Turning Off the Interwebs

Turning it all off is surprisingly easy. Just go to http://www.turnofftheinternet.com/ (make sure you have pop-ups enabled.)

But in all seriousness, there is a senate bill out there threatening to place a kill switch on the interwebs. Though I am loath to link to the sensationalist Fox News, they have a story on this phenomena here. (Also, check out that pic of Obama... man, they did not catch his good side).

Now, we can argue until out browsers run out of ink about whether this is a good or bad idea, but my question is simply, how would one do this?

First, let's examine the irony of the situation. For those of you out of the know, the interwebs was initially founded by ARPANET. Great wiki explanation of it here.

Long story short: these guys made the interwebs so that once the nukes fell, they'd still have a way to commnuicate. Apparently when nukes go off, it messes with radio waves, making any sort of transmitter useless.

Yes, back in the day, they had plans for surviving once they nuked themselves to oblivion. Our grandparents were nuts.

So, basically you have the most indestructable form of communication ever made by man. The interwebs has grown way beyond the capacity of what anyone at ARPANET could've dreamed of. Just check out this "map" of the interwebs, provided by andreae.com:

Each intersection of that light grid is a service provider. Each line is a connection. Each tiny little pixel represents a hundred computers or so. How could you destroy such a massive structure?

Imagine a spider on its web. To get from one side to another to feast on a juicy fly. It walks right through the center to the other side and gets its fly.

Now imagine the same web, only a bat has flown through the web, destroying the center. Now the spider must traverse to the other side, but by alternet routes along the edge. Is it slower? Sure. Is it destroyed? Not even a little bit.

That's what would happen with nuclear war, or a kill switch. The interwebs would be slowed certainly, but not nearly taken down. To me, the entire idea seems not just a little silly.

Basically, we've made an Aasimov-style super computer of such great complexity no man (or woman) can even understand a fraction of it. We can only manage it effectively as an entire species.

If it ever becomes sentient, we're going to have one heck of a time putting it down. I'd make that into a Science Fiction movie, but it's probably already been done about 400,000 times.