A World without the Internet
The Marubo used to know it...so did I.
I’m of the generation that remembers the BEFORE TIMES, when there was no internet, or at least none for public use. Oh, those golden days of not scratching every single itch for knowledge every minute of the day.
I’m not knocking the internet. I’m writing on it right now. Because of the internet, I can reach all of you, and you can read my thoughts here on Substack. I also feel, though, that it has inadvertently stolen something from humanity that it may not be possible to retrieve.
Before I elaborate on that, let me take you on a little time travel journey. The year is 1995 or thereabouts. I was working as a drama/choir/journalism/English teacher at Mar Vista High School in Imperial Beach, California. It was my second or third year of teaching, and I had very little idea of what I was doing, other than I knew I wanted to help kids and inspire them and show them how amazing writing and theater and music were.
One of our staff devleopments that year was about something called Netscape Navigator. We were to report to the school library to do an introductory course in this magical marvel called the World Wide Web. Some of us had early versions of the Macintosh computer, the little beige box that had very few illustrations and all the text was in this hideous green. So we brave teachers trooped into the library, sat at a Macintosh terminal, and waited for the world to be revealed.
Remember this ugly beige monstrosity? I played my first home video game on this. It was HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY and it was all just words. Magical!
Now when I think about that day, I am truly amazed, mostly because I had no idea what to do. The librarian walked us through the steps to use Netscape Navigator, which were much more clunky than today’s intuitive, AI-driven web searches. It was such a novel, mind-boggling thing to attempt, I felt like the world had just split open. Everything took forever to load, photos especially. Forget sound or video files! No way!
This brings me to today’s topic. I read an article in the New York Times (I’ve gifted it here NYTimes article (gift) ) about remote Amazon River tribes getting the internet courtesy of Elon Musk’s Starlink. These are people who have lived for many generations in the same village, the Marubo people. A tribe of 2,000 people nestled near a river in Brazil, they had been blissfully unaware of the Kardashians, Chris Rock’s slap, Donald Trump’s buffoonery. Can you even imagine not knowing every single word these famous people say every day? I can’t. Even if you don’t want to know, you know. As soon as something happens, it’s on social media, in the online papers, quoted in messages by friends and relatives. It’s a feat to remain ignorant of much of what happens in America these days.
A photo from the New York Times article, taken by photographer Victor Moriyama.
But here are the Marubo people, doing their thing for generations, unburdened by the National Enquirer or ads for penis pumps. A subsistence living, to be sure, and I’d bet most of us couldn’t do it. By all accounts, they had been pretty happy, although isolated.
From the NYTimes: “When it arrived, everyone was happy,” said Tsainama Marubo, 73, sitting on the dirt floor of her village’s maloca, a 50-foot-tall hut where the Marubo sleep, cook and eat together. The internet brought clear benefits, like video chats with faraway loved ones and calls for help in emergencies. “But now, things have gotten worse,” she said.
It happened so quickly. These people went from being a community of tribespeople to phone zombies. According to the reporter Jack Nicas, “after only nine months with Starlink, the Marubo are already grappling with the same challenges that have racked American households for years: teenagers glued to phones; group chats full of gossip; addictive social networks; online strangers; violent video games; scams; misinformation; and minors watching pornography.” After nine months!
Another photo taken by Victor Moriyama. Future scoliosis victims unite!
The kids don’t want to learn the ways of the old people anymore. They don’t want to learn how to hand-dye beads or weave blankets or catch fish. They’d rather watch cat videos or fight with someone on social media, or see how many retweets their posts get on Twitter (Fuck it, I am not going to call it X).
When the elders saw this, they did something that might seem inconceivable to us: they made a decision to limit access to the internet. Again, from Nicas’ reporting: “Leaders realized they needed limits. The internet would be switched on for only two hours in the morning, five hours in the evening, and all day Sunday.” During those times, everyone in the village is crouched over their devices, scrolling, texting, searching, the same things we do all day here.
There are positives, of course. A snakebite doesn’t mean death, because they can now call for medical assistance. They can keep in touch with family members that might have left for other villages, or even for the wider world. This bite of knowledge has broadened their world, but it has also stolen something; some might say they’ve been kicked out of paradise.
When I read this article, I thought about how I’d feel if the internet were to suddenly disappear. It is so much a part of our lives now, would we be able to function at all? Everything happens on the internet: our banking, our social lives, listening to our music, learning, dating, ordering food, diagnosing phantom medical problems, researching. As a knowledge hound from way back, I love the internet. But I also hate it.
I do remember when we didn’t have it. We spent a lot of time talking, reading, walking, getting together, going to the library. You had to specify a time to meet and a place on the old landline, and get there. Somehow, it worked! You had a paper book called a Thomas Guide, a giant map book of San Diego that allowed you to navigate the city (unless your destination was on a page fold). There was no Amazon shopping (irony alert). You got in your car and drove to the grocery, or the book store, or the music club, or the record store. Was it less convenient? Yes. Was it richer? I think so.
Now I find it hard to imagine life without it. If it were suddenly taken away, how would society react? What do you think? Would you like to go back in time and try a world where we had no internet? Or even better, would you like to live like the Marubo people before Starlink, with nothing but traditions and community? I’d love to know your thoughts.
Amen! Thank you for reading!
Laura, thank you for your thought-provoking piece.
I awake frequently to wonder and to check if the internet is down. Because if the internet is down, it could be the beginning of the end of life as we know it. Our weakest link—the first target of an attack against everything we know.
I almost never use credit cards any more. I haven’t carried cash for years (except for tips—which is another social/economic weakness altogether), and rarely buy anything anywhere I can’t use ApplePay—on my Apple Watch! When was the last time you wrote a check?! How much of our social exchange takes place on line? I shop on line. Order and pay for fast food and coffee on line, even if it’s to be picked up. We are indeed vulnerable and you are wise to point it out.
Finally, inasmuch as the internet is to society as the great highway system is to transportation, think about REGULATION. Highway speed, direction, weights, dangerous cargo, driver age, training according to vehicle type, stop signs, distractions, and even convenience signage are REGULATED!
Let’s don’t even talk about GUNS. If a society cannot regulate guns—weapons—how in the name of all that is good, can we expect to regulate our next biggest lifeline, the INTERNET? Not until Congress can begin to work for the common good instead of power mongering, and SCOTUS begins to rule for the good of all the people, and we maintain an executive branch for the people, will we make progress.