lot of these are commercial or private and some of them belong to the military, which of course, one of the things is we don't want people to know where these cables are, right? Yes. I mean, it's a secret because we don't want anybody coming in with a hook or something coming in and trying to dredge up a cable and then maybe using that as a form of piracy. We've got your cable and we're going to hold it hostage. Yeah, that's a problem. It's certainly a security issue that they have to keep the site where the cables sort of come aground, very secret, and they can't put exact cable locations on that. So that's sort of a double-edged, they can't, yeah, the exact location, sort of a double-edged part. Right. So somebody knows, but we're not telling. Right. So there are general areas where, you know, both aren't supposed to sort of dredge things along in fish or drop anchors, but without knowing exactly where those are, sometimes they're a problem. Yeah, you could just accidentally, that's right, you could accidentally pick up a cable if you weren't paying attention or, you know, because you don't know exactly where they are if you're down there running a side sweep sonar because you're doing an investigation in the area, it's quite possible that while you're dragging one of those behind, you could hook one of these cables. Yeah, so it's a double-edged, the word of how do we keep us safe and how do we also prevent accidents from happening that would wipe out, you know, a lot of communication between countries. Well, and the thing is with the internet too, you know, a more realistic sort scenario probably, and a more common scenario, is that you have partial loss of internet access, right? I mean, so maybe the systems go down, it could be a power outage, could be something, you know, it gets blown up, who knows. But partial or a partial loss of the internet, I'm supposing that there's a lot of redundancy that's built into the way the internet operates. Yeah, um, you know, I was surprised once I started thinking about the internet going down that although there is a lot of redundancies, there's probably not as much as makes me feel really safe. So because a lot of the redundancies also rely on the power grid, so if we lose power then all of their redundancies fail, and there's also a lot of sort of patchwork of our systems that, because that was sort of how it was financially feasible to build these things up, and the internet's grown at such a rapid rate that our technology hasn't necessarily been able to keep up with the demand. Interesting, interesting. So partial loss is certainly a problem, I think of the Delta power outage a couple of months ago, you know, they lost power for about six hours. Their data center went down, people were stranded all over the world because no Delta flights could take off. But Delta was the only, they were the only company in their area that lost power. So there was a lot of like, well, it was the power company from Delta, and the power company was saying, no, no, it was Delta. So that tells Delta that they need to have redundant power systems in place and not be, not be reliant on a sole power provider. Yeah. And I'm sure that they do. I didn't follow that story closely sort of after it developed. But I mean, it caused a lot of chaos. And so that was a case where even one small hiccup for one company had a lot of effects all over the world for travelers. Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. So now with all of these systems and the more the more companies lean on the internet, I guess the proclivity for failure would get higher. So where should, what other things should we do? Should we be doing anything strategically or tactically to ensure that we don't have failure, total failure of the internet? Well, as consumers, there's not a lot we can do to make sure the internet just doesn't go out. We can prepare for the case of that by doing things like keeping some cash on hand in case there's a problem with your debit card or your credit cards are being declined because of an error thousands of miles from you. Yeah, that's a thought. That's an interesting thought because if we were to lose access to the ability to process payments, of course, banks today don't carry as much cash on hand as they used to because they don't need to. And if you needed to go and get money out of the bank and of course then there is a possibility with the loss of the internet that there would be a run on the bank for cash. Yeah, I think that is a problem. And even, you know, ATMs, you couldn't use your debit cards to get money out of the ATM because that relies on the internet. So I think that is something that is a good thing to think about, keeping some cash on hand, some extra batteries, and the like crank radios so that if there's a weather emergency, you're still getting alerts about that. Yeah, that's true. I would prefer a pedal radio myself. Oh, okay. Pedal. Yeah, yeah. But if I could find a bicycle? That's right, I'll get up to the bicycle and just crank, keep that radio going. Yeah, but then of course we still have that broadcasting and I guess we would rely on older technologies such as broadcasting, we'd rely on older technologies such maybe there would still be some POTS lines that would still be working, maybe we still have some of the older switchboard technology around. But yeah, you know, certainly that would put a, there would be a huge push to resolve whatever issue caused the internet to go down. If it were to go down for a sustained period of time, we would have to make some serious adjustments to our economy. Yeah, absolutely. And that's something that I'm not sure how we would do. It would certainly lead to a period of chaos, I think, if it were to go down and not come back up. And you know, for all those people out there that are attached to dating sites, they're gonna have to meet people the old fashioned way. Yeah, exactly, you know, everything we've gotten used to it would just be fun. Yes, yes, you'd actually have to know how to go up and approach somebody and introduce yourself and make conversation. In some ways it may not be a bad thing, you know. No, I think what we found in talking to people was that a lot of people actually said they sort of wished they could go somewhere that they were not connected. So about one and a half, about 60% of the people we interviewed said they would love to travel to a place without any internet connection. Do you think they would take their phones? You know, I think they would. So just having them, I just, I don't think we are willing to give them up. And thinking sort of about Homeland Security, again, this is, there are some colleges that are referring to today's college age students as the homeland generation. These are kids that were very young on September 11. They've come of age where they're always connected and we're in a 24-hour news cycle. They can easily find out what the terror level alert is. It's orange or yellow. And don't forget, we would have to go back to using maps to find stuff. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. So I would be terrible. I'd be lost forever. Yeah, yeah, we would sort of, us older folks would have an advantage over our teenagers because we know how to get somewhere and be able to read a map and look at it and know how to get from point A to point B. So that would probably, yeah, that would be an interesting impact. And the psychological impact of being disconnected when you've lived your whole life, being connected to the internet. The withdrawals, I think they would create a whole new kind of psychological practice for psychologists and psychiatrists. Yeah, and just, I think that that psychological fear is why so many people wouldn't give up their phones even if they said, oh yeah, I want to travel to a place without internet connection. Yeah, yeah. And then you can imagine if the internet didn't work and the phone didn't work, they'd probably still clutch the phone just in case it's unplugged, it actually comes back on again. Yeah. A modern security blanket for us. Yeah, that's true. In fact, I'm sort of surprised people haven't started betting their phones inside their teddy bears, you know, things like that. Right. So, yeah. It's a very interesting topic. It really is. Just to think about how much has changed and the way that we've become reliant on things that did not exist at all 30 years ago. It's quite amazing. Or at least not for the average American. That's right. That's right. That's right. Well, Jamie, I want to thank you so much. And then we hope to see you here in Honolulu next time we talk about the loss of the internet and our digital dependence that we have today. And thank you very much for joining us here at Think Tech Hawaii on Think Tech Talks. Thank you so much for having me. It was great to chat with you. Thank you. Aloha everybody. Hi, I'm Chris Letham and hopefully next week, Jay Baidel will be back here at his usual chair here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we look forward to seeing you again. Aloha.