CBS - For Americans addicted to Facebook and Google, a day without the Internet might seem to last forever, but the effect of going offline would be no less traumatic for the entire U.S. economy, experts say. While the economy probably could reverse the damage from being offline a few days, every day without the Internet would be a step closer to calamity for manufacturing, finance and other sectors of the economy. Such would be the consequence if the United States ever followed the example of Egypt, which shut off its Internet Jan. 27 in an attempt to silence widespread protests.
Is CBS serious? Have they ever worked in a real office? A day without the internet would be a frigen joy and would, at least in the short term, increase productivity 10-fold.
It might come as a shock that I'd welcome a day without the internet in the office but I'm completely serious. Do you know how much stress I have each day trying to decide between crushing a few hours of work or aimlessly browsing the corporate sanititzed depths of the internet? Not being able to check the hit count on this blog alone would save me one hour a day, never mind the couple of hours or so spent on LongReads.
Yes it would suck to have to have information faxed or relayed over the phone as opposed to receiving it via email or websites, but honestly it would still be at least as efficient. I average somewhere around 250-300 emails received at my work address per day. 75 or so are my friends and I having arguments via one line pot-shots at eachother, 50 are duplicate or triplicate emails because my address has been added to lists multiple times, another 75 may involve me on the periphery but ultimately I just file them without ever reading, and 50 are just pure corporate junk that I don't even think of opening or filing, and that leaves 50 more that are actually pertinent to my job. I spend probably an hour a day just deleting emails, another hour returning shots at my friends or debating the merits of the current BCS football system in detail, despite the fact that none of us work for a BCS school or the NCAA.
If you've been meticulously following along I've just noted roughly 5 hours of waste in my normal 8.5 hour day, and really I meant to exaggerate the time wasted but if I honestly think about it that might be fairly accurate, I'm a fast worker and get a lot done in 10 minute spurts (yes, that is what she said). I rarely work for more than 15 minutes straight(ditto).
With all that excess slacking off time I'm farily certain that even with the crippled capabilities an internet-less workplace would have to deal with, an extra 5 hours would allow ample time to make up for and exceed my normal days production.
