Ask HN: If there is a failure of the internet, what info would you save?

[jpmec]

What if the internet suddenly shuts down catastrophically, and the communication infrastructure needed for the world wide web will not return for the foreseeable future.

Assume you have local computer devices that are still operational.

What information would you want to save to view on your local device?

(This is obviously a question about when TSHTF. What would the HN community do to ensure critical information is not lost forever?)

[doctorshady]

If that were to happen, the first thing I'd want is a copy of Wikipedia.

And some BBS software :) .

[jpmec]

good answer, that's the kind of thing I was wondering about.

I figured since HN was mainly "hackers" (builders, tinkerers, doers) that this would be a good forum for this type of open ended question.

I was primarily interested in if the answers would be centered around self-preservation, rebuilding of society, rebuilding of technology, or preservation of the arts and philosophy.

Second, I was interested in real, pragmatic solutions that people were implementing.

For example, since the paper book is becoming less and less important in our daily transfer of information, then less and less is being written on paper about knowledge in building, agriculture, and technology. If "google it" becomes impossible for the common citizen, what would they do for information?

I know in my own personal life, I am reasonably accomplished in the academic area, and working professionally as a software engineer. However, I have not bothered to commit to memory the breadth of information required to sustain myself and my family if we were suddenly thrown into a "dark ages" situation.

[doctorshady]

Culturally, textfiles.com would probably be at the top of the archive game. Jason Scott puts a lot of effort into preserving that sort of thing, and would probably be happy to sell cheap media through the mail with content on it.

The way I'd see it, there'd probably be a few networks. There's obviously a lot more wireless devices capable of ad-hoc transmission then before the internet was popular, so there'd likely be some sort of meshnet-esque way of communicating.

There'd probably be a lot of inventive ways of using the phone network as well. For data, I'm sure there'd be a lot of study into powerful compression and modulation techniques (you'd be surprised how much you can cram into an 8 khz PCM channel), but also some pretty extensive use of conference calls. Not like, the shareholder meeting type, but semi-commonly, you'll see people use conferences just to joke around with each other, and collaborate on things; there'd probably be a good deal more of that.

What network someone picks would probably depend on their personal values and social circles, but just from observing Reddit, I feel like there'd be a lot of people who might feel like a fish out of water without internet - particularly among younger age groups. It's likely there'd be walled gardens set up by companies looking to capitalize on people feeling lost.

Ultimately though, people are resourceful. As a species, we've survived through a lot worse then a lack of internet access. For what we lack in physical literature, there's bound to be someone ambitious/smart enough to either reverse engineer something in place or come up with a new solution to their problems. East Germany's Poly Play arcade machine is a good example of this.

[dman]

1. Sources for all packages in debian.

2. Source for freebsd, openbsd, linux.

3. Intel and AMD manuals.