Comment by anticorporate

Comment by anticorporate 10 days ago

4 replies

Honestly, very little if anything.

I would double-check my offline backups of everything I care about (personal files and professional projects, as well as local copies of music and videos), be sure my local maps are up to date for directions, and perhaps grab new videos from a YouTube channels to have some new entertainment in case I wasn't able to get anything new for a while.

Otherwise, there's not much I'd want. Presumably my local library would still have books, and the radio would still carry news. Most of what I find valuable on the internet are things that refresh in near real-time like message boards and news, or aren't really data to be backed up so much as services I use like ordering food or checking my bank balance.

Having recently gone through over three weeks of power, internet, and cell service outage with Hurricane Helene, at no point was I tempted to go into town and download me some more internet for use offline.

chgs 10 days ago

Depends what “internet is down” means, but are you sure radio will carry news?

Even if the studio can get the signal out to a transmitter, how will news get to the studio? How will you be able to trust it? You might have someone saying something in a CB radio if you have one, but can you rely on that random person?

  • anticorporate 10 days ago

    Having recently lived through a natural disaster, the radio carried local news, which was all I cared about at the time. (Transmission overall was harmed by storm damage, but the local station had direct access to at least a few of their towers.)

    Whether I can rely on the information I get is a good point, but it seems like we as a society struggle with that just as much with the internet as without. Forced decentralization through broken connections may have played as much of a positive role in preserving the integrity of information as it was a negative.

    • chgs 9 days ago

      For now. Our transmitters have links via isdn from the studios. Isdn goes away soon.

      Beyond that, how does the studio receive information? By say phone? SMS?

      Again depends what “the internet” means

      • anticorporate 9 days ago

        I don't disagree with you. The world is increasingly fragile with too many consolidated single points of failure.

        The original question, though, was what would I preserve, and news was an example of something that can't be backed up ahead of time.